Mind your manners, not the phone, please

What's funny about this is I used to run workshops for academics and I'd say that they demonstrated exactly the same behaviour! I'd add "going for a break and not coming back" to the list though...

I am sure that virtually all academics will find this article reflects with depressing accuracy their own experiences of many of today's students. To complain about these things is to invite the accusation of being 'a dinosoaur', and told to 'get real' or 'learn to live with it'. The response of some of the students in this article reflects their arrrogance and ignorance, and their belief that their uncivil behaviour is perfectly normal and acceptable, and that it is everyone else who is at fault for not tolerating it (yet Heaven forbid that we do something they don't like -'You dissed me!'). As I am well over 30, I really cannot understand this pathological obsession that young people have today for chatting or texting on their mobile phones all day long; their mobiles seem to dominate their whole lives, and validate their very existence. At the risk of being accused of sexism (but basing this comment on empirical observation), it does seem to be young women especially who have their mobile phones virtually glued to their ears, or who look every 5 seconds to see if any of their friends have sent them a message. Go the university library or coffee bar, and they'll virtually all be using their mobile phones (but not talking to each other!), instead of reading books, or prepaaring for their next class. More generally, though, I suspect that all these signs of incivility are part of a more general culture of narcissim and nihilism among many young people today. Our individualist culture, the worship of celebrities, and the role of social networking sites like Facebook, all reflect and reinforce a mindset which says that 'I am very important, and should therefore be able to do as I please. If other people are offended then they can go and....themselves', or 'Get a life'. I also suspect that paying top-up fees compounds the problem, because students think that being 'consumers' gives them the right to behave however they wish. Point out to them that their behaviour is unacceptable, and you are liklely to be told that as their fees are 'paying for your salary', you have no right to admonish them for their boorish or disrespectful behaviour; the customer is always right. One fiinal concern about all these issues: what use will such students be to employers when they have graduated? Will they still behave so badly when they start work? An accountant friend of mine took on a graduate trainee last year, but had to 'let her go', because she spent half of her working day texting, or updating her Facebook site ! Are we wasting our time trying to teach today's students?

A researcher at Edge Hill University (a university with a big nursing cohort in NW England) does a study on nursing students at a 'University in NW England'. Hmmm, wonder where that was then?

I suppose this might turn into a 'this never happens in pre-92 universities let's get rid of the mets, banks and whatevers' kind of discussion but before it does, for those who do struggle with this kind of problem then there are some tips at http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/lectures/faqs/showfaq.php?faqid=16 and http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/lectures/faqs/showfaq.php?faqid=19

Nursing students are not just studying for an academic qualification but also a professional one. As nurses registered with the NMC the lecturers have a professional responsibility to ensure that students learn to behave in a professional manner and as such this behaviour must not be tolerated.

I am a (female) student nurse, 28, and acknowldge that yes I use my phone an awful lot, not just for communicating with friends etc, but I also read lots of nursing/mental health blogs and news articles on it. If I have a spare 5 minutes I will catch up on the blogs or news feeds and then have a discussion with my fellow students over lunch/break etc. It is a different way of learning and has proved invaluable for keeping abreast of what is going on outsde of uni walls. So think again when you see that girl scrolling through her phone. I agree wholeheartedly with the disruption points above. It may be 10 years since I was last in education but I have a 4 yr old at home and trust me I am use to distractions when I am studying. I believe that the issue with lateness, texting/whispering/chatting in lectures arent that they are a distraction, it is the height of rudeness and it is not just the younger students that do it (although they are the main culprits). On the lateness point, however as student reps, we were instrumental in intigating a rule which said if students were more than 5 minutes late for a lecture then they were refused entry. And we received very positive feedback from the lecturers that we were instigating such a request as it infuriated them as much as I. So students CAN improve things to. It is not just the responsibility of the lecturers. We are responsible for our own learning and should speak up if we have an issue with something. Perhaps I am one of those mouthy older students that "dominates class discussions" but in response I say you have a voice, share your experiences too...

Hmm, so the young ones think the older ones can't cope with the background noise that the younger ones are used to? Well fair point perhaps. But I thought there was an article on here not so long ago saying that the older ones tend to get higher honours classes when they graduate. Or did I imagine it? Apologies for being completely unscientific in that observation. Will hunt for article and post again.

I have considerably more sympathy with the students on this course. If one goes back to first principles, a lecture exists for the benefit of the student not the academic. Anything that disturbs fellow students, such as a phone ringing should clearly be addressed. However, texting etc is not likely to disturb other students but it, along with falling asleep and packing up with 15 minutes to go, shows inattention by the students. That is either a fault with the lecturer or the lecture. Is the lecturer's delivery poor? Is it an unassessed but compulsory module that the students consider to be a waste of time? Is the lecturer merely reading out information in handouts or textbooks and not adding value or aiding understanding? In the case if packing up early is it simply unrealistic scheduling with the students needing to be elsewhere with insufficient time to get there? Again I can see why in a course such as nursing, younger students are put off by mature students hogging seminars with their "war stories". Again that is not a fault of the mature student but of direction by the academic leading the seminar.

Mel (nursing student above) You can read your (obvously extremely important) snippets of information about "the latest updates" on your subject in the lunch break - it doesn't have to be in class. But I suggest (and I hope I don't get accused of "dissing" you), these snippets are hardly substantial learning tools. Neither is Wikopedia. Heard of books and libraries? In class, distractions are unacceptable. This is nothing to do with older people being "out of touch with everyday life". One of the central elements in good teaching and learning is to offer, as a teacher, and to invite the student to, partake in a sustained thought process - one that can be followed through to some sort of conclusion. This requires concentration, and should not be interrupted. Everyday life now does, alas, involve constant "interruptions" to such thought processes. The reason "older people" hate mobiles being fetishised is because they (luckily) grew up in a world where constant interruption and zapping from one perspective to another - the world through nibs and banal images (as Mel seems to enjoy) - had not taken hold. Thanks to the advancement of capitalism and advertising, it has now. This is something we, as educators, do and should oppose. Young people who claim they are used to distraction are merely describing a pathology of everyday life - a sad state of affairs where people cannot sustain their thoughts to the end, and others do not have the patience or time to listen to them. I always instruct my students to turn off their phone completely or leave it at the front of the class with me if, as sometimes is the case, they have a nervous tick they cannot control whereby they keep looking at their text screen. I say all this flippantly, but it is actually an extremely serious point. If people are at a stage (& they are) where their powers of concentration are waning, where they reject something that doesn't come easily to them as "too difficult" because they have to work at it by reading copious amounts, and where their thinking is constantly broken up and saturated by often banal or irrelevant chatter (but they don't recognise that that is what is happening), we're in a worrying place.

Gary, your claims that "inattention by the students...is either a fault with the lecturer or the lecture. Is the lecturer's delivery poor? Is it an unassessed but compulsory module that the students consider to be a waste of time?" reflects an attitude that is itself part of the problem. Lecturers are there to educate you, not entertain you. Perhaps students are bored because so many young people these days, when everything is 'instant' (a mouse-click or mobile phone call away), are too lazy or intellectually ill-equipped to think things through carefully, or work things out. 'If I can't see the answer in 5 seconds, I won't bother', seems to be the attitude. Why is it always the lecturers fault if students are bored, or falling asleep, or would rather play with their mobile phones? Aren't students responsible for their own behaviour. So it's the lecturers fault if students behave badly - what a cop-out. If they're falling asleep, perhaps they students need to organise their social lives more carefully, so they're not getting to bed until 4.am each morning. If they have to check every 30 seconds to see if they've received a text from a friend, then I'd say they're suffering from a form of compulsive behaviour disorder, and need help from student counselling. And suppose one student is bored, but the others aren't - does that give the bored student the right to show disrespect to the Lecturer or disrupt the class for everyone else. What an all-too-common selfish, self-centred argument. And regardless of whether something is assessed or not, or compulsory or not, are you saying that a student knows better than a Lecturer whether something is important, or worth learning. Are you saying that if it isn't assessed, then it's not worth learning? What breath-taking arrogance. Everything in your response, Gary, confirms my worst fears about the attitude of too many students today. It's all 'me, me, me; no-one else matters, and if I behave badly, I'll blame someone else and say they made me behave badly. Not my fault. I’ll vociferously demand my rights, but won’t accept any responsibility.’ Incidentally, students with such anti-social attitudes and appalling social skills will be of no use to employers when they graduate.

@Old-fashioned scholar: Just a suggestion: have you considered the possibility that your own manifestly contemptuous attitude towards students might be more than apparent to them, thus causing the massive 'turn-off' to your teaching? Students are a lot smarter and perceptive to lecturers' oppressively negative attitudes towards them than we sometimes realise. A lecturer is not the only one deserving of respect; if a lecturer doesn't respect the students it shows; and it's more likely than not that the same negative energy the lecturer puts out will be reflected back by way of student disinterest, inattention, and, yes, disrespect.

Old fashioned scholar-I am afraid I am not the 18 year old student you think I am, but rather an employer of 22-25 year old graduates who do, in the real world and no doubt like the products of the Edge Hill nursing course, have to concentrate on one thing whilst being subjected to a barrage of interruptions about other things. As I indicated in my earlier post, nothing can excuse one student disturbing the others in a lecture theatre. There was once a make of car where there were only 4 different patterns of keys. A lot of those cars were stolen. Who was responsible for those thefts? Obviously it was the fault of all of the car thieves in the same way that each student is responsible for his actions. It was also the fault of society because the car thieves were not brought up to respect other peoples' property in the same way that these students were not brought up to behave in the way that Old Fashioned Student would like. However the owners of the cars didn't blame the car thieves and they didn't blame society. They blamed the car maker who supplied only 4 key patterns and I would suggest they were not wrong to do so. The blame for inattentive students lies with poor lecturers or poor lectures despite the personal responsibility of the students and the ills of society. You say "And regardless of whether something is assessed or not, or compulsory or not, are you saying that a student knows better than a Lecturer whether something is important, or worth learning." There are two answers to that. Firstly not every element of a course, particularly a vocational course that is often the product of the requirements of an external body, is worth learning. The decision of an academic institution not to assess a module may well be the academics' verdict on an outside requirement that something the academics perceive as valueless must be taught as part of a course. Both lecturer and students are going through the motions. Secondly, where it is not self-evident, it is part of the lecturer's role to explain why what is being taught is of importance. Today's students are tomorrow's lecturers, tomorrow's funders and in the vocational context, tomorrow's employers. I am afraid Old Fashioned Scholar, that unless you pass on to the next generation why your teaching is of importance rather than the simple dogma that it is, those bored students might just decide that it is dispensable.

Do you need so many lines?

Maybe not-but since I don't belong to the texting generation I tend to be verbose

I don't think it is automatically the fault of the lecture or the lecturer if students are inattentive. Students may only want to pay attention in classes that lead to some sort of assessment, but it's their loss. Some classes are actually designed to teach students necessary skills and elements of subject knowledge that will enable them to succeed when they reach an assessment point at a later date. If students aren't willing to put the effort in they only have themselves to blame for low attainment. Personally I've never heard of teaching an entire module and not basing an assessment upon it. That sounds like a badly designed course to me. Furthermore, I don't know what today's students are doing when they pay tuition fees and are then not interested in the classes they have paid for. I never had any problem paying attention in lectures even in the days when the fees were paid by the taxpayer. Mind you, I didn't used to fiddle with a mobile phone at the cinema in the middle of a film I'd paid to see or walk in and out while important plot points unfolded the way many youngsters seem to nowadays.

You do not need to text but can say what you want to say in 4-5 lines. If you are this verbose, your message will be lost. You must be the first verbose employer I have come across!

I have fallen asleep during a lecture but I suffer from insomnia and at that point hadn't slept in 3 days. I waited until the break explained the situation to my lecturer and then left. I don't like it when people text in lectures from a manners point of view but if they want to muck about as long as it doesn't stop me from being able to hear and pay attention I don't mind. I can't stand the inveterate whisperers possibly the most distracting thing in the world as you often can't pin-point exactly where it's coming from. I also dislike the generalisations that are being used I'm a 23 year old student about to enter my third year (and thus one of the 'young people') being lambasted. I do enjoy going to the library and reading books but libraries are finate spaces and ergo can only contain so much. The internet is an infinite tool containing millions of books on thousands of subjects. When studying a subject like law, as I am doing, you find that things move forwards very fast and books that are reprinted once a year are simply not adequate for the modern student who is expected to be able to illustrate the latest developments in essays and exams The internet give access to more periodicals than could ever be contained on one subject in an average university library. Blogs are also a very valid way of finding out new information, news stories or jounrnal articles are often passed from one blogger to another in the same way you used to hand a newspaper to a friend and say 'read this it's really interesting' bloggers are doing the same thing but on an international scale. Don't disparage new technology simply because you don't understand it's many valid uses in educational fields. Yes all the behaviours listed in the article are rude and lecturers, universities and other students should be doing their best to stamp it out but new technology is not to blame for it students have always been disrupting things by turning up late, falling asleep and bickering. At least we don't riot or hold our instructers hostage anymore.

You fell asleep while writing this too!

Why is it only disruption to other students that is an issue? My problem, as a lecturer, is that chatting, texting, snoring, etc, affect my own concentration on what I am saying. My hearing isn't perfect and a constant hum in the background is very irritating. I am expected to "keep control" of the class - and will be berated by other students if I do not. Disciplinary action such as removing the university ID card and removing the student from the class, possibly helped by security is time consuming.

RE Mobiles etc. Simple solution. BAn them from lectures. Anyone bringing one in is dismissed from the class. This is behaviour bred in schools today where discipline has become a foreign word and heaven forbid that anybody should actually undergo a punishment !!!!! Then wonder why anti-social behaviour has become the "norm" in this country ! Lay down rules and stick to them. You will find that after a short while people will respect the boundaries, and those that don't should be expelled. No arguements ! Generations have been bred to whom nobody has said "No". It may be contentious initially, but in the long term will help everyone, lecturers and students alike.