Written by Sara Rzeszutek and Sara Venezian (Office of Student Accessibility, OSA)

This collaboration between QILT and OSA aims to provide interested faculty with accessible strategies for reducing technology in their classrooms.

Overview

For a range of reasons, many faculty are experimenting with analog classrooms, in which devices like laptops, tablets, and cell phones are not allowed. These include concerns about student use of artificial intelligence, concerns about screen addiction’s potential impacts on mental health, and evidence that suggests writing by hand can better support learning. While these approaches may not work for every student or instructor, some faculty have experienced favorable outcomes when they’ve experimented with analog classrooms. Student presence and engagement can improve without the distractions technology can create.

Implementation of a low- or no-tech classroom can be complicated. Study results are mixed and, at times, difficult to replicate. It falls on you, as an individual faculty member, to decide what’s right for your own class, teaching style, discipline, and approach. One of the critiques faculty face when restricting technology in the classroom is that some students require laptops to meet their academic accommodations. If only those students have a laptop out, their learning differences are immediately visible, and this can inform how their classmates view them as peers and collaborators.

Ensuring ADA Compliance

If there is a student with an accommodation allowing them tech in the classroom, it is important to have a conversation with the Office of Student Accessibility about your low- or no-tech classroom rules to explore alternative ways to support the student. Further, to ensure compliance, we must document the conversation and alternative support in the student’s case file.

Accessible Analog Classrooms: What are my Values, Needs, and Goals?

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Remove Technology Altogether

• Use the Zoom room to record your lectures to distribute after class.
• In this scenario, students won’t need to take notes. They can devote their full attention to what’s happening in your class. This helps them be present and engaged, and gives them essential access to the class after the fact, so they can take notes and study. No student will be singled out for using a laptop when other students are required to hand-write.
• Create notes to distribute to students at the start of class.
• This scenario also removes the need for student note-taking, although they can mark up the printed notes if they chose to do so. You can also print your lecture slides with dedicated space for students to take notes.

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Minimize Technological Distractions

• Implement a no-Wi-Fi policy, requiring students to toggle off Wi-Fi on their devices and store devices with cellular access.
• This eliminates the distraction of constant notifications and the temptation to veer off course without limiting students who need or prefer to type notes.
• Have students put Microsoft Word into “Focus mode” which blocks everything else from the screen, turning a laptop into an old-school word processor.
• To enable Focus mode, select the “View” tab from the Word ribbon (at the top). Focus mode is located in the “Immersive” box. Students can also type “Focus” into the Word search box (at the top right) and click the option there. To leave Focus mode, hit the “ESC” (escape) key on the keyboard.
• Focus mode is only available in downloaded versions of Word, which they will need to do before class. Students can download Word (and other Microsoft Office applications) for free here, using their Quinnipiac SSO credentials to sign in →

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Improve Note-taking Skills

• If students don’t take good notes, it’s probably because they don’t know how. Providing guidance on note-taking and instructions on how to use good notes can help students understand how to focus and what to focus on, regardless of modality.
• A model like the Cornell Note Taking Template can help students organize notes they take at home or in-class.
• Offer guidance on in-class note-taking strategies as well. This guide provides excellent tools for students who want to take useful notes and study from them later on.
• When students are taking notes, talk to them about how to use their notes to reinforce their learning, ask additional questions, and improve their retrieval of information.

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Blend the Strategies

• Tech Free Days: Have some designated tech-free days where you distribute notes in advance or record your lecture. This will encourage presence and allow students an equitable approach in the class according to their needs on days when they take their own notes.
• Designated Notetakers as an Assignment: If you aim to have a distraction-free classroom but don’t want to single out students with accessibility needs, consider providing a note-taking template and clear guidance for note expectations at the beginning of the semester.
• Assign students note-taking days where they are the notetaker for the class, and they can take notes in their preferred format. Those notes would be distributed after class. Designated notetakers should toggle off Wi-Fi.
• If a student has an accommodation for recording a lecture, they can do so and distribute notes once they’ve processed them according to the template.
• This will give all students experience taking good notes, foster classroom presence and engagement, and allow students with technology accommodations to avoid being singled out.
• Note-taking as Prework: Have students take notes on assigned material, recorded lectures, and so on before class (this follows the model of a flipped classroom), and have no note-taking in class. If you would like to review student notes, you can. Or you can have students use their already-taken notes in classroom exercises. This allows students to practice taking good notes, be present and distraction-free during class, and remove the screens.
• Co-Create an Accessible Classroom Technology Policy WITH students: Create a technology agreement with your students at the start of the term where you determine appropriate uses of technology.
• Discuss benefits and drawbacks, agree to limitations, and have students be accountable to one another if they create distractions with their devices. Students are more likely to adhere to policies they’ve had a role in creating.