If I make my course materials availabe to students on their wireless devices, they’ll study a whole 40 minutes more a week! While they’re working out! While they’re standing in line! While they’re in the bathroom! And if this extra 40 minutes a week wears them out, they’ll take breaks by texting one another, reading email, or Facebooking.
Call me old-fashioned (my students do), but I’d almost rather have them study less in a less distracting environment. Indeed, I suspect that with mobile access to course information, students probably do a higher proportion of their, er, homework on the go.
I’d bet, in other words, that this marginally greater amount of study time is spent less productively. And yet grades keep going up . . .
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
