In stark contrast to the pandemic, which has required universities to use technology at all times to continue teaching, the university began piloting a new screen-free class this summer, dubbed the Technology Sabbatical. The class is meant to give students the opportunity to learn subjects without traditional technology and encourage them to “develop a more thoughtful relationship with their devices,” according to the university’s Summer Technology Sabbatical website.
Some of these classes also require students to spend a certain amount of free time outside of class without using technology, simulating a technology-free college life as it was just a few decades ago.
The idea for technology-free classes at the university came after University President Jim Ryan read a New York Times opinion piece about a similar class at the University of Pennsylvania, said Brie Gertler, vice president for academic affairs. The opinion piece cited, among other things, a 2023 study that found a positive correlation between high screen time and levels of depression.
“It’s clear that spending time away from technology and social media has psychological and cognitive benefits,” Gertler said in a statement to The Cavalier Daily. “But while people understand this, they also find it difficult to step away from their phones.”
The first of the summer tech break classes, “Reading Climate and Humanitarian Crisis Fiction” by English professor Adrienne Gallie, concluded the first summer session, which ran from May 20 to June 14. Three more non-tech classes are underway for the third summer session, which runs from July 15 to Aug. 8.
Those three classes are “Contemporary Essays,” taught by English professor John Casteen IV; “Book Crafting: An Introduction to Book Editing and Production,” taught by English Writing professor Heidi Nobles; and “Neural Mechanisms of Behavior,” taught by psychology professor Adema Ribic. Nobles said the professors who agreed to teach classes during technology leave have also agreed to teach the classes again in the next 12 to 18 months.
Gulley, who taught his first technology vacation class this summer, said he had students read during technology-free time and focused on improving their focus and comprehension, an approach he said had a positive impact on students’ performance during class discussions.
“The discussions in our seminar were incredibly rich, engaging and conducted at a very high level, and the students really absorbed the material, which is fantastic,” Gulley said in a statement to the Cavalier Daily.
After learning the process of teaching without technology, Nobles said adjusting to learning without technology has been a challenge for students as well as professors. Nobles said she has spent the majority of her career using digital technology for various steps of the book production process, including Adobe InDesign for page layout. In preparation for teaching this summer, she recently completed a four-day course focused on how to publish a physical book.
Students in this physical book publishing course, taught by the Virginia Library Center, an organization dedicated to promoting literacy and reading throughout Virginia, completed and bound eight books using a variety of binding techniques.
While she isn’t asking students in Nobles’ course to do the same, she said she wants to make them as familiar with different publishing techniques as possible, so they’ll have a chance to think about aspects of book production that don’t get thought about online, like the weight of paper and the feel of the pages, she said.
“In this class, we learn how physical books [changes] “That’s the way we’re reading it,” Nobles said.
Nobles said that in her typical bookbinding and publishing classes, students create books using digital software, including platforms like InDesign and Microsoft Word. However, when using these platforms, most of the editing and design parameters are preset, limiting the possibilities for creative approaches, Nobles said. While old-fashioned bookbinding methods aren’t something everyone should reconsider, Nobles said preparing to teach a technology-free class has given her a deeper appreciation for reading certain influential books.
“When you [editing] “We’re all inventing the world together through each other’s work,” Nobles says, “and that’s a wonderful thing, but most people don’t have the opportunity.”
Nobles’ bookbinding course includes a requirement that students spend four hours each day away from screens, in addition to their time in class, a requirement he said was inspired by his own experience teaching a technology-free bookbinding class.
“It felt like such a luxury to have that time protected and be able to get away,” Nobles said. “It felt like the time flew by.”
Despite the benefits, professors who teach technology holidays point out some challenges in planning technology-free lessons. Science classes, which typically rely heavily on technology, can be difficult to adapt to a screen-free format, said Libic, who teaches the neural mechanisms of behavior.
“We typically incorporate a lot of technology into our classes… and [look] “This is the first time we’ve looked for solutions online,” Ribic says, “and this time we wanted to mainly get students to do simple experiments without the help of technology.”
According to Ribic, using the internet to map out experiments and anticipate potential errors is typically an integral part of her neuroscience classes, and the lack of technology is forcing students to change this approach. To facilitate this approach, Ribic said she will switch to analog tools such as stopwatches and lab notebooks, tools she does not yet have.
While some professors have encouraged students to limit their use of technology outside of class time, Ribic said using technology to stay in touch with friends and family, especially those who live far from home, is a necessity for her and many of her students.
Ribic said he was hesitant to hypothesize about the future of a technology-free teaching model, instead wanting to focus on current opportunities to make classes more enjoyable for students.
“I generally try not to make assumptions,” Ribic says, “because I end up being disappointed.”
