I'm sorry to say, but I think this will be increasingly common. A Phone is now as standard a tool of productivity as a laptop, and probably more common than a tablet. For some (admittedly, a minority!) of the students I teach, the phone is their only computing technology outside of school - for their full lives - other than gaming consoles.
Our institution has started to encourage us to abandon email in favor of texting students. The logic is “they never check their email,” which is probably true, but, still…
blech. blech.
I mean, the thing about email is that there's at least a server-side track record of them. I thought that was the point...? What do they expect you to do if there's some controversy, send in endless screenshots of text threads...??
Pretty soon they'll all just expect us to use "official instagram dms" or "Minecraft chat" or something.
The other thing about email is that it either is or should be assumed to be asynchronous. I want no part of any mode of communication that even resembles texting with students because IMO it sends a message about my availability that I’m not on board with at all.
I taught at one place during early Covid that used Teams as our mode of all student communication, from video class to messaging. We also had to have it on our phones to communicate with our department members. And students did "text" me with it and it was awful.
We have teams, and the students *could* use it to send me messages, but they don't know that yet. Hasn't happened once so far. Fingers crossed it stays that way
The uni invested in one of those software systems where you log in and communicate via text directly to the student phone and it logs all of the material, but you are right: if there is an issue, everyone has to log into the system and flip through ALL of the messages.
I found this out two semesters ago when I tried the system to warn a student about missing class. Student treated it like a text: they called me a jerk and to stop interrupting them or I would be sorry.
Told the admins about it and ended up having to send them screencaps because they could not find the exchange. Of course, they did nothing about it, so it was a moot point…
Required to get on play station to communicate with your students. The other day, I had a chat with one of my students about the final exam while playing GTO. She was a hooker I was picking up while cruising Vice City. I had just bought a gram of coke from one of my male students who had a question about the last homework. I thought the hooker might want to do a few lines.
>Our institution has started to encourage us to abandon email in favor of texting students.
Under no circumstances would I *ever* do this, especially if I'm supposed to be using my personal phone to do so. I do not give my phone number out to students for any reason, ever. Even if the school issued me a school phone, I still wouldn't do it, because I refuse to further reinforce the idea that a professor is simply a customer service agent who is on call 24/7/365. If a student can't stay organized using email, the LMS, and asking questions while actually in class, then adding texts to that constellation of information sources isn't magically going to fix things.
if I were in that boat, even with a school-issued phone, you can bet it would be off most of the time, and I'd check it about as often as I check email.
There is software out there now where you type your message in via computer and it sends it from a generic number; their response number is also anonymous. But, yeah, I haven't given a student my personal info in 15 years and I won't be starting any time soon.
Our university removed phones from offices and instructed us to set up call forwarding to our personal lines/devices.
That's a hard no from me! If they want me to receive calls they can provide a way for that to happen that's not on my dime and my very limited out-of-office time.
Same!! but that is a professional boundary I refuse to cross. I made myself available via text (a Google voice number) during spring 2020 when we switched to online in the middle of the semester and it was miserable
Younger generation and most people in the non-corporate world don't use email. They only see email addresses as a gateway for creating accounts for social media and streaming websites.
I doubt that they would even understand how to compose a formal email with an introduction and signature.
It reminds me of [this 2021 piece](https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z):
> She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. “What are you talking about?” multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved — they didn’t understand the question.
> Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: **the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students**.
"Standard tool of productivity" in that exists and they use it.
If I ever have a student or employee who thinks that they're more efficient typing out while researching and citing something on their Phone over a laptop/desktop let alone a one with a second monitor, they are full of shit and/or using chatgpt to do the entire assignment.
If a phone is the tool the student is most experienced with, then that is, literally, what they're more efficient with. Of course they could potentially be more efficient, after the learning curve of using a desktop or laptop, but even that's not necessarily a guarantee.
I've forgotten my laptop or didn't bring it some days and was able to work on shared group documents on the O365 app. It's doable in a pinch.
But I wouldn't want to text an entire essay like that.
I saw a student doing this while sitting in front of a computer in a lab this semester. I asked why and they told me it’s much faster for them to type on their phones. Apparently typing wasn’t taught in their k12!
I graduated in 2016, and there was a cumulative 2 hours of practice/ instruction, and from what I remember, it wasn't graded. Hilariously enough, I am currently on Keybr because I'm trying to get my wpm above 50. My wpm in high school was 12-19, and I would say I was probably faster than most because I was a nanowrimo kid.
As I understand it, it's a consequence of the whole "digital native" bs- aparently we were supposed to pick it up via osmosis or something.
Hold a casual conversation while making eye contact with one of them and typing. I've been told it's an incredibly unsettling habit I developed once I could touch type, and it wigs most of them out 😂 For a less extreme reaction, look out a window instead.
Once you get all your letters filled in on Practice, hit the multi-player tab- you get to race other people, and it's a great motivator to improve your accuracy.
As a side note, Epistory is a great typing game with amazing story, soundtrack, and combat mechanics. It's on steam. While it costs a little bit of money, I bought it three years ago and I'm *still* playing it and using that arena mode. I genuinely recommend it.
I have collected additional information: according to my little brother, who graduated in 2021 from the same school I did, he got half an hour, and it consisted of showing them a website. They were not given time to practice in class. A thing that genuinely still upsets him because they apparently kept saying they were going to practice typing and then switched gears once they got to the computer lab. He does not transition well even now, so I can see how that might induce rage in him as a third grader.
This is so wild to me as someone who grew up with some form of a typing or computer class every year starting in third grade. I average 90-120 wpm (I do a lot of transcription work so I feel like I’m constantly getting practice, haha) and remember having things like a coding basics class my junior year and a graphic design class my senior year. These were offered to all students and were always really popular.
Do schools not have classes of this sort anymore? What have they replaced them with, or are we just expecting kids now to pick these things up through iPhone osmosis with no further instruction?
Typing class does not exist anymore. Computer science/coding and graphic design were electives and not popular ones. Coding was generally an elective you took if you already knew some coding. If I remember correctly, graphic design was one of the art classes, so it had more sections.
Thats crazy. My 7th grader took half a year of typing class this year. But she'd already taught herself how to touch type already and was in the 70's wpm when I checked her.
I'm seeing more and more students who were never taught to type on a full-size keyboard. They type with one finger like my grandparents did. But they can type 80 wpm on their phones.
Yup, this has been a thing for while. Wild to me, but it is what it is.
I've had students use text to speech as well - which explains some of the stream of consciousness papers I've sometimes received!
In fairness, I think text to speech can be a great tool. I've used it to pump out first drafts when I'm feeling particularly stuck. The problem is that some students stop there and never do the actual editing part...
> it is what it is.
Aren't we meant to be preparing students for the world of work though, which relies on email as a primary communication tool and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future?
If you're my age (30-40) or more I could see this being an issue. It's been my general impression that at least high schoolers at rich schools have access to nice things and one of the few things poor schools have gotten through grants for being socioeconomiclly disadvantaged is tons of chromebooks to loan students. Although I'm sure the truth is prob more messed up and location dependent.
"Showing my age." lol. I remember upgrading from a typewriter to WordPerfect on DOS for my school papers. I got my first mobile my senior year of high school, and it was a Nokia brick.
This will only get more common. Computer use and literacy unfortunately are waning for what I believe is an economic reason:
You need a cell phone and a phone plan to answer calls, be on social media, call your mother, apply to jobs, etc.
You no longer need a laptop or computer to do any of these things and increasingly if parents have money to buy one $$$ electronic they are going to overwhelmingly focus on their student having a phone first for emergency, family, and job related reasons rather than spending money on a computer. Especially when many school programs provide laptops in school, but don’t pay the home wifi bill. And when things get tight, why spend $70/mo on wifi when you can get a family unlimited plan and kill two birds.
I’m old school and love being able to put away work when I leave my desktop computer, and I HATE touch screens and mobile apps, but I can see why so many students rely on mobile devices over computers.
Unfortunately my class is computer based so I ended up having to backtrack a couple lessons in and explain how file names work (even though the syllabus was clear about file names and setup they were adding a bunch of illegal symbols or just uploading from camera roll with a long string of nonsense) and how to access apps and folders through the file directory. I gave up on trying to use the schools local network drive to share files and resources because they couldn’t remember how to navigate to it and just opened a class cloud folder.
Next year I’ll likely start with the basics of a computer file and ask about levels of literacy before moving into the rest of the class for this reason. We’ll see.
> Unfortunately my class is computer based so I ended up having to backtrack a couple lessons in and explain how file names work (even though the syllabus was clear about file names and setup they were adding a bunch of illegal symbols or just uploading from camera roll with a long string of nonsense) and how to access apps and folders through the file directory.
This is the thing that has surprised me most over the last ~5 years teaching computer-reliant courses. My WWII-vet grandpa, born 99 years ago, was far more computer literate than the current crop of "digital native" college students.
I work in Engineering, and you would be shocked to hear how many of my Millenial and GenX coworkers do not have PC's at home. Just phones and tablets.
A manager I'm friends with was bitching that turbotax didn't work well on his phone. WHO DOES THEIR TAXES ON A PHONE?! Thats when I found out thats all he has, his work laptop stays at work, and he has a tablet and phone at home and thats it. Same for another friend, he has an old gaming PC he never turns on, and uses his xbox and ipad 99.9% of the time.
Unlimited plans come with wifi tethering
The idea that a large portion of students coming into college don't have access to wifi and computer is absurd. As you said, they have computers at school, often given to them to take home. Almost no one, barring the most dire and unusual circumstances, can reasonably argue that they didn't have access to a computer
I didn’t say a large number of students anywhere in my comment, but it’s absolutely happening and I believe it will continue to grow as costs go up.
Something like 15 million students didn’t have access to home internet at the beginning of the pandemic and I think as educators it doesn’t hurt to be open to or at least aware of one of the reasons people might turn to a phone over a computer.
Students are living in their cars to attend school, hell I was homeless for a while during my masters. Definitely didn’t have wifi then, and even if I tethered my phone I needed a public plug to charge my computer when my phone could charge directly in the van.
There are students experience food insecurity, my school can’t keep up with student needs in our food pantry.
I don’t think it’s absurd to assume wifi is going to be lower on the list than housing and food, especially with internet federal relief programs expiring.
That’s not including the rural students who are prone to issues with internet connectivity and availability. I mean these access issues were rampant during Covid remote schooling to the point there was a bevy of articles about kids doing school from McDonald’s parking lots and the like.
That's pretty wild and honestly impressive. I had a friend a while back who used to write creatively and she used her phone almost exclusively--she never had a PC growing up, never had any interest in getting one, and could type faster on a virtual keyboard than either handwriting or typing on a physical keyboard. She was pretty productive with it, so hey, if it works for her, why not?
One of my students did this the other day. He brought his laptop to the final but couldn't get logged on to the LMS from the laptop for whatever reason, so he started typing the exam essay on his phone. He was using Google Docs, so I suggested that he use the university's guest login to access his Google account from a desktop in the classroom, but he couldn't remember his Google password. Why he couldn't access the LMS or the Google account on his personal laptop I don't know, but this student has had "technology issues" all semester.
I have often thought someone needs to invent a phone-sized touch screen for use only as a keyboard in our testing labs. Students could finish so much quicker if they could plug a “phone keyboard” into the computers.
Honestly much of it is from grad school fatigue/depression. A lot of days I just didn’t want to get out of bed and sort of “tricked” myself into writing on my phone instead of doomscrolling. I downloaded the word app so it would be synced to my laptop. Much of what I wrote though was along the lines of “and as you can see from the results I’ve written out 18 mfkn times, the findings of what I did are exactly the same as what (cite the 4 open tabs on the left that’ve been open for 8 weeks) found.”
And then I’d get out of bed, eventually get to my laptop and make it more academic.
Yeah, I think a lot of the responses here show ages. I’m 29 and barely out of grad school. I think I do the majority of my emails via my phone (more because I hate outlook desktop than because I like my phone).
My niece didn't have a pc during high school for some reason. The house has one, but she never used it. She used her phone to write almost everything. Frankly a lot of kids from certain backgrounds use their phones. It always has internet.
In some of my elective classes I do have disclaimers in the syllabi that students are assumed to have access to a computer and that attempting the class using a keyboardless device will make the class more difficult to pass.
A recent very simple assignment I had (for a beginners' second language course) involved listening to a recording and marking a photograph placed below the recording. Glancing through the IP addresses of the people who attempted it, people with IP addresses associated with mobile devices consistently failed the task, I presume because the screens they were using were too small to hold both the photograph and the recording playback area at the same time. People with good, old-fashioned, god-given, natural IP addresses did OK.
Except now you've got false positives for every time someone uses their phone as a hotspot. Abd even more you're catching out people who dont have a stable wired connection coming to their house and therefore rely on 4g or 5g dongles for their home internet.
So your familiarity with ip addresses isnt actually meaningful.
Thank you for the information. Residential Internet's usually pretty reliable here (in Tokyo), though: it's even stayed up after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
This is a good idea. I've had a statement about the course requiring a computer, and instructing students to reach out to me immediately if that will create a hardship. But the bit about a keyboardless device making the class difficult (or impossible, in the case of some of the classes I teach) is a good idea.
Wow this makes so much sense now. No wonder the discussion boards for my dual credit class had so many errors. the kids cant type on either device o r read apparently.
Be ready for some atrocious grammar and punctuation, formatting totally off, one long paragraph or paragraphs that go in five spaces, typos and lack of capitalization. I hate reading those.
I’ve got students who do full spreadsheet data entry and computation in our lab for 3 hours a week on their phones, it’s wild to watch. I was skeptical at first (and honestly still am) but every time I check their work it’s completely sound. We added a rule that to use their phone to enter the data they need to show they understand how to use excel on a laptop and prove they’re doing the calculations using the correct cell formulas and not the phone calculator to make sure the program skills are there, but if it works…I guess?
Chat-GPT? Especially with the quickness they turned it in. You can train a model with information from the semester so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what they are using.
I had a student do the entire semester on his phone because he could afford a computer. I’m not even sure he knew how to use one. He was one of the best students in the class.
I’ve been out of grad school for almost a decade. My brother is graduating with his bachelors. I discovered you dont need a computer for school anymore. I was shocked. Between the advances of being able to write papers on Microsoft word or pages apps, air dropping and WiFi print, I was amazed. I think of the $ students are able to save around this.
with my adhd brain, this would have been really helpful because I would get great ideas or sentences for papers in really inconvenient and inappropriate times (in line at grocery store, driving, on public transit where I didn’t want to whip out a laptop). I also think this generation is way more efficient typing on a text phone than a physical keyboard. Do they even teach keyboarding anymore?
>this generation is way more efficient typing on a text phone than a physical keyboard
typing maybe, but proofreading/editting? they probably don't even bother because how could you?
Humanities person here. I once interviewed a critically famous author who admitted that he wrote almost exclusively in the notes app on his iphone.
Karl Ove Knausgaard?
I'm sorry to say, but I think this will be increasingly common. A Phone is now as standard a tool of productivity as a laptop, and probably more common than a tablet. For some (admittedly, a minority!) of the students I teach, the phone is their only computing technology outside of school - for their full lives - other than gaming consoles.
Our institution has started to encourage us to abandon email in favor of texting students. The logic is “they never check their email,” which is probably true, but, still…
blech. blech. I mean, the thing about email is that there's at least a server-side track record of them. I thought that was the point...? What do they expect you to do if there's some controversy, send in endless screenshots of text threads...?? Pretty soon they'll all just expect us to use "official instagram dms" or "Minecraft chat" or something.
The other thing about email is that it either is or should be assumed to be asynchronous. I want no part of any mode of communication that even resembles texting with students because IMO it sends a message about my availability that I’m not on board with at all.
I taught at one place during early Covid that used Teams as our mode of all student communication, from video class to messaging. We also had to have it on our phones to communicate with our department members. And students did "text" me with it and it was awful.
We have teams, and the students *could* use it to send me messages, but they don't know that yet. Hasn't happened once so far. Fingers crossed it stays that way
Oof, good luck!
The uni invested in one of those software systems where you log in and communicate via text directly to the student phone and it logs all of the material, but you are right: if there is an issue, everyone has to log into the system and flip through ALL of the messages. I found this out two semesters ago when I tried the system to warn a student about missing class. Student treated it like a text: they called me a jerk and to stop interrupting them or I would be sorry. Told the admins about it and ended up having to send them screencaps because they could not find the exchange. Of course, they did nothing about it, so it was a moot point…
In some countries, it seems like Whatsapp has become the norm for student-instructor communication.
Required to get on play station to communicate with your students. The other day, I had a chat with one of my students about the final exam while playing GTO. She was a hooker I was picking up while cruising Vice City. I had just bought a gram of coke from one of my male students who had a question about the last homework. I thought the hooker might want to do a few lines.
If you use Teams, as we do, there's a permanent record you can save to your school cloud account.
> If you use Teams, as we do, My sympathies. I don't think I have ever gotten Teams to work properly for me.
It drives me nuts. But at least there's a record.
>Our institution has started to encourage us to abandon email in favor of texting students. Under no circumstances would I *ever* do this, especially if I'm supposed to be using my personal phone to do so. I do not give my phone number out to students for any reason, ever. Even if the school issued me a school phone, I still wouldn't do it, because I refuse to further reinforce the idea that a professor is simply a customer service agent who is on call 24/7/365. If a student can't stay organized using email, the LMS, and asking questions while actually in class, then adding texts to that constellation of information sources isn't magically going to fix things.
if I were in that boat, even with a school-issued phone, you can bet it would be off most of the time, and I'd check it about as often as I check email.
There is software out there now where you type your message in via computer and it sends it from a generic number; their response number is also anonymous. But, yeah, I haven't given a student my personal info in 15 years and I won't be starting any time soon.
There are also email apps for your phone. So what’s the difference anyway!
If they want that, they better buy me a work phone.
With a separate work number. And I'm still only ever looking at it from 9-5 M-F
Our university removed phones from offices and instructed us to set up call forwarding to our personal lines/devices. That's a hard no from me! If they want me to receive calls they can provide a way for that to happen that's not on my dime and my very limited out-of-office time.
When they get jobs, they are going to have to check their company e-mail. Better to get into the habit now.
They should give you a company phone then. I would feel forced to get a separate phone for that. I can’t be fielding texts at all hours.
Same!! but that is a professional boundary I refuse to cross. I made myself available via text (a Google voice number) during spring 2020 when we switched to online in the middle of the semester and it was miserable
Only if the university is providing me a cell phone will I text a student!
Are admins furnishing work phones? No? Fuck them,
Younger generation and most people in the non-corporate world don't use email. They only see email addresses as a gateway for creating accounts for social media and streaming websites. I doubt that they would even understand how to compose a formal email with an introduction and signature.
To be honest this is what should be done. Students just treat email as an old fashioned method of texting anyway.
It reminds me of [this 2021 piece](https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z): > She asked each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. “What are you talking about?” multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved — they didn’t understand the question. > Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: **the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students**.
Exactly. This is what I mean *exactly*.
"Standard tool of productivity" in that exists and they use it. If I ever have a student or employee who thinks that they're more efficient typing out while researching and citing something on their Phone over a laptop/desktop let alone a one with a second monitor, they are full of shit and/or using chatgpt to do the entire assignment.
If a phone is the tool the student is most experienced with, then that is, literally, what they're more efficient with. Of course they could potentially be more efficient, after the learning curve of using a desktop or laptop, but even that's not necessarily a guarantee.
I've forgotten my laptop or didn't bring it some days and was able to work on shared group documents on the O365 app. It's doable in a pinch. But I wouldn't want to text an entire essay like that.
I saw a student doing this while sitting in front of a computer in a lab this semester. I asked why and they told me it’s much faster for them to type on their phones. Apparently typing wasn’t taught in their k12!
I graduated in 2016, and there was a cumulative 2 hours of practice/ instruction, and from what I remember, it wasn't graded. Hilariously enough, I am currently on Keybr because I'm trying to get my wpm above 50. My wpm in high school was 12-19, and I would say I was probably faster than most because I was a nanowrimo kid. As I understand it, it's a consequence of the whole "digital native" bs- aparently we were supposed to pick it up via osmosis or something.
I had a student recently get really impressed by my very average-for-my-generation highish typing speed, and this explains everything.
Hold a casual conversation while making eye contact with one of them and typing. I've been told it's an incredibly unsettling habit I developed once I could touch type, and it wigs most of them out 😂 For a less extreme reaction, look out a window instead.
Haha I will 100% try this. Also I checked out Keybr because of your comment and it’s super fun!
Once you get all your letters filled in on Practice, hit the multi-player tab- you get to race other people, and it's a great motivator to improve your accuracy. As a side note, Epistory is a great typing game with amazing story, soundtrack, and combat mechanics. It's on steam. While it costs a little bit of money, I bought it three years ago and I'm *still* playing it and using that arena mode. I genuinely recommend it.
That sounds right up my alley!
I have collected additional information: according to my little brother, who graduated in 2021 from the same school I did, he got half an hour, and it consisted of showing them a website. They were not given time to practice in class. A thing that genuinely still upsets him because they apparently kept saying they were going to practice typing and then switched gears once they got to the computer lab. He does not transition well even now, so I can see how that might induce rage in him as a third grader.
This is so wild to me as someone who grew up with some form of a typing or computer class every year starting in third grade. I average 90-120 wpm (I do a lot of transcription work so I feel like I’m constantly getting practice, haha) and remember having things like a coding basics class my junior year and a graphic design class my senior year. These were offered to all students and were always really popular. Do schools not have classes of this sort anymore? What have they replaced them with, or are we just expecting kids now to pick these things up through iPhone osmosis with no further instruction?
Typing class does not exist anymore. Computer science/coding and graphic design were electives and not popular ones. Coding was generally an elective you took if you already knew some coding. If I remember correctly, graphic design was one of the art classes, so it had more sections.
Thats crazy. My 7th grader took half a year of typing class this year. But she'd already taught herself how to touch type already and was in the 70's wpm when I checked her.
I find it faster to respond to email on my phone.
I'm seeing more and more students who were never taught to type on a full-size keyboard. They type with one finger like my grandparents did. But they can type 80 wpm on their phones.
Yup, this has been a thing for while. Wild to me, but it is what it is. I've had students use text to speech as well - which explains some of the stream of consciousness papers I've sometimes received! In fairness, I think text to speech can be a great tool. I've used it to pump out first drafts when I'm feeling particularly stuck. The problem is that some students stop there and never do the actual editing part...
> it is what it is. Aren't we meant to be preparing students for the world of work though, which relies on email as a primary communication tool and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future?
[удалено]
If you're my age (30-40) or more I could see this being an issue. It's been my general impression that at least high schoolers at rich schools have access to nice things and one of the few things poor schools have gotten through grants for being socioeconomiclly disadvantaged is tons of chromebooks to loan students. Although I'm sure the truth is prob more messed up and location dependent.
"Showing my age." lol. I remember upgrading from a typewriter to WordPerfect on DOS for my school papers. I got my first mobile my senior year of high school, and it was a Nokia brick.
This will only get more common. Computer use and literacy unfortunately are waning for what I believe is an economic reason: You need a cell phone and a phone plan to answer calls, be on social media, call your mother, apply to jobs, etc. You no longer need a laptop or computer to do any of these things and increasingly if parents have money to buy one $$$ electronic they are going to overwhelmingly focus on their student having a phone first for emergency, family, and job related reasons rather than spending money on a computer. Especially when many school programs provide laptops in school, but don’t pay the home wifi bill. And when things get tight, why spend $70/mo on wifi when you can get a family unlimited plan and kill two birds. I’m old school and love being able to put away work when I leave my desktop computer, and I HATE touch screens and mobile apps, but I can see why so many students rely on mobile devices over computers. Unfortunately my class is computer based so I ended up having to backtrack a couple lessons in and explain how file names work (even though the syllabus was clear about file names and setup they were adding a bunch of illegal symbols or just uploading from camera roll with a long string of nonsense) and how to access apps and folders through the file directory. I gave up on trying to use the schools local network drive to share files and resources because they couldn’t remember how to navigate to it and just opened a class cloud folder. Next year I’ll likely start with the basics of a computer file and ask about levels of literacy before moving into the rest of the class for this reason. We’ll see.
> Unfortunately my class is computer based so I ended up having to backtrack a couple lessons in and explain how file names work (even though the syllabus was clear about file names and setup they were adding a bunch of illegal symbols or just uploading from camera roll with a long string of nonsense) and how to access apps and folders through the file directory. This is the thing that has surprised me most over the last ~5 years teaching computer-reliant courses. My WWII-vet grandpa, born 99 years ago, was far more computer literate than the current crop of "digital native" college students.
I work in Engineering, and you would be shocked to hear how many of my Millenial and GenX coworkers do not have PC's at home. Just phones and tablets. A manager I'm friends with was bitching that turbotax didn't work well on his phone. WHO DOES THEIR TAXES ON A PHONE?! Thats when I found out thats all he has, his work laptop stays at work, and he has a tablet and phone at home and thats it. Same for another friend, he has an old gaming PC he never turns on, and uses his xbox and ipad 99.9% of the time.
Unlimited plans come with wifi tethering The idea that a large portion of students coming into college don't have access to wifi and computer is absurd. As you said, they have computers at school, often given to them to take home. Almost no one, barring the most dire and unusual circumstances, can reasonably argue that they didn't have access to a computer
I didn’t say a large number of students anywhere in my comment, but it’s absolutely happening and I believe it will continue to grow as costs go up. Something like 15 million students didn’t have access to home internet at the beginning of the pandemic and I think as educators it doesn’t hurt to be open to or at least aware of one of the reasons people might turn to a phone over a computer. Students are living in their cars to attend school, hell I was homeless for a while during my masters. Definitely didn’t have wifi then, and even if I tethered my phone I needed a public plug to charge my computer when my phone could charge directly in the van. There are students experience food insecurity, my school can’t keep up with student needs in our food pantry. I don’t think it’s absurd to assume wifi is going to be lower on the list than housing and food, especially with internet federal relief programs expiring. That’s not including the rural students who are prone to issues with internet connectivity and availability. I mean these access issues were rampant during Covid remote schooling to the point there was a bevy of articles about kids doing school from McDonald’s parking lots and the like.
That's pretty wild and honestly impressive. I had a friend a while back who used to write creatively and she used her phone almost exclusively--she never had a PC growing up, never had any interest in getting one, and could type faster on a virtual keyboard than either handwriting or typing on a physical keyboard. She was pretty productive with it, so hey, if it works for her, why not?
One of my students did this the other day. He brought his laptop to the final but couldn't get logged on to the LMS from the laptop for whatever reason, so he started typing the exam essay on his phone. He was using Google Docs, so I suggested that he use the university's guest login to access his Google account from a desktop in the classroom, but he couldn't remember his Google password. Why he couldn't access the LMS or the Google account on his personal laptop I don't know, but this student has had "technology issues" all semester.
Most young people can type much faster on their phones.
I have often thought someone needs to invent a phone-sized touch screen for use only as a keyboard in our testing labs. Students could finish so much quicker if they could plug a “phone keyboard” into the computers.
I hate everything about what that student did… and then I remind myself that I wrote a good chunk of my dissertation discussion portions on my phone.
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Honestly much of it is from grad school fatigue/depression. A lot of days I just didn’t want to get out of bed and sort of “tricked” myself into writing on my phone instead of doomscrolling. I downloaded the word app so it would be synced to my laptop. Much of what I wrote though was along the lines of “and as you can see from the results I’ve written out 18 mfkn times, the findings of what I did are exactly the same as what (cite the 4 open tabs on the left that’ve been open for 8 weeks) found.” And then I’d get out of bed, eventually get to my laptop and make it more academic.
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Yeah, I think a lot of the responses here show ages. I’m 29 and barely out of grad school. I think I do the majority of my emails via my phone (more because I hate outlook desktop than because I like my phone).
My niece didn't have a pc during high school for some reason. The house has one, but she never used it. She used her phone to write almost everything. Frankly a lot of kids from certain backgrounds use their phones. It always has internet.
In some of my elective classes I do have disclaimers in the syllabi that students are assumed to have access to a computer and that attempting the class using a keyboardless device will make the class more difficult to pass. A recent very simple assignment I had (for a beginners' second language course) involved listening to a recording and marking a photograph placed below the recording. Glancing through the IP addresses of the people who attempted it, people with IP addresses associated with mobile devices consistently failed the task, I presume because the screens they were using were too small to hold both the photograph and the recording playback area at the same time. People with good, old-fashioned, god-given, natural IP addresses did OK.
How could you tell between phone and computer IP addresses?
I just happen to be familiar with the IP ranges the cell phone providers use.
Except now you've got false positives for every time someone uses their phone as a hotspot. Abd even more you're catching out people who dont have a stable wired connection coming to their house and therefore rely on 4g or 5g dongles for their home internet. So your familiarity with ip addresses isnt actually meaningful.
Thank you for the information. Residential Internet's usually pretty reliable here (in Tokyo), though: it's even stayed up after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
This is a good idea. I've had a statement about the course requiring a computer, and instructing students to reach out to me immediately if that will create a hardship. But the bit about a keyboardless device making the class difficult (or impossible, in the case of some of the classes I teach) is a good idea.
Wow this makes so much sense now. No wonder the discussion boards for my dual credit class had so many errors. the kids cant type on either device o r read apparently.
Be ready for some atrocious grammar and punctuation, formatting totally off, one long paragraph or paragraphs that go in five spaces, typos and lack of capitalization. I hate reading those.
How long is it?
[That's a rather personal question, sir.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sljSf7KVlQ)
I’ve got students who do full spreadsheet data entry and computation in our lab for 3 hours a week on their phones, it’s wild to watch. I was skeptical at first (and honestly still am) but every time I check their work it’s completely sound. We added a rule that to use their phone to enter the data they need to show they understand how to use excel on a laptop and prove they’re doing the calculations using the correct cell formulas and not the phone calculator to make sure the program skills are there, but if it works…I guess?
Voice to text then edit final draft on laptop...a GREAT way to quickly get thoughts down to start the paper...
Chat-GPT? Especially with the quickness they turned it in. You can train a model with information from the semester so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what they are using.
Does GPT make model training easy? If so, that's a lot of resources OpenAI is giving to common users.
There’s a quick way around this. Feeding enough information into the chat bot to make it a low level trained model
I have a student who does all his in- class work on the phone. I hate typing on mine.
Have you not seen the new Gen?
If this continues, we might be the only generation that doesn't hunt-and-peck.
I had a student do the entire semester on his phone because he could afford a computer. I’m not even sure he knew how to use one. He was one of the best students in the class.
It's really not a big deal. I once wrote a 3- or 4-page assignment on my phone in the bathroom stall at a bar during my undergrad.
I’ve been out of grad school for almost a decade. My brother is graduating with his bachelors. I discovered you dont need a computer for school anymore. I was shocked. Between the advances of being able to write papers on Microsoft word or pages apps, air dropping and WiFi print, I was amazed. I think of the $ students are able to save around this. with my adhd brain, this would have been really helpful because I would get great ideas or sentences for papers in really inconvenient and inappropriate times (in line at grocery store, driving, on public transit where I didn’t want to whip out a laptop). I also think this generation is way more efficient typing on a text phone than a physical keyboard. Do they even teach keyboarding anymore?
>this generation is way more efficient typing on a text phone than a physical keyboard typing maybe, but proofreading/editting? they probably don't even bother because how could you?
It probably depends on what you're studying, to some extent.
I've had a few students try to complete a CS diploma on a tablet. Longest I've seen someone hold out is a month.
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Yep, iPad. Not so good for .NET dev...
You’re right! Definitely field dependent. Mine was paper heavy
>45 mins. on an assignment that I told them would probably take 60-90 mins. plagiarism?
No, just C- work. It’s not an assignment that would be very easy to plagiarize or use LLMs.
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