In the Sunday Review section of The New York Times on May 15, Jonathan Malesic wrote an Opinion column titled “College Students Are Not OK,” in which he claimed:

In my classes last fall, a third of the students were missing nearly every time, and usually not the same third. Students buried their faces in their laptop screens and let my questions hang in the air unanswered. My classes were small, with nowhere to hide, yet some students openly slept through them.

Dr. Malesic (Ph.D. University of Virginia) teaches at an elite private university –Southern Methodist University–and a less swanky public university. He writes that other university teachers have similar problems:

Last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education received comments from more than 100 college instructors about their classes. They, too, reported poor attendance, little discussion, missing homework and failed exams.

Malesic also writes about online courses in 2020:

Faculty members and students across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where I live, described a widespread breakdown in learning that year. Matthew Fujita, a biology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the results of the first exam in his fall 2020 genetics class, a large lecture course, reflected “the worst performance I’d ever seen on a test.”

I’ve been teaching college courses for 42 years, and for 25 years in the graduate Media Management Program at The New School in New York. I taught an in-person course this past spring semester that ended May 10, and the students in the course were OK. In fact, they did some of the best work I have seen in a class I’ve been teaching for 20 years. The students were highly engaged and enthusiastic about their projects and attendance was excellent (about three percent absences).

Perhaps some of the reasons why my students were engaged were:

First, I stopped lecturing about 10 years ago. If I want to impart some new knowledge that is not in the textbook or reinforce some lessons in the assigned reading, I present a PowerPoint presentation that is heavy on visuals and graphics and is about 20 minutes long. I post longer, full-text versions of my presentations online so students can study them and keep them for reference as long as they want. The reason I stopped lecturing is that I realized that young people’s attention spans can be measured in milliseconds, primarily because they are used to social media and dating apps. Keeping them engaged for longer than 18 minutes is virtually impossible. Eighteen minutes is the average length of a TED Talk, and the latest research shows that viewing to TED Talks is down significantly for younger people. Viewing time for young people for a video can be counted in seconds, not minutes by a generation addicted to Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube videos.

Second, I also stopped giving exams about 30 years ago because I realized that students cram for exams and then forget almost everything they shoved into their heads. There is virtually no retention of the material or concepts covered in the class. Students learn by doing, not by taking tests. I divide my class into teams, randomly assign a team leader and give the teams projects in class to complete and present to the class. I give teams feedback on their presentations (smile when presenting, look at the speaker, use gestures, etc.). Students not only learn how to solve practical problems, but they also learn teamwork and presenting skills.

Third, halfway through the course (after eight weeks), I have a feedback assignment (five percent of their grade) and ask the students to send me an email giving me feedback on how the course is going: what they like, what they dislike, how am I doing and what subjects would they like more of and less of. I urge students to be candid. I have found that the students appreciate having the opportunity for input and to be heard, and every semester I receive good ideas on how to present concepts, structure the course and guests to invite. I do this Feedback Assignment halfway through the course because official course evaluations filled out by students at the end of the semester are worthless. The horse has left the barn; you can’t make course corrections. Besides, those who have been teaching for more than a couple of years know that regardless of the questions asked on the student evaluation questionnaires, all the evaluations reflect is, as a Stanford professor once told me, “how many jokes you tell.” They are popularity contests that, like almost all rating or evaluation mechanisms, tell you more about the evaluator than the evaluatee. Also, course evaluations absolutely do not help teachers improve their courses.

Fourth, on week number seven of a 16-week course, I asked the students to design the content for the class on week number 12. We wrote the suggested topics on the whiteboard and voted on them. We selected two topics that got the most votes, and I asked three professional experts to be guests on a Zoom session to address the topics the students wanted to know about. I copied this idea from best-selling author and University of Pennsylvania professor, Adam Grant, who mentioned it in his monthly newsletter, “Granted.”

Fifth, in his first paragraph, Malesic wrote “Students buried their faces in their laptop screens.” Why on earth does he allow laptops, tablets or cell phones to be open in his class? I have a policy in my classes that laptops, tablets and cell phones are forbidden to be open or even visible during class except when students are working on a team project. I ruthlessly enforce this policy to no ill effects on course feedback or course evaluations, which I never look at, but have been told are pretty good.

Sixth, 20 percent of a student’s grade in my courses are based on a team grade. At the end of the semester, students are required to submit a letter grade for their team leader and each team member. I ask the students to be candid and not to give As to free riders and to those who do poor work. This past semester one student was given a C for poor work. In my couses I emphasize the vital importance of teamwork in today’s business environment. In many articles I have read about the top five or ten qualities companies look for when hiring people, collaboration is invariably in the top five, usually in the top three. Therefore, I stress collaboration, teamwork and creating an atmosphere of psychological safety in teams.

Maybe my students are OK because the MMP program has exceptionally motivated and engaged students. Maybe students in Texas are different from students in New York. But maybe my students are OK and engaged and show up because I don’t use outmoded (before social media) teaching methods: I don’t give lectures, I don’t give exams and I don’t allow laptops or cell phones to distract students. I suggest Dr. Malesic and other professors he quotes in his article look in the mirror before blaming the students.