To many teachers, it just seems obvious: all that screen times MUST be bad for student brains.
To many other teachers, it just seems obvious: technology will unleash academic possibilities and revolutionize education.
So, which is it? Does media multitasking damage students’ cognitive capabilities? Or, does it allow them new avenues to creative possibilities?
Here’s What We Know
In a recent analysis, Uncapher and Wagner surveyed research into this topic.
Sure enough, they found some troubling evidence.
In half of the studies they examined, people who often use multiple streams of technology scored lower on working memory tests than those who don’t.
In two studies, they had a harder time recalling information from long-term memory.
Studies also showed problems with sustained attention.
Here’s a place where media multitasking might help: task switching. Given all the practice that multitaskers get diverting attention from one gizmo to another, they might well get better at doing so.
Alas, most of the research that U&W examined didn’t support that hypothesis.
Here’s What We Don’t Know: A LOT
Although all of the sentences above are true, they don’t answer most questions with any certainty.
For example, if half of the studies showed that high multitaskers do worse on working memory tests, that means that half of the studies DON’T reach that conclusion.
(It’s important to note that NONE of the studies showed that high multitaskers were better at working memory tasks than their counterparts.)
Uncapher and Wagner repeatedly emphasize this point. We don’t have lots of studies — and those we do have don’t all point the same direction.
Another important question: causality. Perhaps multitasking reduces sustained attention. Or, perhaps people who have trouble sustaining attention multitask more often.
Firm Conclusions
At present, we can conclude with confidence that we don’t have enough evidence to conclude anything with confidence.
Overall, the evidence suggests heavy media multitasking might cause (or might result from) relative weaknesses in several cognitive functions.
We certainly don’t have evidence that encourages us to promote multi-gizmo use.
I myself try to stick to one device at a time. Until more evidence comes in, I’ll gently suggest my students do likewise.
(For thoughts on technology and attention, click here.)
His point is not that technology is bad for learning, but that it’s bad for the environment. As we think about the educational work we do, we should keep this perspective in mind.
Do you have to print out emails before you read them, because you just hate screens?
Or, do you take your Kindle everywhere, because old-fashioned books are just too cumbersome?
The “paper vs. screens” debate has raged for quite a while now.
I occasionally visit schools that have “done away with books” altogether. For reasons of cost and convenience, administrators tell me, e-readers are the only way to go.
Paper vs. Screens: Today’s news
Although I have written about tentative answers to this question, we would love to inform the debate with substantive research. As of today, we can.
Lalo Salmeron and colleagues have completed a meta-analysis comparing the two formats. Their research included several dozen studies, and included more than 170,000 participants.
The results?
In almost every case, students understand better and learn more when they read from paper than when they read from screens.
Some highlights:
Surprisingly, we aren’t getting better at reading from screens. In fact, more recent screen technologies produce greater gaps than previously. As Salmeron writes, “the screen inferiority effect has increased in the past 18 years, and … there were no differences in media effects between age groups.”
Especially when students faced time pressure, the length of the text didn’t matter. That is: even short passages that don’t require scrolling are harder to understand on screen than on paper.
Another surprise: screens made reading information harder. But, they didn’t make reading narrative harder. The teaching implication: e-readers work better for novels than for textbooks.
Paper vs. Screens: Today’s reality
Salmeron’s team has a practical bent as well:
“Given the unavoidable inclusion of digital devices in our contemporary educational systems, more work must be done to train pupils … with reading tasks in digital media.”
On standardized tests, for instance, our students will almost certainly have to read on screens at important moments in their academic lives.
We do need more research on particular strategies. In the meanwhile, this article recommends Lauterman & Ackerman’s article on “Overcoming Screen Inferiority” for places to start.
In the meanwhile, we can help our students understand by having them read from good old-fashioned paper. And no: despite “cost and convenience,” e-readers are not the best way to learn.
We all want to know if technology benefits learning.
And yet, that question is far too large to answer sensibly. We need to focus.
Do laptops help learning. (There, that’s narrower.)
Do laptops help students take notes?
Do laptops help college students take notes during a lecture?
Now we’ve arrived at a question precise enough research.
Divided Attention?
In a recently-published study, Glass and Kang asked just such a precise question:
In college lecture halls, do technology distractions — especially laptops and cellphones — harm short-term learning? Do they harm long-term retention?
Because Glass teaches college lecture classes, he had the perfect opportunity to investigate this question.
The study design is straightforward. During half of the classes, his students were allowed to use technology. In the other half, they weren’t.
(The study design is a bit more complicated than that. Unless you’re really into research methodology, that’s the essential part.)
Did the absence of technology improve learning?
Divided Attention!
No. And, yes.
In the short term, the technology ban made no difference. Students did equally well on in-class quizzes whether or not they were distracted by their cellphones.
In the long term, however, the ban made a big difference. On the final exam, students scored higher on information they learned during distraction-free classes than on information they learned during classes where laptops were allowed.
How much better? About 7 points better. A jump from an 80 to an 87 is a lot of extra learning.
And here’s an essential point: students scored worse in classes where technology was allowed whether or not they themselves used technology.
As other researchers have found, technology distracts both the users and those around them. Divided attention interferes with retention, no matter whose cell phone does the dividing.
Practical Implications
This study shows, persuasively, that technology interferes with learning when it distracts college students from lectures.
However, it does NOT show that technology is bad for learning, or even that laptops and cellphones are bad during lectures.
In fact, the professor required students use their laptops and cellphones to answer retrieval-practice questions during class.
On “no technology days,” Glass had a proctor stand at the back of the lecture hall to ensure that no one used technology inappropriately. But: all Glass’s students used technology to help them learn. And they all used that technology during the lecture.
That is: technology wasn’t the problem. Misuseof technology was the problem.
To help our students learn, in other words, we needn’t ban technology. Instead, we should ensure that they use it correctly.
We might even share Glass’s research with them, and explain why we’re being so strict. They might not notice a problem in the short term. But in the long run, they’ll learn better with undivided attention.
Teachers have a love/hate relationship with technology.
In some cases, technology provides exciting opportunities to enhance teaching. (Here‘s a recent post about virtual reality technology, and another about classroom clickers.)
Action video games and cell phones take most of the heat in these discussions. Who’s got anything good to say about either?
Technology Good News: Video Games
We’ve got lots of evidence to suggest that action video games improve visual attention. All that virtual racing around, all that shooting at monsters and aliens seems to heighten our visual systems.
A recent study in China wondered how quickly video games might might produce this effect. They reached two conclusions.
First: expert video game players do better on tests of visual attention than beginners. Basically, their peripheral vision is more acute.
And, EEG data show that specific brain regions process visual information more efficiently for these experts. The details aren’t important — EEG data are very difficult to summarize — but the results are clear. Playing action video games trains up visual attention.
Second: the beginning video-game players improved their visual attention after only one hour of play.
Their peripheral vision improved from before to after. And, the EEG data showed more expert-like processing of visual information.
Yup. After JUST ONE HOUR.
Now, the study doesn’t show that this improvement will last. Presumably it takes more than an hour to create enduring changes in such sophisticated cognitive systems.
But, it’s impressive to see how quickly those changes start taking place.
Technology Good News: Video Games (Part 2)
Although “visual attention” sounds like a good thing to have, we might nonetheless worry that action video games have other bad effects.
For example, they might interfere with our students’ ability to make friends. We’ve all seen enough lonely nerdy gamers in movies to wonder about their real-life counterparts.
Well, according to two recent studies from Sweden, we needn’t worry. Gamers are just as likely to befriend their peers as non-gamers: “high-use did not make game users socially isolated or less popular in school.” In fact, gamers often make friends with other gamers in the real world.
Perhaps Swedish and American cultural contexts are so different that these results don’t apply to our students. However, that objection seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Of course, we might still be concerned about video games. One of my grad-school professors forbade his children from playing Grand Theft Auto because its messages struck him as so deeply anti-social. He nonetheless showed us lots of research suggesting that video games really don’t have all the bad effects that people worry about.
Technology Good News: Smart Phones
I got a question about “cell phone addiction” from a teacher just last week. As a society — and as teachers within that society — we’re deeply concerned about children’s relationships with this portable slice of technology.
A recently-published think piece offers a fresh perspective on the dangers of cell phones. Its authors don’t discount those dangers; the specifically note correlations of cell-phone use with anxiety and loneliness.
Instead, they reframe them within an evolutionary perspective. Humans have evolved to be highly social beings, and practically everything we do with cell phones — texts, chats, conversations, schedules, even games — is ultimately largely social.
In other words: we’re not addicted to cell phones. We’re addicted to the social possibilities they allow us.
If we rethink cell-phone use, and strategies to manage cell-phone use, within this perspective, we might be considerably more effective in helping curb addictive impulses.
We might also be quicker to see the healthy benefits of technology: when used best, it helps us develop cognitive function and connect with the broader social world.
A recent article in Nature magazine wisely captures the complexities of the Great Cell Phone Debate.
Will they transform human potential?
Will they destroy our children’s self-confidence, not to mention their ability to hold a simple conversation? Their ability to pay attention in class?
(For earlier articles on these topics, see here and here.)
Researcher Candice Odgers offers a simple formula to answer those questions:
“In general, the adolescents who encounter more adversity in their offline lives seem most likely to experience the negative effects of using smartphones and other digital devices.”
That is, the cell phone isn’t causing the problems. For children who already struggle, however, it might exacerbate existing problems.
Teens and Cell Phones: The Good
You might be surprised to read Odgers’s list of digital benefits. Several studies show that teen texting can foster healthy relationships.
6-12 year-olds with solid social relationships are likelier to keep in digital communication with peers as they get older.
Virtual conversations can even help teens “bounce back after social rejection.”
Clearly, cell phones aren’t destroying our children’s ability to create healthy relationships. (Of course, the form those relationships take looks quite different from those of our youths. Or, at least, my youth.)
Teens and Cell Phones: The Bad
As Odgers sees the research, socio-economic status might be a key variable.
The “digital divide” used to mean that rich people had technology that others didn’t. Today, it’s more likely to mean that affluent parents can supervise their children’s digital lives more consistently than less-affluent parents.
“What we’re seeing now is a new kind of digital divide, in which differences in online experiences are amplifying risks among already-vulnerable populations.”
So: for low-income families, online fights lead to real world fights more often. So too bullying.
A Final Point
Complaints about teens and cell phones often miss a crucial point: they get those cell phones from us.
Odgers’s own research shows that 48% of 11-year-olds in North Carolina have cell phones. I’m guessing that relatively few of those 11-year-olds bought those phones — and the data plans — with their own money.
Also: adolescents did not invent the cell phone. They aren’t running companies that make huge profits from their sale.
Odgers’s article suggests that we should focus our concerns not on teens overall, but on those who are already struggling in their daily, non-virtual lives. I suggest, in addition, that we should focus on adult participation in this digital culture.
We are, after all, the ones who make their digital lives possible.
Regular readers of this blog know that I like technology, but I’m not easily wowed about its educational uses. From my perspective, many “you just have to try this” technologies fail to produce nearly as much learning as they promise.
(Some of my concerns show up here and here. But: I’m a champion of laptop notes here.)
At an evolutionary level, our species evolved interacting with real, live other people. Our basic perceptual and emotional systems often work best when we’re learning with and from them.
All that being said, I’m REALLY interested in the educational possibilities that this new technology might offer.
As you’ll see in the video below, combining virtual reality (VR) with advanced haptic feedback produces remarkably persuasive visual and physical experiences.
The video’s host — a professed VR skeptic — is obviously giddy by the end of his trial.
Potential VR+haptics pedagogy
Several kinds of learning might well be much more persuasive (and interesting) with this VR/haptics combination. Physics problems with mass and momentum and magnetism, for example, lend themselves to this kind of exploration.
(As you’ll see in the video, our host can feel the weight of the virtual rock he lifts.)
Another possibility: As our research into embodied cognition gets better, we might be able to translate those strategies into VR/haptics pedagogy. (For an introduction to embodied cognition, see Sian Beilock’s book How the Body Knows Its Mind.)
For example, Susan Goldin-Meadow has done considerable research showing that different hand motions improve mathematics learning. These gloves just might make such problems more physically — and therefore cognitively — persuasive.
Just watch the video; you’ll see what I mean. (By the way: I’m not endorsing any of the products advertised here. They’re an unavoidable part of the video.)
Few educational innovations have gotten more hype than online learning, and few have a more checkered track record.
For every uplifting story we hear about a Khan Academy success, we get at least one story about massive drop-out rates for MOOCs.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that people are just better at learning face to face than from a computer.
And so a recent study deserves our attention. And — like all other research — it also merits our respectful skepticism.
Three Headlines, and a Warning
First Headline: middle schoolers learned A LOT more science from an interactive online curriculum than from a more traditional one.
Second Headline: learning gains seem impressive for students with learning disabilities, and for English language learners.
and
Third Headline: the program was tested with more than 2300 students and 71 teachers in 13 schools in two different states: Oregon and Georgia. That is: this study isn’t about 30 college students in a psychology lab. It’s about real students in real classrooms at opposite ends of the country.
And now, the Warnings: I’m going to give you reasons to be skeptical about all of this. (Well, at least the first two headlines.)
Interactive Online Science Teaching
Researchers developed four units aligned with national science standards. These units, each roughly 10-14 weeks long, covered such topics as Knowing My Body and Our Place in the Universe.
We should note that researchers brought several theoretical perspectives to these science units. They took care to make them culturally relevant to the learners. They designed each unit with project-based learning principals in mind.
And, they made sure that students could interact with the material in different ways. Middle schoolers could control the pace of the lesson, move images around on the screen, get feedback, and navigate among several sources of information.
Even from this brief description, you can see how this interactive online science lesson could be especially appealing — and potentially especially effective — for 7th and 8th graders.
(You can learn more about the curriculum at this website.)
Results: By The Numbers…
First, the online units helped students learn.
In the control group, where teachers taught as they typically had done, students improved 5.7% from pretest to posttest. In the treatment group, where teachers used the units described above, students improved 16.7%.
When the researchers looked at students with learning disabilities and at English language learners, the raw data also showed promising improvements.
For ELL students, for example, the control group improved 4.9%, whereas the treatment group improved 15.0%.
Reasons for Concern #1: “Active Controls”
Researchers compared students who used their online curriculum to others who did not. This comparison to a “control group” allows them to say that their curriculum is better than the old way.
However, it’s quite possible that the students in the treatment group responded well simply because they did something different. In other words: perhaps the online curriculum didn’t help students learn, but the change of daily routine did.
The only way to rule out this possibility is to have the control group do something new as well. If the new online curriculum produces more learning than some other new curriculum, then we can reasonably conclude that the curriculum itself made the difference.
After all, in this hypothetical case, we can’t say that just changing something made a difference; both groups changed something.
However, because the control group in this study wasn’t “active” — that is, they didn’t do anything different or special — we can’t be certain why the researchers found the results they did. Maybe it was the interactive online science curriculum. But maybe it was just the change of pace.
The researchers’ own video — linked to above — highlights this concern. One of the teachers who used the online units says that she liked them because teachers simply hadn’t had an organized curriculum in the past. Each teacher had put something together on her own.
If that’s true for the schools in the control group, then this study compares schools that had no consistent, professionally developed curriculum at all with schools that had a curriculum developed by a Oregon University’s School of Education.
In other words: the benefit could come from having any well developed curriculum, not specifically this curriculum. Or not an online curriculum.
We simply can’t know.
Reason for Concern #2: Goodies
There’s no neutral way to say this. Teachers assigned to the online curriculum got a big gift bag. Teachers in the control group got dinky gift bags.
More specifically: teachers in the control group got a $300 bump. (Admittedly, that’s a nice perk for not having to do anything special.)
Teachers who used the online curriculum got $1500. (That’s a REALLY nice perk.) It’s five times as much.
And, they got some cool technology. And, they got extra PD and instructional resources. They even got 2 days of paid subs so they could attend that PD.
For all these reasons, it’s possible that the students did better with the online science curriculum because it helped them learn. It’s also possible that they did better because their teachers were really excited by all the loot they got.
Again, because of the study design, we simply can’t know.
What Should Teachers Do?
In my view, the jury is still out on online curricula.
On the one hand, they seem like a really good idea. On the other hand, the evidence in their favor is, at best, equivocal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, 20 years from now, we all clapped our hand to our foreheads and asked, what were we thinking?
In other words: we can’t yet look to research to be certain of an answer. If you have an opportunity that appeals to your teacherly instincts, give it a try.
If it works, let me know. If not, don’t worry that you might be doing something wrong. After all: humans evolved learning face to face. It’s just possible that the e-version of that experience will never be as good.
Regular readers of this blog—and, people who have even a glimpse of common sense—already know that mobile devices distract college students during lectures.
(If you’d like a review of research on this topic, you can check out The Distracted Mind by Gazzaley and Rosen.)
You can picture college students now: squinting at small screens, thumbing away at tiny keyboards, chuckling at oddly inappropriate moments of the lecture.
How can there possibly be any reason to research this question further?
One Reason to Research this Question Further
When scientists discover any kind of principal, they quickly start investigating the specific conditions under which it applies.
For example: we know that retrieval practice is—generally speaking— a great way to review. But, does it work equally well for 8-year-olds, 18-year-olds, and 80-year-olds?
We know that a growth mindset—generally speaking—enhances motivation. But, does it work for athletic as well as academic endeavors?
We know that—generally speaking—stress is bad for learning. But: how much stress is bad? Is there a low level of stress that might be good? Or, are there some tasks that benefit from high levels of stress during learning?
Researchers call these boundary conditions: a finding applies under these particular circumstances, but notthose particular circumstances.
And so, we might want to investigate use of mobile devices during lectures even further to discover their boundary conditions. Are there ages at which cell-phone use matters less? Are there class lengths where it matters more? Are there personality types who learn more while surfing away?
A Surprising Answer
A group of researchers in South Africa wanted to find boundary conditions for the harm done by mobile devices in college lectures. In particular, they wanted to know: do cell phones lower grades equally in all disciplines?
Perhaps history students are more distractible than classics students. Or, perhaps physics concepts can be obscured more readily than biology concepts.
By surveying students and by doing a meta-analysis of other studies, le Roux & Parry found that mobile phones did less harm in Engineering classes than in Arts and Social Sciences classes.
So: cell phones distract students during lectures, but they don’t distract students equally during lectures on different topics.
Teaching Implications
I, for one, wouldn’t encourage my Engineering students to break out the iPads during class. Those devices might not be as distracting as in other classes, but they’re still distracting.
(And: they’re probably distracting to other students: see Faria Sana’s research.)
Here’s what I would do: follow le Roux’s example and look for boundary conditions.
If a speaker says “working memory limits preclude students from remembering more than 2 instructions,” ask if that rule applies to your 11th graders. Ask if it applies to written instructions as well as verbal instructions. Ask if it applies to instructions given in a foreign language class. Ask if it applies to instructions that students must follow over the next 30 minutes.
Look for boundary conditions.
(By the way, the answer to those questions are:
Because WM capacity increases with age, most 11th graders can recall more than 2 instructions.
Written instructions don’t take up much working memory capacity at all.
Because foreign language instruction is VERY WM taxing, students might struggle to remember even a small number of instructions.
The longer students have to remember instructions, the harder that effort becomes. That’s why you make shopping lists: it’s hard to remember what you want at the store when it’s 30 minutes away.)
In Sum…
Cognitive sciences offers teachers general principles—and those principles can be mightily helpful. (For instance: retrieval practice DOES work well for 8, 18, and 80 year olds.)
But, most of those principles do have important boundaries. Your students, your class size, your discipline, your age group, your personality—all these variables just might be outside those boundaries.
And so: be curious about the general principles. And, be equally curious about their boundaries.
To many teachers, it just seems obvious: all that screen times MUST be bad for student brains.
