Hanging up on class disruptions

USA Today has an entertaining article on how some professors are dealing with cell phones on campus and their ringing interruptions in their classrooms.

-- Algebra instructor Raymond Moore spells it out in all capital letters, just below the title of his course on his syllabi:

TURN OFF ALL CELL PHONES AND PAGERS. "If a phone goes off, I have the student leave for the remainder of that class session," he says. "If it persists, which it never has, I would drop the student."

-- Howard Hoyt, an associate professor at California's Mount San Jacinto College:

Anyone whose cell phone goes off will be marked as having an unexcused absence that day.

-- Psychology professor Joann Wright at Hofstra University in Long Island threatens to lower the student's grade by one letter every time it went off.

-- When that familiar ringing goes off in Maryland's Salisbury University history professor Kevin Birch's class, he picks up the offending phone.

"I usually say something funny or slightly embarrassing, then remind the students how disrespectful it is," Birch says. "It usually only happens once. The students tend to be mortified."

emily | 2:45 PM | SMS and Students |
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