This blog was inspired by an eight hour long lecture that I attended yesterday – eight hours straight were delivered by the same lecturer, in the same room, with the same people. 

Believe it or not, throughout the whole lecture, none of the students opened their laptops, not out of fear, but because we were so engaged that it didn’t cross our minds for a second.

We didn’t even look at our mobiles when they rang and, when nature called, we shifted and squirmed in our seats to avoid having to leave the class and miss out.

Just fifteen minutes before the end of the lecture the fire alarm got triggered, and we were all startled out of our focused chairs and surprised to find that the eight hour were almost over.

The lecturer had successfully held our full attention for the whole duration and, she managed this without the threat of an exam in the looming future.

This is in complete contrast to what is happening at our university, where students are claiming to be so bored that they are resorting to fiddling with their laptops during lectures.

Whilst the students’ reaction to Antoine Vella’s ban of laptops from his classroom might seem childish, if you’ve ever been forced to sit through a mind-numbing, excruciatingly boring, sixty minutes of humdrum, you’d know it’s not.

I’m not about to defend the students by quoting research, because as convincing as reported boredom levels might be to some, they do not even start to explain what it’s like to be forced to repetitively listen to someone who is pacing away on a podium, is hardly speaking loud enough to be heard by the front row, is not making the slightest effort to be understood, and is after all being paid by your parents’ taxes.

I’m not in any way saying that Antoine Vella is this sort of lecturer because I don’t know him and never sat in on any of his lectures, but my extensive experience in listening to good and bad lectures, as well as delivering them, has me absolutely convinced that engaged students will not chat, email or use Facebook.  In fact I have no doubt in my head that the majority of students will only do so as an alternative to slitting their wrists.

Whether they look it or not, students are adults, and they know very well that passing their exams is entirely up to them. They are also fully aware that their lecturers and examiners will not think twice about failing them should they have to, and that their future depends on this.  

This is why I think that unless of a practical nature, attending lectures should be entirely voluntarily; if students can pass their exams without attending lectures then, good luck to them, but for crying out loud, if the majority of students are resorting to entertaining themselves on laptops, then it’s the lecturer who needs to be examined not the students.

I’ve personally delivered three hour long lectures and, in the few instances when one or two students started fiddling with electronic gadgets, I let them be. But had it been the majority of the students doing so, the message would have been loud and clear - something would have been wrong with my delivery, and banning laptops would not have been the solution.

The sad truth is that students are used to such low levels of presentation that in order to avoid electronic distractions lectures need only be semi-coherent and their delivery a tad less boring than watching a banana take a nap.