Social Econ Blog

At the reception before the Pfoho Pforum last night, one of the house masters was discussing the observations of one of his colleagues who is co-teaching a class this term. On the days this colleague doesn't teach, he sits in the back of class and discovered, what you all know, that students with laptops are not looking at class materials or writing notes, but rather checking email and surfing the internet. One of the undergraduates immediately defended such behavior stating that having these temporary distractions helps keep her awake. When she has class in buildings that lack wireless, she is more likely to fall asleep.

First, I am totally interested in trying to test this hypothesis. Does having wireless internet access in classrooms have any affect (positive or negative) on attendance, propensity to fall asleep, and performance.

Second, I really wonder how long before universities adjust their teaching methods to new technologies. Specifically, how much longer will students be forced to attend massive lectures? I think the technology now exists to completely eliminate this archaic system. Let's break it down.

On the supply side, lectures are very costly for the university. First, massive lecture halls cost lots of money. Now, most universities have already accumulated a large stock of these spaces, but they still occasionally build new ones, they have to maintain the old ones, and that space could be used for something else. Second, teaching large lectures costs faculty members enormously. Preparing lectures takes an enormous amount of time and performing in front of large groups sucks the life out of you. The opportunity costs of this time and effort are enormous. Faculty members could use this time to produce more research or to teach (probably more than one) small seminars. Further, the university incurs additional costs because the faculty typically try and avoid teaching these classes (imposing bargaining costs) or require extra compensation in order to do so.

On the demand side, students don't like large lectures. Professors rarely captivate their students in this setting. Students want someone to talk them through the material, but most faculty lack the charisma to make attending lecture anything but a chore. Further, attending lectures imposes opportunity costs on students because they must be in a specific place at a specific time (and they have to be interested in thinking about that material at that time).

Can't we use technology to improve this system for everyone?

I think the answer is yes. Most faculty members should stop producing large lectures. Instead, some some entrepreneur needs to figure out how to work with faculty to make slick video productions of the material for their course for distribution over the internet. Most faculty still want to teach their own material (i.e., they aren't interested in professionally produced video textbooks), but one could probably convince them to make their own high quality videos which they can re-use year after year and modify easily if they feel the need.

In this system, faculty still produce courses themselves (and are compensated for this effort), but, after an initial fixed cost, they are free to pursue more productive tasks (like research and teaching small classes). Students still learn the material, but now at much lower costs (the material is presented more clearly and interestingly, they can watch when most convenient for them, and they can pause and rewind if confused). Further, I think that you could use the efficiency gains from this system to allow students to take more courses (particularly more small courses like our tutorial).