Poker Playing Leads to Princeton Laptop Ban
Written by Matt W | Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
While the use of portable computers was once welcomed by university lecturers in the United States, more and more classes are banning them. One of the reasons is that lecturers were finding that students were playing poker with each other instead of listening to the information being taught.
A professor of geosciences at Princeton University, Allan Rubin, told the Times Online that he has banned the use of laptops outright from all his classes, after noticing that many of the 120 students were not focusing on the lessons.
“What I found, and it was getting worse over the years, was that a larger and larger fraction of the students just had their heads buried in their laptops as I lectured,” he said. “I know from teaching assistants who were wandering around when the laptops were open that they were surfing the Web. They were playing poker with each other.”
Not everyone agrees with the extremity of Rubin’s decision, and of many other lecturers like him.
One blogger reacted to the article and said: “I can tell you with great certainty that people who play poker in class usually find some other way to not pay attention; such diversions are a time honored tradition, and usually diminish when a professor is actually interesting. This trend is an overreaction by so-so professors…”
But while poker may not have a place in academics while a professor is trying to teach a lesson, the benefits of this game to the academic world have been proved beyond a doubt. Professor Charley Swain of the University of Wisconsin developed the Strategic Thinking Using Game Theory after seeing how much success his students enjoyed using the game to develop skills in business, politics and other careers.
“Poker is a great metaphor. When you play poker, you don’t know what someone else’s cards are,” said Swayne. “In a competitive situation in life, you never know entirely what is going on with your opponents.”
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· Written by Matt W · Filed Under Poker News · Comments Off
