Guest post by Anton Mosunov, Math Undergraduate Group (amosunov@uwaterloo.ca)
In this blog post, I will tell you about one excellent talk that I’ve attended at the EdCog Conference at McMaster University on July 15 this year. The talk was by Bridgette Hard, and while she presented three case studies of pedagogical research, I will focus on only one of them — the one about technology multitasking in classrooms.
There are several studies observing that technology multitasking in classroom is harmful for both the multitasker [2, 3, 4] and neighbouring students [5]. As it is summarized in [2], there are at least three costs of divided attention:
- Selection Effect. “Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.” (Quote from [1])
- Switching Effect. When two tasks are performed, there is a switching time between them when neither task is being performed. To see it for yourself, try the following exercise: first, time yourself when counting from 1 to 52; then time yourself saying the letters of English alphabet twice (A B C … Z A B C … Z); finally, time yourself saying 1 A 2 B 3 C …. Likely the third count will take significantly more time than the first two counts, even though all three sequences had 52 items in them.
- Retention. “When attention is divided between two tasks, fewer targets of a study task are subsequently remembered.” (Quote from [2])
At their first study, Bridgette Hard, Cayce Hook, David Kalkstein and Greg Walton were interested whether an intervention focused on informing students of modern research in self-regulation will give students the motivation to reduce multitasking with technology. At the beginning of the term, students were presented with evidence that multitasking harms learning, that willpower alone isn’t enough to regulate one’s own behaviour, and that changing a situation works much better (e.g., putting a phone on silent mode and hiding it in the backpack). Students developed their own plans for managing their technology that semester. Although students who received the intervention were initially more motivated to avoid multitasking, ultimately, this kind of intervention did not affect student behaviour, since social norms may have much stronger influence.
In their second study Dr. Hard’s team focused on implementing the tech-free policy, investigating whether a strong social norm can reduce multimedia temptations and the need to use self-control. Students who wanted to use laptops or tablets for note taking could request to do so, and such requests were always approved, but they had to sign an Agreement to Use Notetaking Device, explaining what technology they were planning to use in class and why, and acknowledging the fact that by using technology for non course-related activities they negatively affect other students. The results of this study indicate that this approach does enable instructor to reduce multitasking. Furthermore, in the tech allowed classroom 69% of students experienced at least one laptop-related urge, while in the tech free classroom 62% of students experienced zero laptop-related urges. The research team also observed that the exam grades and course engagement went up, and that even though students viewed a no-tech policy negatively when considered hypothetically, after adhering to it they largely evaluated the experience as positive. The study of Kalkstein, Hook, Hard and Walton is currently under review, so I look forward to reading the article in detail when it gets published!
References
[1] P. Atchley, You can’t multitask, so stop trying, Harvard Business Review, December 21st, 2010. URL: https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr.
[2] A. L. Glass and M. Kang, Dividing attention in the classroom reduces exam performance, Educational Psychology 39 (3), pp. 395–408, 2019.
[3] R. Junco and S. R. Cotton, The relationship between multitasking and academic performance, Computers and Education 59, pp. 505–514, 2012.
[4] J. M. Kraushaar and D. C. Novak, Examining the affects of student multitasking with laptops during the lecture, J. of Information Systems Education 21 (2), pp. 241–251, 2010.
[5] F. Sana, T. Weston and N. J. Cepeda, Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers, Computers and Education 62, pp. 24–31, 2013.
