I believe that this decision depends on the kind of students.

I was recently teaching teenagers, and in my experience the best way to deal with this age is to discuss the matter with them and decide on a punishment together. In my last class, they suggested punishments, usually embarassing ones. For example, if you get caught using your phone during class, you must dance in front of the class or do an impression of someone famous. As they want to see their colleagues in this situation, they control each other. Of course you have to know your students well and know how much you can push them into this kind of "game".

For adults this usually does not apply. Talking to them about it should do it, and if not, asking them to leave the phone at your desk in the beginning of the class.

But as my father always said, if the students are not paying attention, your class is boring. Change it! Make them participate and interact. Ever since he told me that, my classes have improved a lot.

I am quite happy with the enlightening answers from both of you. But use if technology, particularly ICT is a part of main objectiveas of many universities, including UCLan. When they are supposed to use Tablets or smartphones, it sometimes is not so practical to pick up on what the actually are using. I have even tried going around the class and seeing what they actually doing, but when it comes to a large group teaching, it's sometimes not practical. Punishment also is not practical. Would anyone has some other thoughts?

As a new instructor the above examples are very insightful and will help me greatly moving forward. However, isn't there an upper limit on what we can do? Especially in a post-secondary setting?

In my classes I use interactive in-class assignments, discussion questions, movies, and anything else I can to interact with the students. But at the end of the day, sometimes I have to go over a complicated model (say a cell signalling pathway or an optimal foraging model). Try as I may, at least on those topics, I need to cover a vast amount of very complicated information. Now I try to make it as fun and interesting as I can (and instructor enthusiasm helps) but in the middle of explaining such a complicated topic the lesson is not really interactive, and if you're not interested in the subject matter, its boring. I simply can't make this 25 minutes of this one lecture more interesting, as the topic matter really does not allow for that. Now one would hope that students would be less likely to go on social media as they know this material is complicated, but I am not sure.

Secondly, in post-secondary we are teaching adults. If they decide to check social media during class I am not really sure we can stop them. It may be feasible (but difficult) to get them to not check a cell phone, but if they are taking notes on a tablet or labtop, then we can never really police it. At the end of the day, they are adults, and if that is their decision then they have to live with it. However, I have been reading about how the use of social media in the classroom can distract other students around the guilty party. This has been leading me down the path of considering having no electronic devices in my classroom. However, if your institution requires or suggests the use of tablets etc... I am not sure you can ever really police it!

Thank you for the interesting discussion!