The very first lecture I attended at the university, I was a scapegoat. Not sure who exactly called, but I only took it to say, "I'll call you later." Next thing I knew, the lecturer called me out, seized my phone, and asked me to stand before the class for the rest of the lecturer. A bit embarrassing, but I should have known better sitting in the first row.
A similar thing happened in 300 level during one electrical class. My phone only rang out this time, and again, I was in the front row. The lecturer was going to smash it to the ground. Somebody else must have vexed him that day, because it just couldn't have been my phone that really got him angry.
Now I know it looks like I don't hear word... The idea is that this kind of thing is bound to happen every now and then. Somebody is going to have the class distracted with their phone somehow. Or maybe it was just my school. In any case, phones are never going anywhere.
There are different lecturers, though. Some are keen on class ethics and don't even want to see that your iPhone 17 Pro Ultra that can buy their cars. Others just walk in, say what they want, and leave regardless of whether you gained anything. One thing that I believe many of them have in common is cutting corners in your assignments or cheating with your phones.
AI and its superpowers only arrived just when I was about to graduate, so all we had was our long-standing friend, Google. But of course, we still found our way around.
There was a time in 300 level -- second semester, I think -- and we had this massive assignment. We were each supposed to make business proposals or something like that. We were in engineering, and many of us had no clue how to go about it. Of course, we turned to Google and found very interesting results. As per sharp students, we tweaked some of them, prepared our voluminous documents, and submitted.
Many of us had our submissions rejected. I had never heard of Turnitin.com or something like that, but the man passed all of our work through its plagiarism detector. Such tools were strange to us then -- to me anyway. And from what I remember that semester, I scored a C. Whether it was the assignment or the fact that it was a boring course to me, I'm not sure, but it taught me something that year.
Different schools and lecturers can have their own rules, but to think that taking devices away from students is going to do anything is beyond far-fetched. It's like taking calculators away from people in this age. I think the standard rules can remain, like not using or bring devices to certain places and occasions, but enforcing bans won't cut it. In the end, whoever's interested in working hard and doing well will do the right thing.
Images in this post are mine