not to see how it can be anything but very rude to sit texting in a seminar?

[ElaineReese]

The majority of my students (first year undergrad) are lovely and attentive and I don't think this girl is particularly unpleasant in her own right..... but I can't see how you could not think for a moment that it is very rude to sit very blatantly texting through most of a seminar.

The problem is that it's difficult when you're not actually a school teacher, and they're not actually a child, to pull them up on bad manners like this without seeming schoolmarmish.

Would you expect this? Would you do it - if you were really really bored, which obviously I hope she is not and worry about?

Quite a few of them do it from time to time - but she does it LOADS and it's starting to really infuriate me. Do you think she would be surprised/appalled to be pulled up on it? And would I be unreasonable to collar her and tell her to bloody stop it?

You have to say something. You are the adult in the room and you set the rules.

Quod's little speech was perfect.

I don't know why you think you'll be in trouble. Do you think she will complain that you told her off for texting during class? Who does she think will sympathise, apart from another girl like herself?

I would start off the next seminar as you mean to go on. Stay calm and say that if they are expecting an emergency call they should not come to the seminar. Tell them you keep a record of attendances and no, you will not be able to give them extra help for the time they have missed.

Say that they are there to learn, not for you to spoonfeed them and if they find that too difficult, there are other universities that will take their money and reward them with a degree. If they are not prepared for the seminar, they should stay away and expect their absence to be noted.

Remind them you will be writing them a reference at the end of the year and you are legally obliged to tell the truth. If they are immature and lazy, you will not write them a reference. Lack of a reference says so much more than a poor reference.

I teach A levels and it's an uphill job trying to stop them using their phones in class. It's an addiction - they become hysterical if I say I will put their phone on my desk, not because they are worried I will read their texts (it's switched off by that point) but because if it's not nearby, they panic. They will often sit and stroke a broken or switched off phone.

I wouldn't specifically call her on it, I'd start the next half-term with an announcement that you think that texting in lectures has got out of hand, and is a bad thing because x,y,z, so from now on it is verboten. If she carries on, then call her on it with extreme prejudice.

Personally I might finish sneak a glance at the quick crossword during the boring bits of a lecture if there were (say) 200 students there, but for seminars of 20 people or less then any daydreaming should be prop-free.

An adult woman was sitting next to me in a recent computing course (small course, about 12 people, all sitting at internet-enabled PCs) and she spent the entire bloody time on Facebook. It wasn't the most interesting of courses, so I'd have some sympathy if she'd been keeping up, but she then slowed us all down by not following the lecturer and having to ask for help with every single bloody exercise. Honestly, I could have strangled her by the end.

OP, do a

put on powerpoint

"If you can't be bothered to listen I won't teach

this includes
texting
chatting
staring out of the window

You are adults. Please act like it"

But Dilys, why didn't you say, "Well of course you are struggling; you were on Facebook when the teacher was explaining how to do it."

I'd rather people were called up on bad behaviour, instead of people politely pretending not to notice it.

Yes I should have done, but I'm too English, (despite being Welsh), I just tutted. I should have channeled my Welsh Granny, she'd have put a rocket under her.

hard - your point c made me roll my eyes, it sounds so familiar!

One of mine tried 'well, I didn't get your email, and so I naturally assumed we could read one or other text .... ' and 'I couldn't find a translation so I assumed we didn't have to read the foreign language version on the reading list'. Not impressed.

I must be a horrible person but it wouldn't occur to me not to tell someone who was texting to stop.

YANBU i nearly died of embarrassment when my mobile went off during a seminar and it was from the nursery saying my daughter was sick and needed to go home. i apologised so much and even sent a further apology email to the tutor later that day

OP YANBU texting (I bet it's twitter/facebook btw) in a seminar is wrong, disrespectful and immature

however

get yourself a watch woman!

Hard that is so familiar - it's a variant on them resenting buying a Collected Works or whatever when perhaps we're only doing one play/not all the poems.

God forbid any superfluous knowledge might find its way into your head, eh?

And Maig, I once did exactly that - my phone went off in an MA seminar and I was mortified, and emailed to apologise!

eeeh, when I were a lass....

OP, I was thinking of silent texts and not receiving / making calls.

If that is the not the case then I would agree the student was being rude.

ElaineReese - totally agree. It is awful and rude.

I recently had the same experience as ujjayi when I spent 5 weeks in a lecture theatre with a bunch of 18 - 21 yr old first year undergrads. I am 48 and was sitting there as a student myself and was shocked an disgusted at the way some of the students sat texting, surfing the net talking, swearing laughing and mucking about while the lecturer was talking.

It got so bad one day I was on the verge of standing up and making an impromptu 'Dad speech' to the lot of them. I suppose this is how they must have behaved at school and know no better.

I used to be a university lecturer until about ten years ago and it was never like this in my classes so I think it really is a recent phenomenon.

I turn a blind eye to the occasional quick peek at a phone on their lap (e.g. to check a message), especially in a large group/lecture situation. But anything more than that gets the same treatment as irritating whispering and giggling - I just stop and look at them. Surprisingly effective and means you don't have to raise your voice or even be sarcastic. I often follow up by asking the offender a question within the next couple of minutes to make it obvious I still have my eye on them! I think often they just don't realise how obvious they're being.

I think with smaller groups/older students you can aim for a more collaborative atmosphere; but with younger ones, compulsory courses or large lectures you just have to accept that a relatively firm impression of authority is part of the role. Ime students are much more scornful about teachers or lecturers who seem weak or uncertain than they are about the most dictatorial martinet types - as long as you are also fair and enthusiastic.

ElaineReese - oh yes and I agree with this as well.

"They want 'contact time' and feel short-changed if they don't get enough of it; they want everything available electronically; they want and expect prompt replies to emails etc etc. "

The students I was with often bitterly complained if the lecturer asked them to write anything down. They expected it all to be put on the web for them, photocopied handouts and electronic versions of lectures. Its as if students think they dont have to learn something if it can be looked up on the internet.

DW is also a part time university lecturer and she gets exactly what you get from her students. Constant emails asking for help with essays. Even when she puts them on the internal system for download the students can't be bothered to download the slides and make notes. Instead, her students often just sit in her lectures holding up their mobiles taking photos of her slides on the elctronic board and recording her voice as she speaks.

The university she works at feels under pressure to provide 'contact time' and almost one-to-one tutorials to justify the rising fees. Problem is they are not allowing lecturers more time to provide this extra tutorial time or more pay for the extra hours. DW only does it part time but she is getting really sick of it.

I think the reason some university teachers hesitate to call people on this kind of behaviour is that the reason they became academics rather than school teachers is that they like the idea that a university class is attended by voluntarily by interested fellow-adults, rather than involving you wrangling a bunch of uncooperative children who haven't chosen to be there! I spend so much time trying to break first years out of their school habits, and encourage them to talk in seminars, that it's easy to feel you are reintroducing a school-style disciplinary situation when you have to start actually introducing rules about texting, talking and eating etc that any clued-in adult would never normally think of doing. I do call people on things, but, in a seminar especially, it can tend to change the dynamic for the worse and make other students reluctant to talk, even if they weren't themselves texting etc.

I agree with MoreBeta that it's a comparatively recent thing - and we do also frequently see disgust and incomprehension about it from mature students.

If it's just one girl, speak to her & find out what she's doing. Trouble with laying down the rules to a whole group if they aren't using their phones is that they'll be annoyed and feel accused and she'll probably be oblivious and think it doesn't apply specifically to her.

Ask to speak to her as she comes into the next seminar and explain you've noticed she spends the whole time on her phone and ask her what she is doing. If she's taking notes then you'll know and it won't wind you up and if she's messing around then she'll probably feel embarrassed it's been noticed and stop. If you don't want her to use her phone to take notes as you feel it distracts the other students you could discuss it with her then.

Good luck :)

what HardCheese said

you do have to keep a very fine balance here between maintaining a disciplined working environment and giving students the idea that they are still children who should be "managed" by the teacher

when they start believing, as ImperialBlether put it, that "You are the adult in the room" then you have lost the chance of enabling them to learn as adults- which is what university should all be about

I try to get round this by explaining very clearly at the start of the semester what I expect them to get out of the seminars, the kind of participation they will have to commit to and the minimum amount of preparation that will take. But from last year, I have realised that I will have to be clearer still.

This happened to me last year. I watched for a couple of weeks to make sure it wasn't an isolated incident. The class was also small enough that I could see her phone so I knew there was no note-taking or emergency texting going on.

I then sent her an email after class saying her behaviour hadn't gone unnoticed, it was disrespectful to me and affecting the learning of her classmates, and if it continued I would begin steps to have her transferred out of my tutorial group.

I got an immediate apology, it never happened again, and she was always attentive and on time after that.

It is a difficult balance to maintain, isn't it?

Thank you for support and suggestions - I still think (Pendeen) that constant fiddling with your phone and obviously typing on it is an ill-mannered thing to do.

And yy to the expectation of everything being electronic and the onus being on me to deliver it - I have an email this morning (sent during the seminar!) to say someone wouldn't be there and can I forward any work. Nope, the PPT will be on the VLE, but powerpoints are visual aids, not scripts, and if you missed it, you missed it. Grr.

Find out her number, then mid-seminar break off, text her "this is your lecturer, get off your bloody phone" and look at her like this --> whilst you await her reply...

titters....

When it happens in a large lecture theatre I like to walk up menacingly towards the offending student spouting all the while. Sometimes they don't notice I've climbed all those steps and arrived next to them. I then turn to the student and say conversationally, 'It's an interesting point isn't it? How would you see XXXXX?' In front of the other gathered 180 it works a treat as they stutter and turn bright pink. I have also been much more direct and just said 'You seem to be texting. I suggest you turn that off until the end of the lecture.' With recidivist talkers and note-passers, I have a 3-strike thing where I catch their eye and shake my head at them (they probably think I am just a loony!), then go up close and take away paper or discretely ask them to be quiet, and finally do the: "Right, it's time to stop talking to each other while I'm talking. Or leave this lecture now. You are preventing others from concentrating". Never has a single one of them been brave enough to walk out.

I also sometimes start a lecture from right at the top, back of the hall looking down on them while they look forwards at the powerpoint presentation. Scare tactics! They don't know where I'll pop up next.This only works if you don't have a fully scripted-out lecture which I rarely do because I'm so disorganised I like my teaching to be interactive.

In seminars I ask direct questions to the offending student(s) at regular intervals throughout, and spend a lot of time desk-sitting on their tables or and circulating from group to group, person to person. I am a scary lecturer and a total wimp in RL!

talkingrabbit, you do sound formidable! I am impressed.

I used to regularly doze off in EU law Tuesday afternoon 4-6pm. And not be concentrating in Tort 11am - 1pm as I was starving. But I recognised it was rude and tried hard not to. :) Many apologies to my lecturers. Texting/using mobile is definitely not on.