Most classes at Saint Anselm include online components such as message boards, chat rooms, and electronic paper filing. But web-based courses and podcasts are not on the horizon.

"There is an intangible, incalculable value in being in the same room with other people exchanging ideas," says Fr. Augustine. "We’ll use technology to enhance and supplement classroom learning, but it will never be able to replace the kind of personal exchange that often contains nuances of rhetoric or expression. Nor should it."

The dean also emphasizes the experience students should have with "the most valuable learning technology that ever existed: the physical artifact of the book. It’s something we will always very much treasure."

Millennials in the Classroom
On the 19th of April last year, a student received a cell phone message during class informing him that the new Pope had been named. The whole class then got the information—before the campus bells pealed to spread the news.

In his elementary biochemistry course, professor Robert Vallari enforces a strict "no cell phone" rule and deducts two percentage points from a student’s final average if his or her phone rings during class.

"In a class that enrolls 80-90 students, typically freshmen, I do what I can to minimize distractions," he says. "Cell phones ringing in class falls in the category of major distraction—for both me and the students."

Faculty members adapt their methods for millennial attention spans. English professor Ann Norton observes, "We have to make an effort to keep students focused and entertained. When it comes to assignments, if I don’t make it obvious—if I don’t repeat it and repeat it and repeat it—they don’t get it. Reading complex material closely, as in instructions, is a skill they find very hard to master. As a generation, they’re not capable of focusing on complex thought progression written in language that’s somewhat complicated. They’re used to skimming for the big highlight."

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