Some of the students at the University at Tal-Qroqq are up in arms. They feel they have been grievously wronged by one of their lecturers – Antoine Vella. His sin? Giving “excruciatingly boring” lectures, and banning laptops when he realised students were more taken up with updating their status on Facebook than following his lecture.
Since when has it become acceptable to ignore the people in front of you while you tap, click or scroll away on some gizmo?- Claire Bonello
For this failing he has been reported to the netizens of the world and his e-mail banning laptop use uploaded online for all to see and rant against. The student who uploaded the original post about the topic (anonymously) wrote: “A lecturer like the one who sent such an e-mail simply can’t blame their students. The presentation of this particular lecture made a buzzing fly look more interesting. And Facebook, Tumblr, Miniclip.com also were.”
In other words, the blame for students’ immersion in the virtual world during lectures lies squarely on the lecturer’s shoulders. He should have put up an interesting and enthralling show. Maybe something worthy of Lady Gaga would have done the trick.
As it turned out, Vella hadn’t delivered. Unlike Robbie Williams who sang Let Me Entertain You, all Vella had done was prepare a 116-slide presentation. This contained some 160 photos of animals, bright flowers and spectacular landscapes with a few sentences here and there, delivered over a 110-minute session.
Vella explained the biological and ecological significance of the photos being shown. Apparently, this was not stimulating enough for the students present. They had to retreat to their online world to escape the horror of being “bored”.
Now I am all for interesting, informative and entertaining lectures. You can’t expect students to welcome a lecturer who speaks in a monotonous drone and makes no use of audio-visual aids.
The days where students were supposed to jot down every word falling from their lecturer’s lips are long gone. Unless students are presented with interesting material they will disengage completely and fail to respond.
But students’ insistence on their right to be constantly entertained means they are forgetting some of the basic rules regarding communication and common courtesy.
There is a limit to how entertaining certain subjects can be. How is a lecturer meant to animate applied maths? Or explain the complexities of the law of succession while being stimulating and exciting? What if a topic requires extensive explanation and study?
Should lecturers be expected to package information in two-minute sound bites to make it more palatable for students with the attention span of a newt?
What are these students going to do when they’re out in the real world, having to do something that requires a concentrated effort over a span of time which is longer than five minutes?
Run sobbing to the papers with their tales of woe about not being able to access Facebook for the time that it takes to communicate with a client or a fellow employee? Give up on having a job or being employed because it’s “boring”? Rail against a system which requires their undivided attention for longer than two minutes?
I hate to burst students’ bubble, but away from the sheltered halls of Tal-Qroqq there’s a big, bad world. Out there – in the real world – they’re going to need some skills to be able to compete with others.
Surfing the net and sending tweets do not constitute a skill-set which is widely sought after by employees the world over.
Students’ immersion in an online world during lectures is characteristic of another irritating trend in modern society – the complete and utter disregard for other people. This may come across as a bit of a rant, but since when has it become acceptable to ignore the people in front of you while you tap, click or scroll away on some gizmo? Don’t people realise it is impolite to ignore the physical presence of someone?
In effect, it’s conveying the message that you are more interested in your Crackberry than in the person in front of you. Within the university scenario, I imagine it’s very disheartening addressing a wall of raised laptops, as their owners tap away behind them. Perhaps the students should first consider these factors before blaming others for not being entertaining enough.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt