Laptops Are Great. But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting. The New York Times: Economic View, November 2017 Step into any college lecture hall and you are likely to find a sea of students typing away at open, glowing laptops as the professor speaks. But you won’t see that when I’m teaching.
That may seem extreme. After all, with laptops, students can, in some ways, absorb more from lectures than they can with just paper and pen. They can download course readings, look up unfamiliar concepts on the fly and create an accurate, well-organized record of the lecture material. All of that is good. [Read more] | Online schooling: Who is harmed and who is helped? Brookings Evidence Speaks, October 2017 Online courses have the potential to improve instruction at every level of education. Adaptive online courses can allow students to learn at their own pace, with material adjusting to fit the needs of both advanced and remedial learners. Online courses can also open up more curricular offerings in schools that lack specialists, such as those in rural areas. Online courses are particularly attractive to school and district leaders looking for ways to trim costs. Teacher salaries are the key driver of instructional costs at every level of education, so any technology that allows a teacher to instruct more students can free up funds that can be used for other purposes. Whether cost savings are realized depends on production costs, which can be high for universities that are rolling out their own digital content. [Read more]
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