National Collegiate Honors Council
Date of this Version
2009
Citation
Published in Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council 10:2, Fall/Winter 2009.
Abstract
During the first week of classes this semester, I showed a YouTube video to my professional development classes for honors freshmen. “A vision of students today,” created by Michael Wesch (2007) and his Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class at Kansas State University, depicts a realistic yet frustrating view of the learning taking place (or in this case, not taking place) in the college classroom. Students sitting in a large lecture hall bemoan the purchase of expensive but “useless” textbooks and the fact that only 18% of their professors actually know their names. One student claims that, while she will only read eight books this year, she’ll read 2300 web pages and 1281 Facebook profiles. Another student notes that she will write 42 pages for classes this semester and 500 pages of emails. Finally, a student notes that he spends 31⁄2 hours per day online while another says she spends most of her class time on Facebook.
Comments
Copyright 2009 by the National Collegiate Honors Council.