Should Students Take Pictures of Class?

Photo: Rhett Allain. This is what it looks like when a student takes a photo during class.

Let’s be clear. Students are going to take photos (and videos) during class no matter if it’s a good idea or not. But is it a good idea? Does it help them or hurt their understanding? Finally, is it annoying? Oh, I already know the answer to that last part — yes, it’s annoying.

What photos are students taking?

I should point out that I’m exclusively teaching physics courses. Class usually consists of short lectures, reviewing problems, multiple choice conceptual questions and student problem solving (where they work in groups). I know that lectures aren’t always useful (by themselves) so most of my important stuff is also posted on the course website as a video. (You can also find these videos on my YouTube channel).

Students will often take photos of the board once it has a final solution (if I worked out a problem). Sometimes, I get a student video recording an entire derivation or explanation. Oh, I should add that for any problems we work on in class — I also post a copy on the course website. It really feels redundant to capture images of this stuff posted in class.

I also teach an introductory physical science course. This curriculum uses PowerPoint presentations with videos of experiments along with conceptual questions. I don’t post the PowerPoint files since they go…