Our research has emerged from a passion for higher education. We also feel an urge to radically change it for the better. An increasingly dense literature has documented the harmful effects of screens on concentration and learning. With the emergence of the Internet, early hopes of a universal knowledge-sharing community have been shattered by the greed of companies competing for attention in the cognitive market. The Internet only mirrors the true nature of a humanity that is more interested in distraction than self-development. In this context, youth is particularly vulnerable to the lure of entertainment for its own sake. Based on years of teaching experience and the observation that screens make people stupid, we have developed an experimental design that bans them from the classroom. Teaching relies on the oratory skills of the teacher and true (rather than virtual) communication with students. Interactivity and learning do not require advanced technical artefacts such as videos or games, but quality storytelling and rhetorics - an art of conversation teachers should return to. We have witnessed extraordinary results following this “old school” method which will hopefully become the school of tomorrow. Students were not passively staring at slides that emptied their minds, but developing thinking skills and a taste for imagination that made them masters of their own learning.

Screens, distraction, tradition

Alhumaid, Khadija (2019) “Four Ways Technology Has Negatively Changed Education”, Journal of Educational and Social Research, 9: 10-20.

Allen, Matthew and Long, Jane (2009) “Learning as knowledge networking: conceptual foundations for revised uses of the Internet in higher education”, in , Craig Douglas, W.S. Grundfest and Jon Burgstone (Eds), International Conference on Education and Information Technology, pp. 652-657.San Francisco: Newswood.

Alvesson, M. (2013). The triumph of emptiness. Consumption, higher education & work organization. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press.

Ayub, Ahmad Fauzi Mohd, Hamid, Wan Hamzari Wan and Nawawi, Mokhtar Hj. (2014) “Use of Internet for Academic Purposes among Students in Malaysian Institutions of Higher Education”, Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 13 (1): 232-241.

Cavell, S. (2008). Must we mean what we say? Updated Edition. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

Crespo-Fernandez, E. (2006). The language of death: Euphemism and conceptual metaphorization in Victorian obituaries. SKY Journal of Linguistics 19(1), pp. 101-130.

Dillard, J.P., & Ha, Y. (2016). Perceived message effectiveness predicts information-seeking behaviour. Communication Research Reports 33(4), pp. 356-362.

Edmondson, W., & House, J. (1991). Do learners talk too much? The waffle phenomenon in interlanguage pragmatics. In R. Phillipson, E. Kellerman, L. Selinker, M. Sharwood Smith & M. (Eds.), Foreign/Second language Pedagogy Research (pp. 273-287). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Engen van, K.J., Baese-Berk, M., Baker, R.E., Choi, A., Kim, M., & Bradlow, A.R. (2010). The wildcat corpus of native- and foreign-accented English: Communicative efficiency across conversational dyads with varying language alignment profiles. Language and Speech, 53(4), pp. 510-540.

Eunson, B. (2012). Communicating in the 21st century, 3rd edition. Milton, Qld: John Wiley and Sons Australia.

Ferraro, G. P. (2010). The cultural dimension of international business, 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Fransen, K., Haslam, A., Mallet, C.J., Steffens, N.K., Peters, K., & Boen, F. (2017). Is perceived leadership quality related to team effectiveness? A comparison of three professional sports teams. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 20(8), pp. 800-806.

Fredriksson, R., Barner-Rasmussen, W., & Piekkari, R. (2006). The multilingual corporation as a multilingual organization: The notion of a common corporate language. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 11, pp. 406-423.

Georgina, David A. and Myrna R. Olson (2008) “Integration of technology in higher education: A review of faculty self-perceptions”, The Internet and Higher Education, 11 (1): 1-8.

Gilbert and Stoneman (2016) Researching Social Life, Los Angeles: SAGE.

Gikas, Joanne, and Michael M. Grant (2013) “Mobile computing devices in higher education: Student perspectives on learning with cellphones, smartphones & social media”, The Internet and Higher Education, 19: 18-26.

Gore, V. (2013). The importance of cross-cultural communication. The IUP Journal of Soft Skills 7(1), pp. 59-65.

Gros, Begoña, Suárez-Guerrero, Cristóbal and Terry Anderson (2016) “The Internet and Online Pedagogy”, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 13: 38.

Gudykunst, W.B. & Shapiro, R.B. (1996). Communication in everyday interpersonal and intergroup encounters. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 20(1), pp. 19-45.

Gudykunst, W.B. (1993). Toward a theory of effective interpersonal and intergroup communication: An anxiety/uncertainty management (AUM) perspective. In R. Wiseman & J. Koester (Eds.), Intercultural Communication Competence (pp. 33-71). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Gudykunst, W.B., & Nishida, T. (2001). Anxiety, uncertainty, and perceived effectiveness of communication across relationships and cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 25(1), pp. 55-71.

Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture, 1st edition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Hall, E. T. (1990). The silent language, 2nd edition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Hall, E. T., & Hall, M. R. (1990). Understanding cultural differences: Germans, French and Americans, 1st edition. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Henderson, J.K., & Louhiala-Salminen, L. (2011). Does language affect trust in global professional context? Perceptions of international business professionals. Rhetoric, Professional Communication and Globalization 2(1), pp. 15-33.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviours, institutions and organizations across nations, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Khan, Habib Ullah, and Awan, Mahmood A. (2017) “Possible factors affecting internet addiction: a case study of higher education students of Qatar”, International Journal of Business Information Systems, 26 (2).

Levine, D. R., & Adelman, M. B. (1982). Beyond language: Intercultural communication for English as a second language, 2nd edition. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall.

Louhiala-Salminen, L. & Rogerson-Revell, P. (2010). Language matters – An introduction. Journal of Business Communication 47(2), pp. 91-96.

Marginson, S. and M. van der Wende (2007) “Globalization and Higher Education”, OECD Education Working Papers , No. 8.

Mehrabian, A. (1981). Silent messages: Implicit communication of emotions and attitudes, 2nd edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Mulken van, M. (2010). The pleasure of foreign language. Journal for Language Control 32, pp. 268-279.

Mulken van, M., & Hendriks, B. (2014). Effective communication modes in multilingual encounters: Comparing alternatives in computer mediated communication (CMC). Multilingua, 36 (1), pp. 89-111.

Najafbagy, R. (2008). Problems of effective cross-cultural communication and conflict resolution. Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture 15(4/1), pp. 146-150.

Roblyer, M.D., McDaniel, Michelle, Webb, Marsena, Herman, James and Vince Witty (2010) “Findings on

Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites”, The Internet and Higher Education, 13 (3): 134-140.

Rogerson-Revell, P. (2008). Participation and performance in international business meetings. English for Specific Purposes 27(3), pp. 338-360.

Rungtusanatham, Manus, Ellram, Lisa M., Siferd, Sue P., and Steven Salik (2004) “Toward a Typology of Business Education in the Internet Age”, Decision Sciences, 2 (2): 101-120.

Scheu-Lottgen, U. D., & Hernández-Campoy, J. M. (1998). An analysis of sociocultural miscommunication: English, Spanish and German. International journal of intercultural relations, 22(4), pp. 375-394.

Schneider, S. C., Barsoux, J.-L., & Stahl, G. K. (2014). Managing across cultures, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson.

Selwyn, Neil (2008) “An investigation of differences in undergraduates' academic use of the internet”, Active Learning in Higher Education, 9 (1): 11-22.

Steers, R. M., Nardon, L. & Sanchez-Runde, C. J. (2013). Management across cultures: developing global competencies, 2nd edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tess, Paul A. (2013) “The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) – A literature review”, Computers in Human Behavior, 29 (5): A60-A68.

Thomas, D. C., & Peterson, M. F. (2018). Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage Publications.

Zhu, Y., Nel, P., & Bhat, R. (2006). A cross cultural study of communication strategies for building business relationships. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 6(3), pp. 319-341.