Louise Katz, professor of psychology, Columbia State
Community College, Columbia, TN, offered extra credit for students who turned
off their cellphones before class and put them on the front desk. After nearly
all the students accepted the offer, Katz decided to take her experiment to all
of her classes for an entire semester.
She found more students paying attention, taking notes,
and participating in class discussions. Then she upped the ante, offering five
points of extra credit to students who completed a questionnaire and wrote an
essay about their class experience.
Eighty-two of the 90 students in her classes took
advantage of the opportunity, with 94% saying they either loved or at least
liked turning off their phone during class. In addition, 67% said they could
concentrate better in class with their phone off and 71% said the classroom
atmosphere was more respectful.
“In addition to learning about psychology, the students
also learned something else—a little bit about what life was like before the
dawn of cellphones,” Katz wrote in a guest column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And perhaps, just perhaps, they may
have begun to look forward to their brief visits to that different way of
life.”
