If you talk in class, please stop. But… if you won’t stop talking during class, kindly sit in the back.
Most people (I hope) go to lectures with at least the slightest intention of paying attention to what an expert has to tell them about this or that subject. We’re all paying thousands to be here. But if you are bored or confused enough to start chatting with a friend, consider that other students may also be riding the razor’s edge of focus on the lecture content. A staccato of hushed conversations can be enough to cut that last shred of focus.
For the professor, these conversations can disrupt the rhythm of their lecture, and hurt their ability to bounce off of an engaged lecture audience.
Speaking to a room of people is a difficult task; side chatter can distract the speaker and harm their ability to lecture effectively. This chatter can also dash a lecturer’s hope of having an engaged audience by distracting. It is much easier to speak to an audience that shows you genuine interest than one of dissociation and side conversations.
It’s cyclical. Students talking diminishes students focus, harming lecture quality, and diminishing lecture quality can diminish student focus, ad nauseum.
By harming both the focus of students and lecturers at once, those of us who choose to talk in class are kickstarting this cycle of negativity. Perhaps you only whisper once or twice to a friend. But this whispering pulls another student out of the lecture who then follows your example and whispers to their friend. Now the lecturer has a pestering murmur to contend with and less energy from the audience to feed off of. You have just made the lecture worse for everyone.
Want to be less of a nuisance? Great!
First off, shift engagement to the professor. Whispering a course-related question or two to a buddy during a lecture isn’t going to end of the world, but it’s often unnecessary. Professors yearn for questions. They’ll often pause for questions only to be answered by a sea of blank faces. So why not answer their call and ask the professor your questions? It may help other students with similar questions and it shows them that you care about learning. Plus they’ll probably give you a better answer than your friend who barely studied for the midterm.
But if you’re too scared to ask questions to the professor, or if you cannot contain your urge for gossip, please follow the time honoured tradition of sitting in the back of the class.
The back of a lecture hall is a wonderful escape from scrutiny over your lack of focus. If you sit in the front your disruptions will be easily heard by the professor and the students most engaged in the course. Sitting in the middle diminishes those risks but centers your chatter in a way to maximize disruption for the most students.
Sitting in the back is your best bet to put distance between those most affected by you. When I sit in the back of lectures, It’s because I know I won’t be giving the lecture most of my focus. This seems to be a standard phenomena. The less one cares about focusing in a class, the farther back they’ll likely sit. There may be some that prefer the back for focus but research supports the idea that the back rows are overall less motivated. This is not to say that chatting in the back is fine, it’s still rude, disruptive and annoying. This is harm reduction, not permission.
You shouldn’t talk in class, but if you’re going to do it, please sit in the back.
