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

nytimes.com

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

#21

Post by lvoudour »

afarrell wrote: post #17
lvoudour wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100%. I went to college before tablets and affordable laptops became ubiquitous, but the same problem applied to handwritten notes. After a few tries to keep notes and re-read them at my leisure I gave up, it was exhausting to take them and in the end I was missing too much. The best solution is audio/video recording. I think every lecturer can record their lectures and publish them online later in the college'…

> publish them online later Note that you also need to have someone add captions to them for accessibility.

Most professors are experts at delegating the menial tasks to others :)

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

#22

Post by cjsuk »

lvoudour wrote: post #16
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…

Agree 100%. I went to college before tablets and affordable laptops became ubiquitous, but the same problem applied to handwritten notes. After a few tries to keep notes and re-read them at my leisure I gave up, it was exhausting to take them and in the end I was missing too much. The best solution is audio/video recording. I think every lecturer can record their lectures and publish them online later in the college'…

To clarify, I too was before the time of laptops and recording technology being available. MiniDiscs had just come on the scene then and the notes are worth nothing without what appears on the OHP and the contextual timing of them. Video recording was impossible.

Really every lecture should be recorded and links handed out to students.

A big killer is that the lecturer has been doing the same lecture for 20 odd years and is complacent or prefers to defer feedback to the end. Everyone is lost then. Same with meetings. Questions at the end? Context gone!

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

#23

Post by wastedhours »

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…

I had an engineering mathematics lecture where the lecturer was so bad attending was a net negative, as in, not only did he add nothing to the notes, but his frequent mistakes and side tangents led us down so many useless avenues we'd end up more confused.

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

#24

Post by xenophonf »

I'm sick to death of old school instructors making me put my tablet PC away on the assumption that I lack self-control or won't pay attention or can't take good notes. The whole point of a device capable of drawing stuff is the synthesis of digital recording and writing/drawing. Dunno about anyone else but OneNote has made me a way better student as a result, plus it makes my logs and notes available (and shareable) in ways that no paper lab notebook can replicate. By all means let's encourage students to not simply take dictation during lectures, but let's also not simply throw away a great tool in the process.

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

#25

Post by cjsuk »

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.

I don't want a video. I want the material written down in a formal tutorial style that can be reviewed and updated and consumed at a suitable pace. That pace can be faster for the bits I understand and slower for the bits I don't.

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

#26

Post by reubeniv »

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 think often underrated is the value of knowing what you need to learn, which lectures certainly help with imho.

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

#28

Post by jaymzcampbell »

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 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.

This was very much my experience too. My first foray to university was the traditional full time format. I really didn't get on well with the lectures - it felt too slow in some cases, too fleeting in others and beyond a few particular classes, not very illuminating at all. For what it's worth this was at Imperial so I guess a "top" uni.

In later life, I did a degree with the Open University which has no lectures at all (well almost, there's a few online and night schools but they are more like practicals than lectures). Instead it's all self-study from guidebooks and notes with regularly graded coursework which for many of the courses is a pre-requisite to pass the examinations. I greatly preferred the latter option and felt I had a much better understanding of the material.

It's been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but audio/video recordings are a different ballgame all together for me. I actually really like lectures in that way. I guess it all boils down to the idea of tailored, self-service. I can review/pause/skip and repeat at my leisure.

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

#29

Post by dmlorenzetti »

hashkb wrote: post #14
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…

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.

I have a colleague who makes mind-map style notes, either on paper or via software. He doesn't try to capture everything that's said. Rather, he notes key ideas, and identifies/imposes structure to the conversation.

It can actually be informative to look over his shoulder as a meeting progresses, to see what loose ends are still dangling, and where people focus the most attention.

For myself, I've moved to markdown-style in my handwritten notes. It isn't as fluid as mind maps, but the bullet points and headings still bring out structure, and the number of sub-bullets under any given item can hint to me if I haven't understood how things are going at a fine enough or coarse enough level.

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

#30

Post by cjsuk »

bebe3000 wrote: post #18
austincheney wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like ADHD.

Or a too hard course. Or a bad lecturer. Or you skipped the previous lecture and it's all gibberish again.

Hard course (electrical engineering, laplace fun!), shit lecturer (complacent, dismissive of questions), skipped lecture (never although I probably should have just stuck my face in the course books).
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