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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

>short-changes the students who do want to engage with him

I don't see how it does that at all. If the students were being loud or otherwise actively disruptive, I'd get your point. But if my neighbor has her nose buried in her cellphone, I fail to see how that impedes my ability to engage with the professor by taking notes, asking questions, etc.

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Sorry, what I meant was that it may be very distracting for the professor who's trying to give a lecture and answer questions while faced with a large number of lecture attendees who seem to be engaged in other tasks. Effective public speaking means making eye contact with people in the audience to get a sense of how your remarks are being received; if there's no feedback available it's likely to negatively impact the delivery of the lecture.

From the student/neighbor perspective I personally do find it distracting to have people around me doing irrelevant stuff in a context like that, but I have a pretty bad ADD so I know that's not typical of others' experience.

I'd say it boils down to simple respect for other people's time and your own time. The professor is up there spending their time teaching. The students are in an learning environment which a number people have spent their time (or lives) constructing. In addition, by choosing to enroll in the class or in the college the students have agreed to invest a portion of their time learning. Completely ignoring the class and doing something else on a laptop or phone says that the student in question believes the course or college is a waste of their time. While that may be a valid point to make, I feel it is cowardice to make it by ignoring the people around them. It could just as easily be made by letting everyone know they think the course is a waste of their time and then leaving the course. Even better, they can stay and try to improve it. This way the people who are interested in the course can continue it in an environment where everyone is actually interested in the course. From my experience, something as simple as having everyone paying attention makes a large positive difference in how participatory and enjoyable a course can be.

Talk to some teachers, because it affects them. Teaching a group of uninterested people takes its toll. Why bother making your class a good one if no-one cares? May as well just phone it in. Sure, you could argue "just do it for the ones that do care", but that's easier said than done. And if the teacher is phoning it in, that does affect you.

Of course, we might want to dig deeper on that question. OK, so teaching an uninterested group of people does affect the teacher - why are those people uninterested in the first place? If they are uninterested, do they have the option to not attend?

So one aspect is that it's similar to how people,were disinterested in classes earlier, but with a slight bump because of the stronger engagement to games designed to be skinner boxes, or the impact of constant engagement.

But I'll Assume that it's still only a minor effect.

The part which would bug me is someone using a laptop or device to visibly do something else in class- because it's just far more visible and distracting.

> If they are uninterested, do they have the option to not attend?

Most college students only care about getting the piece of paper that says "college degree".

Any effort above and beyond the minimum required is considered to be wasted effort.

I don't disagree. I'm saying that this is not an issue of civility, but of misaligned incentives.

Meaningful discussion in class is impossible if huge chunks of the class aren't paying attention. It's not a problem in 500 student classes, but the 20-odd ones it is.

Some (many) people are distracted by non-participating neighbors. It's somewhat like second-hand smoke.

Is there a study on this? Personally I've never felt distracted by non-participating neighbors (with the notable exception of one guy next to me who spent an 80-minute class looking for porn on Google Images), but for all I know my peers have.

I did read a study on this at some point in the past year, but my google-fu is failing me today. IIRC the results were that neighbors using laptops were distracting to surrounding students.

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