Friday in my giant Econ 101 class I noticed an obvious change in the reactions of students who are awake, to those who are not. The first week of school, possibly even the second week, people were extremely polite and seemed to genuinely care if the immediate people around them were passed out and missing the lecture. I noticed some people tap shoulders, whisper quietly, or if they were friends a sharp jab with a pencil followed by a not so quiet laugh. It was nice to see that people cared enough about their peers to keep them up during their common lecture. This is no longer the case!
As we entered our 4th week here at UNC it seems people care significantly less about how much they pay attention in class, much less their peers paying attention span. People play a variety of games in class including online poker, Solitaire, Vista's Purble Place, and even online Monopoly. People hold video chats on Skype and Oovoo, and chat using every instant message service known to man! Hiding cell phones seem to be a precaution of the past. Students blatantly hold SKYPE CHATS! It's crazy what people do in big lecture halls.
As I mentioned before, the big event that led me to notice the lack of attention throughout my lecture classes occurred last Friday. A kid sitting two seats to my right began to fall asleep, and was eventually passed out on his laptop. A string of "H's" streamed across his word processor for 10 whole pages before he woke up and noticed what was happening. Instead of anyone waking him up to save him the embarrassment, people snickered and laughed. I myself laughed for a bit. Should I have woke him up, or should he not have fell asleep in the first place? Probably both... Bottom line... we should all pay a little more attention in class, especially those boring lecture classes.. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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I completely understand where you are coming from! I have a PSYC 101 lecture hall with 300 students and the first couple of lectures everybody seemed attentive but the last two classes the shift was obvious. We had a lecture about sleep one day and our teacher joked about students sleeping in the class. Sure enough, five minutes later our class shamelessly pointed our three people as currently sleeping during our seminar.
ReplyDeleteOh and for the people on Facebook and Skype, I not only find it a bit silly but also distracting, I can't help but to get sucked in to Youtube when it's playing right there in front of me.
Not paying attention and sleeping in class is not only obviously harmful to the people themselves but is distracting to the students around them.
I also understand where you're coming from. I have a Drama class with about 300 students and the first day the class was packed with students, so packed that some people did not have any seats. The last couple of days that I went to class, howeever, only about 100 people attended lecture.
ReplyDeleteHaha, the first two weeks of school I didn't even bother to bring my computer to my big lecture classes because I know that I would be using it to get distracted. Now, I purposely bring it just for that. I had not realized this until now. Maybe I'll stop bringing it so I can actually pay attention and not fail..
ReplyDeleteoh my gosh!! that was hilarious...i wish i could sleep in my econ class but then he does those random clicker grades like in every class so i have to pay attention. But then again i dont have to wake up til 11:30 on those days:)
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