You Never Know Who’s Looking Over Your Shoulder

Recently I attended a lecture where the audience included a significant number of high school students.  One of our most gifted teachers was lecturing and I was sitting in the audience directly behind a row of high school students, many of whom had brought their laptops to the lecture to take notes. I appreciated how conscientious they were.

Now, before I continue to talk about this experience, I want to go back to last week’s blog where I wrote about the advantages that classroom technology, including smart boards, can bring to the learning process.  I am clearly an advocate and as an educator and an economist, I understand what can now be easily done in the classroom that could not be done before.

At this lecture, the technology was not being used by the speaker though the teacher effectively introduced some drama into the presentation which did help highlight the points being made. Rather, at this lecture, the technology was being used by the students.  The student in front of me was especially facile with technology.  She was taking notes, responding to emails, using instant messaging and shopping on-line almost simultaneously.  At least two screens were always visible on her laptop and the shopping screen appeared on a frequent basis.  I am certain that there are some individuals who can undertake all four of these endeavors simultaneously and perform them flawlessly but I am also certain the number of such individuals is minuscule.  What is inevitably lost for almost anyone attempting this level of simultaneous multi-tasking is detail, context, and nuances.  In shopping and in doing emails, this may or may not be a problem.  But in the learning process, in listening to an important lecture, not paying attention results in sound bites rather than a fully textured educational experience.  Text messaging, social media and even, to an extent, email all promote sound bite questions and answers at the expense of completeness and perhaps to some extent accuracy.

Use of technology on the part of some students can also undermine academic integrity.  Cell phones, computers, the Internet have all made possible more sophisticated forms of cheating and all of us have to be more vigilant in making sure such cheating is prevented and, if it does take place, dealt with firmly (but within an educational as well as punitive context).  Technology also facilitates the invasion of privacy as the tragic death of Rutgers’ student Tyler Clementi makes clear to us.  Here too, we need to be more vigilant to make sure that technology is not used to undermine the respect, tolerance and civility we should have for each other.

We know that students benefit greatly from the use of technology.  Some of the benefits are more mundane, such as word processing; others, such as analytical tools and access to information, allow for vastly high quality student work.  But with the privileges that technology provides comes the responsibility to use the technology wisely and well.  All of us in higher education have a lot of work to do with our students to make that happen.

A Very Private Office

After I completed my PhD and accepted my first tenure track full-time teaching appointment, I was assigned a faculty office that I shared with three other full-time faculty.  I was on campus usually four days a week but I hated the office even though I liked my office mates.  Trying to talk with students and trying to grade exams, or trying to do research was seriously and negatively impacted.  It is impossible to talk to students about their future plans and ambitions, about courses they needed to meet requirements and graduate, and about economics.  Often I would just leave the office and do research in the library, and talk with students at a remote table in the cafeteria.  My situation was not unique in those days.  Many faculty shared offices with the same ramifications as I experienced.

Fast forward to today.  Every full-time faculty member at Hofstra has his or her own office and once again this is not a unique situation.  The facilities provided for faculty have been enhanced with the realization that a private office is a good investment.  The more comfortable a faculty member is on campus when having meetings with students and when doing research, it should follow that the faculty member spends more time on campus.  In turn the campus becomes more attractive to students with the easy accessibility to faculty. And for many years this relationship worked as predicted.

But the world has changed.  First of all communication is very different than when many of us went to school and very different from the way it was when we started working in higher education.  When I started teaching, a student would always be able to see me if they came during my regular office hours.  Typically, this was 4 hours per week.  Student could also make appointments to see me or any other faculty member; if the regular office hours didn’t work for a student or students, alternatives could usually always be found. Notes could be left in the department mailbox and a phone call to the office was also a possibility. Today, email, text messaging, Blackboard as well as other classroom management tools, provide a much faster and more convenient way of increased student/faculty communication (but you do lose the in-person contact).   In addition, the campus library, which often was key to a faculty member’s research or to a student’s education, has also felt the impact of technology.  As a starting faculty member, I often spent time in the Government Documents Room studying economic data and trends.  All the information is now available on-line with many more analytical options. 

Furthermore, many faculty look for a teaching schedule with fewer days per week on campus and often faculty live further away from the campus.  And students often have part-time jobs and some are looking for an earlier start and a later finish to the weekends which also leads to a more compact class schedule. For faculty the end result is less time on campus and less time in their private office.  Often an office is not occupied for extensive periods of time during the academic year.  Faculty need and deserve first rate office space.  But presently we are not using resources in the most efficient way possible. It’s time for a new model of space utilization.