Update Available: Rethinking Tech in Class

The email from former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power came into my inbox at 8:09 p.m. “Hi Kaivan - please don’t be on your phone in class - it is super distracting to your classmates, your profs, and — above all — to you! really important. Thanks!” I was in DPI 535: “Making Change When Change is Hard,” a Harvard Kennedy School course the Ambassador was teaching with her husband, famed legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein ’75. I was embarrassed, as the class had a no technology policy. I responded immediately, apologizing, assuring Ambassador Power that it wouldn’t happen again, and noting that just five minutes before class, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had resigned — a significant moment for anyone focused on change-making and the fight for justice.

Last week I was reminded of that email, in the first session of my Constitutional Law course, when our professor noted that she bans the use of electronics in class, citing “the pedagogy.” The professor told us how exciting the course would be this semester given the relevance of the ongoing impeachment hearings — and encouraged us to keep up with the news. Ironically, impeachment proceedings were literally ongoing this week, including during our 1-3 p.m. class timeslot.

As an online influencer in the progressive political space, I volunteer my time to help the Democratic National Convention, leading presidential candidates, and others amplify key messages surrounding the Trump administration in real-time. Harvard Law professors, politicians, journalists, and celebrities engage with my content directly. As a student at the Kennedy School and the Law School, experiencing the first impeachment of my adult life in this participatory way is a rare and educational opportunity. While it’s important to pay attention in class, spending five minutes of a two-hour-long session reviewing and responding to highlights of the hearings not only allows me to make important connections that will serve me in my legal career (something the Law School should support), but it also allows me to consider the ideas we are learning in a course such as Constitutional Law against an urgent real-world backdrop.

These anti-technology classroom policies are not unique cases. At my MBA program at the Yale School of Management, at the Harvard Kennedy School, and now at Harvard Law School, I’ve been banned from using any technology in many classes, even to take notes. It’s not just a huge disadvantage for someone with illegible handwriting. It’s infantilizing and counterproductive.

It’s true — I made a choice to be a student, and some could argue if I wanted to keep pace with the real world, I should have chosen to work instead. However, this logic is flawed because it undervalues the powerful potential of digital access in the classroom. The first, which I described above, is the discretion that technology affords ambitious, busy multi-taskers to attend to occasional external urgent matters — personal or professional — while still being present and learning in class.

There are also ways technology amplifies even the internal procedures and substance of classes. Allowing students to use technology in the classroom as they would in reality not only creates more time for critical discussion, but greatly expands the level of information and accuracy that can be brought into those discussions. Students and professors won’t spend five minutes searching page by page for that specific Justice Elena Kagan reference in a 100-page Supreme Court opinion — someone will ⌘F the key phrase and the class will move on with the conversation. A loosely remembered relevant source no longer stays on the tip of the tongue, but is confirmed with quick research and shared to enrich the class discussion. Foolish questions neither go unanswered, nor do they waste valuable class time — a win-win for everyone paying thousands of dollars for a single course.

Perhaps a more widely accepted argument is that banning technology forces students to learn in an antediluvian way. This outdated learning mode will never mirror the practice mode of the digital age. We won’t memorize the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — we’ll Google them. We won’t write out Bayes’ Theorem from memory and “plug and chug” — the process will be automated.

I’ve already experienced this generational shift. When I was in elementary school, cursive was being phased out. In undergrad, I took notes exclusively on my laptop. I’m used to a multi-sensory learning environment of PowerPoint slides and online in-class polls that enhance discussions. That’s the future of education. In a world where all information is at our fingertips, application beats memorization every time.

I’m not necessarily surprised that graduate schools are slow to adjust to this tech-friendly future, but I was shocked that many of my peers are too. In my MBA program, many of my classmates, roughly 28 years old on average, were supportive of laptops being banned. They cited the same reasons as Ambassador Power — they were “distracted.” Having come of age in an era of immersive tech, I couldn’t imagine people with the lofty goals of my business school peers succeeding if they were so readily thrown off by a dimly lit screen and some low-decibel typing in the row in front of them.

We are adults, in our twenties, at an elite graduate school program, paying for education — it’s our time. To be regulated on our access to technology, including to the outside world, is reductive and juvenile. At the risk of sounding crass, I was responsible and focused enough to get into Harvard — trust me to make the right choices for my own education.

Kaivan K. Shroff is a second-year joint-degree student at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.