Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting • Hacker News Board

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#201

Post by toomanybeersies » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #10

retrac98 wrote: post #4

To be honest, I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of exams/coursework. I managed to come near the top of my class this way with something like 5% attendance at lectures. I expect this isn't the case in the top Universities, but I left my University thinking…

I found that the usefulness of lectures depends very strongly on how good the lecturer is, as well as the topic being discussed. When studying physics I found that the lectures were incredibly useful, because it's quite hard to get in the "zone" of understanding the derivation being discussed when at home. However, with mathematics subjects the textbook was almost always a much better learning tool, because the deriv…

On the contrary, I found that mathematics was the one subject where attending lectures was actually helpful. Seeing the lecturer work through problems made it a lot easier to understand than trying to read the lecture notes.

Watching recorded lectures would do the same though, but they weren't recorded. They had the capability, but the maths department decided that they didn't want to, which I think was silly at best, and discriminatory at worst (e.g. people with mental health issues might be unable to attend lectures, thus being put at an unfair disadvantage).

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#202

Post by toomanybeersies » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:05 AM UTC

malkia wrote: post #108

While I worked at Google, laptops @ meeting were pretty much the norm. A note-taker (in our case the oncall person, or build master) would open a Google Docs document, or continue from a long going one (well known to everyone) and start typing notes, agenda, action items. At the same time the rest of the team can join (especially useful, if meeting is happening in more than one room, with people working from home, re…

That sounds like not everyone needed to be in that meeting.

My old work banned screens in meetings (except for the note taker), it made it painfully obvious to me which meetings I didn't need to be in. Sometimes I'd sit there for half an hour with my eyes glazed over.

On the plus side, eventually I started being more assertive when questioning whether my attendance was necessary at certain meetings, or asking to leave once the relevant part of the meeting was over. There was no point in me sitting there while the iOS team discussed some specific issue that I couldn't give any input to.

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#203

Post by xenophonf » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:10 AM UTC

malkia wrote: post #108

While I worked at Google, laptops @ meeting were pretty much the norm. A note-taker (in our case the oncall person, or build master) would open a Google Docs document, or continue from a long going one (well known to everyone) and start typing notes, agenda, action items. At the same time the rest of the team can join (especially useful, if meeting is happening in more than one room, with people working from home, re…

This is how all Internet2 meetings get run. For example, here are the notes from the 2015 Advanced CAMP meetings:

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/ACAMP2015/ACAMP+2015+Ho...

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#204

Post by r00fus » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:28 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #199

r00fus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't rewind a meeting or a lecture. You can't pause to think. You can't review the text in the middle. I disagree about meetings. I often ask to repeat a pivotal discourse in a multi-party meeting simply to emphasize it's being understood by all participants. Also notes help to structure the meeting so you don't take 1hr to discuss 30m of content. I prefer to share my notes on screen (either as email minutes I…

Why are you wasting so much meeting time on non-pivotal discourse?

Where are you finding meetings so regularly effective that they don't need management/facilitation? I'd love to work there.

My setting is sales/consulting with customers including multiple parties.

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#205

Post by robotresearcher » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:32 AM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #168

usrusr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also before tablets and ubiquitous laptops, but after PowerPoint hit: whenever I had the opportunity to have slide printouts ahead of time, they were a surprisingly nice scribble sink (many slides per page, not a big stack). Those short bursts of details, questions or clarifications both from the talk and from thinking while listening that would be useless riddles without the context provided by the rough timeline of…

I really, really wish more professors had provided slides up front; many don't change them year to year anyway, and it would have helped immensely to prepare for the lecture and be more actively engaged. Syllabi are helpful, but even these days I insist on having at least a purpose if not a full blown agenda for meetings, otherwise what's the point?

It's very simple: students who get the notes up front are less likely to come to class.

Before you tell me this is silly, it's a fact that some students need help to decide to come to class. Should we reduce the absolute goodness of the class to assist less-than-perfect students? We already do in so many ways. Sigh.

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#206

Post by snambi » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:33 AM UTC

If the professor is really interesting, why would someone look into a laptop?

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#207

Post by gowld » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

Joe-Z wrote: post #19

hashkb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note taking exists to combat what you're talking about. You can improve your note taking, and how you use your notes, on paper or on a device.

Also I'd say you _can_ pause a lecture. Simply lift up your hand and ask a question: That's the great thing about person-to-person teaching. Painting all lectures and meetings as 'broken' because one would prefer to have video for everything (that's how I understood it) is pretty hyperbolic.

> Simply lift up your hand and ask a question.

That scales poorly- O(n) cost per O(1) benefit

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#208

Post by Pyxl101 » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #178

cjsuk wrote: post #2

I will sit there in a meeting (or retrospectively in a university lecture) and regularly derive nothing of value at all from my notes, be they written or typed. It's the media that is wrong, not the note taking medium. You can't rewind a meeting or a lecture. You can't pause to think. You can't review the text in the middle. Everything is immediate, transient. If you lose the pace, then everything after that point is…

You are not describing a meeting. Meetings should only invite people who will actively participate and provide their input. Anyone not meeting that description should not be invited. You are describing a lecture, or perhaps a presentation, or series of presentations. Which classically have all the problems you cite of losing the thread and not being able to catch up again. In meetings where you actively participate,…

What's wrong with inviting people who wish to observe the input provided by others, and subsequent discussion?

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#209

Post by Groxx » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 2:05 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #191

Groxx wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the "frantically trying to transcribe everything" comes somewhat from how we've been trained by grading-on-attendance and grading-on-note-taking classes. We're used to going to classes that are far less useful than the book, and getting nothing from it except a waste of everyone's time. Some schools are of course different, but IME the most-useless lecturers were also the ones who graded on attendance and/o…

Ok, but there is no grade for attendance in my classes, and I keep reminding people that they don't need to take comprehensive notes. The expectation that a class should be more useful than the book seems odd to me. In a typical undergrad class, you're teaching a subset of what's in a decent textbook (with maybe a little additional meterial thrown in for color). So I mean, sure, you could just read the book if you're…

Or abandon the attempt at lecturing what's already in the book, and spend most of the time on Q&A (i.e. interaction, the stuff that actually benefits from having the teacher in the room). Bonus points: more people come to class having read the material, and people who already read it and don't have questions don't bother coming.

The few I've had that did this were amazingly useful - alternate derivations for people stuck on the book's approach, side explorations on things hinted at but not covered normally, etc. Many would get the homework out and puzzle through it in class too, and come up with Qs part way through. I wish we had this in other classes with a couple days between Qs and As, where you'd be left wondering what you actually understood if you weren't totally confident.

If your class is essentially a book-reading-but-verbal, maybe it shouldn't be a lecture / doesn't need the book? Some people learn better verbally, so a reading is definitely valuable, but not for all.

Re: Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting

#210

Post by dgacmu » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

xenophonf wrote: post #200

dgacmu wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a counterexample - CMU's 15-112 bans laptops. The professor for it for the previous 8 years, David Kosbie, is one of the most highly regarded professors in the university. His primary rationale for it is the "externalized cost" effect described in the article, which I can attest is quite true in my experience teaching. When you look out at a sea of faces, you can see where the laptops are because of the reacti…

People like Professor Kosbie drive me up the wall. Let me show you why. Here are the notes I took on my tablet PC for a week-long Tandberg TCTE+TMS certification class: https://shared.irtnog.org/Tandberg-TCTA-TCTE-TMS.pdf Admittedly, it's a big PDF because I didn't bother converting my handwriting to text, but it's still a pretty useful reference when it comes to video conferencing stuff, even though I don't do that…

I don't feel like you're hearing my point:

It's not about you. It's about the people around you. But you're right: I'm not willing to let you (bleep) up the educational experience for the people around you, because (in my class), everyone around you has also forked over $60,000 per year to be there.

But it's also about context: 15-112 is not a "dump facts at you" class, which the courses you're describing sound much more like. 112 is an intro to programming course, where half of what happens is in-class demonstration of how to solve problems with programming. Most of the real learning in the class happens in recitation and by students doing a lot of programming with a lot of TA support.

It's also a first-year student course. You're welcome to make a prediction about how many of those 17 and 18-year-old students are actually using their bright distracting shiny to take notes vs. having blingy bleepies popping up on facebook. (Answer: handwav-ily about half, where a lot of students attempt to "multitask" between distractions and note-taking.) I'm pretty happy with a blanket ban, because it improves the net educational outcomes in my classes. shrug (I still allow laptops in my grad classes. I may revisit it, but I figure in general that with experience comes some greater degree of self-control. That's a hunch, not a data-driven conclusion.)

The thread later on about the flipped classroom is the one to really look at for resolving this issue -- it's entirely possible that we should get rid of many of the conventional lectures and replace class-time with structured-activity time (which would involve laptops). The problem, however, is that in most flipped approaches, you have to get the students to watch -- often solo -- a video of the lecture material, and/or solo read it. The number who actually do so is somewhat low, even at a top school. The jury's still a little out, but the potential is high.