'Wasting time on the Internet' — not your average course policy

In a new English course, Penn students will get course credit for watching YouTube videos and messaging friends online.

But while professor Kenneth Goldsmith’s new course “Wasting time on the Internet” will use digital distraction to inspire students’ creative writing, not all Penn professors have proverbially downloaded Goldsmith’s philosophy.

Policies on laptop and technology use at Penn vary from class to class, depending on the desires of professors.

For Goldsmith, messaging, status-updating and random online surfing will serve as “the raw material for creating compelling and emotional works of literature,” according to the course description for his class next semester.

“With technology all around in my classrooms, I realized that it made my students smarter, not dumber,” Goldsmith said. “I wanted to create a course that used that resource as a basis for investigation.”

But Stephanie Weirich — a Penn computer science professor who, ironically, bans computers in an introductory programming course — thinks that computers distract students more than they help them learn.

“When I had taught my class without the [computer ban] policy in place, I was getting frustrated with how quiet the class was, how engrossed they were in their laptops and how less engaged they were in lecture,” Weirich said. Banning laptops, she felt, would increase student engagement.

“I view class time as a two-way communication since I feel that I can be a better lecturer if I’m getting information back from them,” Weirich added. “It makes you uncomfortable when you aren’t getting the nonverbal conversation cues back from 150 laptop backs.”

Across the country, schools have taken different approaches to computer use in the classroom. In 2008, the University of Chicago Law School banned internet access in classrooms to stop students from surfing the web in lectures. About a third of professors in Duke University’s undergraduate sociology department no longer allow students to use laptops in class.

“I stopped using my laptop in class because I know that if I have it open I won’t pay attention during class,” College sophomore Gabby Even-Chen said. “I now take notes on pen and paper instead of using my laptop.”

However, research is divided on the issue of computer use in classrooms. A 2012 University of Michigan study found students’ use of laptops for a course-related purpose helped them learn what the professor was teaching. But a 2013 York University study confirms the common finding that students who don’t use computers in class consistently perform better than students who are multitasking online.

Even while some feel that laptop use might be detrimental to learning, many students are still using computers in class. To embrace that trend at Penn, Goldsmith aims to explore the phenomenon of aimless drifting and online distractions. In addition to providing critical texts about the history of boredom and wasting time, Goldsmith will require students to spend the three-hour class period staring at their screens in online chat rooms, social media sites or other forms of internet browsing.

“I think it’s a hallmark of the undergraduate liberal arts program to expose students to unconventional ways of thinking,” Goldsmith said. “Now is the time to indulge in something weird and experimental before leaving and getting jobs. Isn’t that what an undergraduate education is all about?”

While some professors ban laptops completely, Goldsmith believes “that battle can’t be won since you can’t keep students away from it, so instead it will be interesting to see what happens when you nourish it.”

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