To get students tuned in, professors tune out Net

With access to the Web, many students don't pay attention, professors find.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
NEW YORK -- When Don Herzog, a law professor at the University of Michigan, asked his students questions last year, he was greeted with five seconds of silence and blank stares.
He knew something was wrong and suspected he knew why. So he went to observe his colleagues' classes -- and was shocked at what he found.
& quot;At any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 [percent] to 90 percent of the students were online, & quot; Herzog says. & quot;And what were they doing online? They were reading The New York Times; they were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer; they were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco when their new job started. ... And I was just stunned. & quot;
Wireless Internet access at universities was once thought to be a clear-cut asset to education. But a growing number of graduate schools -- after investing a fortune in the technology -- are blocking Web access to students in class because of complaints from professors.
Herzog first went on the offensive in his own law classes, banning laptops for a day as an experiment. The result, he says, was a & quot;dream & quot; discussion with students that led him to advocate more sweeping changes.
This school year, the University of Michigan Law School became the latest graduate school to block wireless Internet access to students in class, joining law schools at UCLA and the University of Virginia. The problem professors face is & quot;continuous partial attention, & quot; an expression coined by Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive, to describe how people check e-mail and try to listen to someone at the same time.
& quot;As a teacher, you can tell when someone is there, but it's just their body that is there, & quot; says Douglas Haneline, a professor of English literature at Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, Mich. & quot;Their face is on 'screensaver,' so to speak, because what they are really doing is checking their e-mail. & quot;
Looking for flexibility
Like most professors, Haneline wants to be flexible about computer use in class. At the same time, when it comes to holding face-to-face discussions about a poem, he wants to see a student's face -- not a laptop screen.
A growing number of professors want computers -- not just the Internet -- out of class. Two professors at Harvard Law School have independently banned laptops in their classes, and many other law professors around the country have done the same.
For some, the issue comes down to learning styles. Professor June Entman of the University of Memphis Law School in Tennessee says some students with laptops end up typing every word said in class.
& quot;When you focus primarily on transcribing everything said, you are not making good use of the class as a practice opportunity, & quot; she wrote in an e-mail to her law students, explaining her decision to ban laptops.
Law school students say laptops are good for taking neat notes and e-mailing them to friends who miss class. Laptop notetaking is still largely a graduate-school phenomenon, but the practice will probably spread to undergrads -- unless teachers balk.
& quot;It would have upset me if they had banned computers at Michigan, & quot; says University of Michigan Law School student Michael Jacobson. & quot;I think my laptop has enhanced my study skills in that I'm able to capture a lot of what's said during class. & quot;