You've had enough of students checking Facebook and online shopping in lecture. Can you ban laptops and smartphones and tablets? Yes you can! Won't the students revolt? You can expect some push-back, but if you explain yourself clearly, firmly, and with a sense of humor, it'll dissipate fast -- and even if there are a few holdouts, you're certainly not obliged to give into them. (The exception is students with learning disabilities, which requires a note from the Moses Center.) Some students may even tell you how glad they are to be free from their cybernetic overlords.
Since many students, even sophomores and juniors, still don't know how to learn effectively in the lecture setting, the first week of class is a perfect chance to ask them what they expect to get out of the lecture and what kinds of notes they're taking -- and explain what *you* want them to take away from lecture and what you advise them to write down. Along the way, you can lay out your policy on machines and the reasons for it.
I present my no-laptops/tablets/phones rule not as a ban (though if pressed I make it clear that it is in fact a ban), but as an opportunity -- an opportunity for the students to exist for a brief time in space free from the internet, to meet and chat with seatmates instead of staring into a screen, to engage with me. As the teacher, I tell my students, I want to look them in the eye, I want to connect with them, I want to be able to ask them questions, I want some energy in the room. If they're staring at their screens, all that is impossible. Yes, of course, students doodle, doze, space out, stare out the window. But just as we work hard to develop interesting material and well-structured lectures to keep students' attention, we can keep the machines that distract them outside the classroom doors. The addiction to email and Facebook affects even the soundest students, and this policy takes the burden of choice, which is itself distracting ("is he about to say something really important or can I check my friends' status?"), off the students.
Most importantly, I tell them, if they're trying to write down everything I say -- typical of those who beg the most passionately to take notes on their laptops -- they're almost surely not *thinking* about what I'm saying, and so they won't be able to track whether they understand my points, and they will have a very tough time asking or answering questions. But lecture isn't a movie: it's an opportunity to engage and think, and students should aim to be active listeners. What does this mean in terms of concrete note-taking? I tell students to jot down my main points, the main examples supporting the points and the reasons why. I tell them to listen for the signs that reveal the structure or arc of my lecture, because part of getting the most out of it -- a skill that will help them in meetings and strategy sessions their whole lives -- is learning how to follow the verbal expression of complex ideas. There is value in training the brain to concentrate for longer than five minutes at a time. (For all these reasons, I don't hand out lecture outlines unless a lecture has been so chopped up by questions -- mine and the students' -- that it feels impossible to follow: then I post my lecture notes online.)
I've found that opening up these issues in the first week creates a healthier dynamic in the room, a sense that the lecture is a collaborative enterprise, even though (despite occasional questions from me or the students) I am the one doing nearly all the talking for nearly 75 minutes. It makes the classroom not quite a "student-centered" classroom, as the education gurus call it, but an idea-centered classroom. It also helps me monitor myself more responsibly throughout the term. Having demanded their attention and engagement, I have to live up to my side of the bargain: I make more of an effort to pause to underline the most important points in lecture, to sum up at the end of lecture consistently, and so on. When I break the news about laptops, and whenever I have to remind someone who unthinkingly lifts her computer out of her pack that she needs to put it away, I tell the class that my main reason for doing this is to use the time in the lecture hall as effectively as possible. I remind them that I'm always working on making lecture clearer and more interesting, and I ask them what arguments have been hardest to follow, what kind of information helps make points stick. (Keep these evaluative questions as specific as you can. If you ask, "What bores you in class?" you're guaranteed to get some joker who says "Everything: this class sucks", etc.)
Suggest that they take notes in a notebook. Tell them that the lecture form developed in a handwriting culture and there are good reasons to think that the typing culture isn't well suited to the lecture scene. You might also tell your TAs to ask to see their students' lecture notes in an early recitation, so that they can see what students are writing (in a non-judgmental way) and give them advice on note-taking.
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