Over the years I have struggled with the issue of whether or not to ban cell phones or laptops. For me, whether or not to ban is the wrong question. A better question focuses on student learning, since I strongly believe in policies that support student learning in the classroom. I also strongly believe in treating my students like adults. 

I don’t mind cell phones in the classroom, I mind behavior that interferes with learning. So I crafted a digital device policy in the classroom that focuses on behavior instead of imposing bans two years ago.

I posted the digital device policy from my syllabi below. When I introduce the policy, I tell the students I expect them to be in categories 3 and 4. During the semester, I make sure to remind of the policy if there are many students who are not meeting expectations or acknowledge that the students are doing a great job by meeting expectations.

I’m more comfortable setting a clear policy that outlines expectations for behavior than a blanket ban. This also puts the students in charge of themselves.

It’s been two years, and I still like it. 

My digital device policy:

Laptops and tablets should be put away and closed if we are not using them for an in-class example. Research* shows that laptop use in class leads to lower grades for those with the laptops and even lower grades for those who are sitting by the laptop users due to the distractions they provide. I ask that you respect your peers’ desire to learn and not engage in distracting behavior in class. I understand that many of you like to follow along with the lecture notes on your tablet during class. I support the use of a laptops and tablets that are consistent with the course’s learning goals. I discourage taking notes during class using your laptop keyboard, since students frequently tell me they find typing noises during class to be extremely distracting.

* Sana, F., Weston, T. and Cepeda, N.J., 2013. Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, pp.24-31.

I use this meme in class, but fewer and fewer students know who Obi Wan Kenobi is:

This updates my previous post on my preliminary digital device policy.

What is your digital device policy?

Every semester, it gets harder and harder for me to police student distraction in my classes. I set policies, they become hard to enforce, and then things spiral out of control. Lather, rinse, repeat. It seems to get harder each semester as we become even more connected to our digital devices.

This semester I am teaching two courses that are both lecture style. I often do in-class active learning activities that require a laptop or calculator. Students can work with one of their peers if they forget their laptop. I ask students to keep their laptops and cell phones away during class when we are not doing an activity that requires their use, but over time, the laptops come out.

Sometimes when class starts I remind students to put their laptops away until we need to use them. The laptop lids close, but half a dozen laptops reopen within 15 minutes of the announcement. I am losing the battle.

Laptops and cell phones are a distraction to everyone, not just the students who are using the laptops, and they interfere with everyone’s learning. I can handle some disrespect in the classroom but I become less tolerant when students are disrespecting their peers who want to learn.

I am experimenting with new ways to set and enforce policies. I firmly believe in focusing on student learning and treating students like adults. I think it’s better for me to set policies that trains students to deal with expectations they will encounter in other parts of their lives rather than stick with an unnuanced ban.

Below is a message I posted to my course discussion board. The statement (aside from the opening paragraph) will now be added to my course syllabus. I plan to introduce the cell phone use rubric periodically throughout the semester when things spiral out of control. Feedback is welcome.

~~~

I want to clarify the laptop policy in class. My ultimate goal is student learning, and the time we have in class is a great opportunity for us to learn. I know everyone is attached to their digital devices and it’s hard to put them down. (Confession: it’s hard for me, too). Here are some guidelines for device use in class.

Laptop and cellphone policy. Laptops and tablets should be put away and closed if we are not using them for an in-class example. Research* shows that laptop use in class leads to lower grades for those with the laptops and even lower grades for those who are sitting by the laptop users due to the distractions they provide. I ask that you respect your peers’ desire to learn and not engage in distracting behavior in class.

* Sana, F., Weston, T. and Cepeda, N.J., 2013. Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, pp.24-31.

Here is an article about the research: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/08/14/laptops-in-classrooms_n_3756831.html

This is a guide for cell phone usage in class:

~~~

I’ve made a few memes that I use in class but they no longer work and my undergrads are no longer familiar with Star Wars episodes IV-VI! But I like them 🙂

This semester I taught a PhD seminar course on Public Sector Operations Research. You can read about it here on our class blog and here on Punk Rock OR.

The students presented three research papers over the course of the semester. I created a schedule for the student speakers, and I matched each student with another student who served as the moderator. The moderator’s job was to introduce the speaker and to field questions after the talk like in department colloquiums. If there are no questions following a talk, the moderator should be ready to kick things off with a question or two.

Students often follow my lead and wait for me to ask the first question. Sometimes when a presentation ends I am too busy jotting down notes on my grading sheet to kick of the questions. Awkward silence follows. My intent was to get the students more engaged in the other presentations and to encourage them to demonstrate leadership in the classroom without assigning extra work. I would say that it worked very well. Following each presentation I had at least one student ready to ask insightful questions, which often led to other students asking interesting follow up questions. The students took ownership in the Q&A session following each presentation.

My favorite part was the unexpected consequences. I did not envision students stepping up to introduce their peers. One introduction was really sweet. I think we all got a little choked up when one student introduced her peer as a “good researcher and a great friend.”

This semester I am team teaching an introduction to engineering course for freshmen (EGR102 at UW-Madison). The course is designed to help students choose a major in engineering by exploring engineering grand challenges. In the course, students discover that there are thousands of ways to be an engineer, not just 10 ways to be an engineer (corresponding to the 10 engineering majors). I believe this approach helps to retain students in engineering, particularly women and minority students who may not have enough role models in engineering to help them feel like they belong.

138 students are enrolled this semester. Students have several common lectures in a large lecture hall. Then, we divide the students into sections (“themes”) of 20-24 students so they can explore a topic in more detail. Each theme must cut across all the engineering majors so it has something for everyone. Each student is assigned to 2 of the 6 themes for about 8 classes each:

Theme 1: Engineering Solutions for a Healthy World
Theme 2: Safety and Risk-Analysis of Emerging Technology
Theme 3: Critical Infrastructures and Logistics (mine!)
Theme 4: Megacities and Urban Engineering
Theme 5: Controlling Carbon: Powering our Future Societies
Theme 6: Global Engineering Challenges: Energy and Water

Here is my list of required and recommended reading for my theme on critical infrastructure and logistics.

Media about cities and the engineering challenges that cities provide:

• Infrastructure is to support human life. A city? A 4 minute video on the science of cities from The Atlantic
• Freakonomics podcast: why cities rock

Systems thinking and engineering design

• Life was simple. After that, we had systems
• IKEA lowers its shipping costs through design
• At UPS, the algorithm is the driver: transportation networks, logistics, and human decision-makers. Watch an interview with Jack Levis at UPS on how seamlessly embedding analytics into design helps drivers optimize performance.
• RadioLab on Facebook and social network system research [podcast]
• Operations research and engineering design at Disney
• Is London ready for the Olympics? Passport checkpoints at Heathrow. See the Wall Street Journal article here.

Thinking about next-generation transportation, public transit, and the sustainability of public transit:

• No new roads: a strategy for the future of transport
• How road diets work (including a 2 minute video)
• Why building new roads just makes people drive more
• Why doesn’t the US have a high speed rail system like most other developed countries?
• How to make public mass transit financially sustainable once and for all
• How São Paulo Uses ‘Value Capture’ to Raise Billions for Infrastructure
• How to Pay for America’s Infrastructure: Should infrastructure banks replace our current system of funding roads and transit through grants?

Self-driving cars

• The problem with self-driving cars are the other drivers
• 99% Invisible podcast episode on self-driving cars and engineering design
• What if your self-driving car chooses to sacrifice you to save others?
• The Onion (satire): Engineers unveil new driverless car capable of committing hit-and-run

Smartgrid, the connected home, and cyber-security

• IEEE Spectrum: How to Blackout-proof a city
• IEEE Spectrum: MP3 interview about Mumbai’s power grid [mp3]
• 6 things you should know about the Internet of Things
• A map of squirrel attacks on the U.S. Power grid
• The U.S. Naval Academy brings back celestial navigation in case of a cyberattack on a GPS
• Ted Koppel on cyber-attacks and power grid security on the Diane Rehm show [podcast]

Disasters

• The mother of all disasters
• Radiation isn’t the real risk: preventing one type of disaster leads to another
• Japan rethinks tsunami safety
• Why are Japanese homes disposable? A Freakonomics podcast about earthquakes, building codes, engineering, non-technical constraints, and unexpected consequences
• Risk-based flood insurance: my national academies experience and report
• Flood risk and engineering management
• Chicago tried to dig its way out of urban flooding for decades before climate change made it a national crisis

Non-technical constraints

• Type II errors are the ones that get you fired: the Atlanta edition
• Italian scientists are convicted of manslaughter for making a Type II error
• Waiting is torture, but it’s not so bad if there are mirrors or trees
• Freakonomics podcast on unintended consequences: “The Cobra Effect” (but dark!)

Here are the course learning objectives:
By the end of this class, students should be able to…
1) Identify a societal problem that requires an engineering solution and identify non-technical constraints.
2) Design multidisciplinary engineering approaches to societal problems.
3) Appraise and evaluate these engineering approaches.
4) Compare and contrast various engineering solutions.
5) Identify the different engineering disciplines and describe how each can contribute to the solution of grand challenge problems
6) Find, select, and correctly document credible sources for use in a group research project.
7) Summarize and discuss important facts, ideas, and arguments from different sources in well-crafted written assignments.
8) Present research findings on a coherent and defined topic to the class in a clear, organized, and persuasive manner using the appropriate media tools.

Related reading:

• read my other posts about teaching with technology
• dividing up a large class into discussion sections using integer programming (it was for this course!)
• engineering grand challenges of the 20th century
• engineering grand challenges that operations research can help solve

The ASEE newsletter has an article about MOOCs that I found particularly interesting. I am not interested in teaching a MOOC, but this article has  general implications for those interested in flipped teaching or teaching with technology, two big trends in higher education. The full article is here [Link].

A not-so-surprising conclusion is that teaching MOOCs is not at all like lecturing, even when literally delivering lectures online. Recording a 50 minute lecture for a MOOC will make for an unpopular online course. Instead, short segments of 6-9 minutes are ideal. Yes, we are teaching to the YouTube generation.

To captivate such a diverse audience, “it’s good to have bite-sized content,” advises Whiteman, who has distilled basic mechanics into short modules and “edu-bytes” of no more than 10 minutes. Armando Fox, professor in residence in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, reorganized his 90-minute lecture into 8-to-12-minute video segments or “lecturelets” for his software engineering MOOC, each covering a topic with one or two self-check questions. Evidence from the field suggests shorter is sweeter. New data from edX, a nonprofit MOOC provider created by MIT and Harvard, for instance, put the optimal length for lecturelets at 6 to 9 minutes. Median viewing time, where half the students watch the entire clip, peaks at 6 minutes, then falls rapidly. The edX data also reveal that mixing talking heads with computer screenshots or slides is more engaging than screenshots with voice- overs. [emphasis mine]

I had heard about breaking the lecture down into pieces, but I had previously heard (a few years ago before MOOCs took over) that 15-20 minutes was ideal. Six to nine minute lecturelets are much shorter and a lot more work per minute of lecture. Teaching difficult content while telling a story in 6 minute chunks requires a lot of skill. Not surprisingly, it takes an eternity to create the MOOC equivalent of a single lecture:

 MOOCs require “a huge amount of work,” says UC Davis’ Owens, who devotes two full days preparing each 60- to 90-minute lecture. To maximize his instruction time, he writes eight pages covering not only exactly what he will say, including jokes, but what he will draw. It takes eight hours to record the lecture, stopping, starting, and rewriting as necessary. The editing crew needs 32 hours to synchronize the audio, screencasts, and video into a complete lecture. Online education veteran Autar Kaw, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of South Florida, estimates that it takes five to 10 hours to produce each hourlong lecture video beyond the time needed to develop textbooks, simulations, and real-world problems.  [emphasis mine]

This sounds unappealing to me. I don’t want teaching prep time to cut into research time or time with students. A more traditional way of teaching can be done effectively with much less work (plus cornier, more spontaneous jokes!). Since so many universities expect professors to be more adept with research than teaching, I don’t see MOOCs the way of the future unless incentives radically change.

I don’t mean to be cynical. The fact of the matter is that I want to be an excellent teacher, even if it takes a bit of time. I try to try a few new things with teaching every semester to improve my skills. Progress is steady and slow. Also, as an introvert, I feel like my personality needs some time to adapt to new teaching styles, because entertaining a room full of students does not come naturally to me. Some professors may simply not be the right fit for teaching online or flipping. But despite personality issues and the lack of incentives, moving toward more online teaching and flipping may be doable as long as professors can move at a tortoise-like pace to make this happen.

I try to turn a lecture into a story, something that feeds into the narrative I tell the class over the course of the semester. Students can better figure out why a theorem, result, or example is important if I connect it with the story of what we are doing in class that day as well as over the semester (and yes, it took me a few years to figure this out!). I suppose I teach with a series of “lecturelets,” but they are probably longer than 6-9 minutes long.

In general, professors have and will continue to adapt to new technologies and teaching styles so long as it doesn’t take 20 hours to prep for a single class. It has been my experience that anything other than lecture takes a lot more preparation time (there is a reason why lecturing is popular!). There are only so many hours in a day.

My favorite part of the article compares teaching to watching movies:

USF’s Kaw still prefers the “social experience” of the traditional classroom but says it’s like choosing between going to the movies and watching Netflix: “I like both.”

Have MOOCs affected how you teach?

At my last university, I used a Windows Journal PC tablet for teaching, and I absolutely loved it. To cut down on costs, I researched alternatives for my first class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I decided to go with PDF Expert by Readdle based on a glowing endorsement from Marina Epelman.

PDF expert is a pdf annotation app available for iOS and Android that costs $10 (I bought it on sale for $5). It does a lot. Here is Readdle’s description:

PDF Expert 5 is an essential application to store, read, annotate and sign PDFs. Highlight, strike out, draw with your finger or make your notes! Filling out PDF forms is a breeze. Smart zoom and intelligent snapping makes it easier to edit PDFs the way you want it. Sepia mode, text to speech an other helpful features create a great reading experience.

The app is great. Here is an example of lecture notes annotated with pdf expert [pdf]

I use the Adonit Jot Classic stylus to annotate the slides. Others have recommended the BoxWave EverTouch Stylus and the Wacom Bamboo stylus, the latter is better for those who annotate with a light touch.

I didn’t want to write this blog post until I read my student evaluations in case my class hated the tablet experience. The students seemed to like the app almost as much as I do. I use PDF expert to:

1. Annotate pdfs while teaching.
2. Annotate and mark up student papers for teaching and research.
3. Sign papers.

What I like about using PDF expert:

1. I can link it with my Dropbox and Box files to wirelessly send files.
2. I can email the files directly to anyone directly from the app.
3. It’s indispensable outside of class. I use this app to sign documents, review student paper drafts, review proposals, read papers for a paper competition, and review slides
4. I can organize files into folders. PDF expert is so useful that I started to use it for everything. Managing clutter is key. The app helps me keep track of my files in folders. If I am on a review panel or a best paper competition, I can store the files I need in a folder and then delete afterward.
5. You can merge pdfs and delete pages.
6. It has a display mode and doesn’t go to sleep during class.
7. It is easy to insert a blank slide, an indispensable tool when teaching when I need to clarify a concept by drawing a picture or working through a short example. I specifically checked for this feature when comparing pdf annotation apps (this feature wasn’t available in all of the pdf annotation apps).

In summary, I really like PDF expert. The only downside is that it took an extra click to use the tools (the pen and inserting a slide). That is a bit unavoidable with a touch screen, but it can be a bit awkward with a live audience. I got used to chatting while inserting a slide to limit awkward silences during class. I preferred using Windows Journal on a tablet PC to PDF expert, but at $10, PDF expert delivers a much bigger bang for your buck.

If you don’t annotate, I recommend considering it. Annotating has improved by teaching:

1. It helps me to better explain complex concepts. I can easily add something to the slide on the fly if helps comprehension. Students better remember my explanations when they look at what I annotated.
2. I face the class when teaching with a tablet. Facing the students builds rapport.
3. I talk too fast. Annotating helps me slow down. Students who aren’t native English speakers truly appreciate this.

This is another blog post in my teaching with technology series. Go here to read other blog posts.

This is another teaching with technology post (old posts here). This one is on Piazza, a course management system masquerading as a souped up discussion board. I used to use BlackBoard, which I disliked especially after it became clunky and cumbersome to use after “upgrades.” It’s hard to describe exactly why I like piazza so much, so I made a short video showing off some of its features.

My single criteria for rating course management systems:

• Time to upload and organize class materials.  I use significantly less time on piazza than I did on BlackBoard.

Upsides:

• Intuitive to use
• The right balance of simplicity and bells-and-whistles
• With a single click, you can post an announcement or send an email when you upload a file/video/link/assignment to piazza.
• Assignments and other resources are on a single page, so important documents don’t get “lost” in the system.
• When you log in, you can immediately see everything you need to do for your students (e.g., unanswered questions).
• Private messages on piazza replace emails from students, so everything is really all in one place.
• Great help posts and emails from the Piazza team to answer questions as you go. The best advice they have is to ask students to post their questions on piazza. When they email you instead, don’t answer. Instead, tell students that is a good question and that you will answer it once it is on piazza.
• Apps for iOS and Android.
• I no longer have to answer every student question – they can answer their own and I can “endorse” a student answer.
• Great statistics on your students’ piazza participation. It’s potentially Big Brother-like, but in a good way. A very handy feature if you have a participation grade. Plus, introverted students who are more comfortable participating on piazza than in class will be “credit.”

Downsides:

• No gradebook
• Students can’t hand in assignments electronically

A meme I made and displayed in class (via the projector) to remind students to use piazza.

It’s the end of a long, brutal semester for me. I’m due for another teaching with technology post (see others here). This time I’m blogging about how wonderful and versatile google docs is for classroom teaching.

I started to use google docs two years ago when a student put together a shared google spreadsheet for a multiobjective decision analysis project that we were performing as a class. It was a fantastic way to collaborate.

It’s worth noting that there are several ways to share a document in google docs: you can share the document with certain users, anyone with the link can see the document, or google can search and find your document. You can allow view access or modify access. You can give ownership to someone else. Therefore, you can be protection or open with google docs. As I said, it’s versatile.

I have found many ways to use google docs when teaching.

1. I created simple class calendars that are easy to update and change (see one here). I ended up changing the schedule quite a bit during the semester this semester, and it only took a minute to change the official class schedule on google.
2. I created a spreadsheet for my multiobjective decision analysis class project. Our project was to select the best restaurant for celebrating the end of the semester. We all participated in collecting and anayzing the data, and a common spreadsheet eliminated emailing of the “hot copy.” It was superior to DropBox in that we could modify the same document at the same time. If someone else modifies the spreadsheet, it shows up as new in my document list (its name is boldfaced), so I didn’t have to spend time figuring out if anything in it had changed since the last time I looked at it.
3. My stochastic processes grader and I came up with homework assignments together via google document. He would propose homework assignments, and I would modify the assignments according to what I covered in class. Then I posted the assignment to BlackBoard as usual.
4. My grader wrote homework solutions in google documents. It became easy to share the solutions with students.
5. I wrote exams with google docs so that my grader could offer feedback at his leisure.

I use BlackBoard to host all of my course materials. I have a love-hate relationship with BlackBoard. It provides many course materials, including a course calendar. But BlackBoard is cumbersome to use–I could spend all day in BlackBoard updating course materials. Google docs saves time.

I should note that at my university, student emails are run by google, so it’s extra easy to use google tools with students. I would imagine that all students have gmail accounts, but it might be hard to collect emails if you want to only share your docs with your students.

I’ve used google docs for other professional tasks. Recently, I set up a colleague’s visit with google docs. I shared the link with my colleagues here at VCU and gave them view access only. They were able to see the available times in the schedule and sign up for a meeting. They could always see the most recent version of the schedule, saving me the time of emailing to and from everyone. Then I emailed the link to my colleague.

My department ran faculty searches via google docs. It was an efficient way to keep track of the ~200 people who applied to the open positions and to manage campus visits.

The INFORMS IT committee used google docs extensively. It was the most impressive use of google docs I have ever seen. We wrote and edited reports. We went over them in meetings. We compared document histories.You can view how to find document histories in the image below.

Here are two things you might not know.

1. You can leave comments in a google doc. With multiple users, this can become a conversation.

2. You can chat in a doc in real-time. My grader and I would often do this before class as I was going over what I would assign to students.

You can view histories in google docs.

I’m looking forward to doing even more with google docs, such as writing collaborative proposals and replacing documents I would normally upload in BlackBoard.

How have you used google docs in (or out of) the classroom?