That’s funny! Tell me another story.

My colleague Joleen Beltrami passes on this interesting story about the increasing presence of laptop computers in the classroom.  I’m sure she was thinking of me and my tablet PC — I use it to take notes (with the pen!), check facts, and run programs like SAS, Excel, S-Plus, or Mathematica.  For me, it’s a timesaver and a great resource, in and out of the classroom.

However, this comment in the article is just a crock of baloney:

Students, he says, have adopted an attitude that class attendance and participation are irrelevant with today’s technology.

"This is what we’re dealing with," he says, describing the attitude:

"I
don’t understand why I have to be here. Why don’t you simply post your
lecture notes using WebCT (Course Tools), we’ll access them later … and
if you’re going to force me to come to class by attendance, I’m going
to do what I want." [my emphasis]

Excuse me, but on the first day of class, Ms Wiseass, I gave you a syllabus that told you about the assignments and readings in the required textbook.  You didn’t read either one of those, why should I believe you when you say you’ll read the course notes?  If you’re so franken’ smart, why not just read the textbook and test out of the course, saving yourself $900+ and about 140 hours of your life?

I give lectures because doing useful statistics is difficult.  You can work every homework problem in most undergrad texts and still not feel competent to perform a straightforward statistical analysis.  Coming to class is all about learning technique, discussing problems, and learning statistical intuition and judgement.  To profitably participate, students need to be current on their readings, ticking away on their homeworks, and ready with questions in class. You can’t pick it up later, reading over the class notes.

Yes, I am adding this to my fall syllabus.