Because technology is everywhere, anecdotes about technology abound. Almost everyone in your school has opinions — strong opinions! — about the effect that technology has on learning.
If we move past anecdotes, what does the research show?
For all sorts of reasons, researching technology in education is tricky to do. (For one thing: by the time a particular innovation has been researched, it’s most likely out of date.)
The National Bureau of Education Research has done a heroic job of surveying quality research, and they’ve reached four conclusions:
First: especially in K-12 classrooms, simply adding technology doesn’t consistently increase learning. Unsurprisingly, students get better at learning the technology. Whether they get better at learning the academic content, however, is much less clear.
Second: “computer-assisted learning” has shown real promise. When students solve math problems on a computer, and find out right away whether or not they got the right answer — and why — their learning clearly benefits.
Third: “behavioral nudges” by text reminders (for example) do have a measurable effect. And, they’re really inexpensive.
Fourth: “relative to courses with some degree of face-to-face teaching, students taking online-only courses may experience negative learning outcomes” (88-89). That’s research speak for online courses don’t (yet) help students learn as well as physically-present-and-breathing teachers do.
If your school is pursuing technology zealously, it might be worth your while to contribute the $5 at the link above to get the full report.
If you have a chance, I highly recommend reading The Distracted Mind — especially if you’ll be attending the upcoming conference.
Authors Adam Gazzaley (a neuroscientist) and Larry D. Rosen (a psychologist) explain our current difficulties with attention by looking at — hold on to your hat — foraging theory. If that sounds crazy, let me explain…
Imagine you’re a squirrel foraging for nuts in a particular tree. How long should you spend in this tree, and when should you head out for a neighboring tree?
The answer depends, in brief, on two variables: the richness of the tree you’re in, and the distance to the next tree. If you’re in a particularly nutty tree, you’re likely to stay longer. If another tree is quite nearby, you’re tempted to make the leap sooner than if it were far away.
Gazzaley and Rosen argue that humans are information foragers. We are a curious bunch, and we constantly want to know more: information relevant to our survival, information about people who are close to us, information topics that pique our interest. (Deflate-gate anyone?)
In this framework, technology distracts us so much because it makes information available to us constantly. The cell phone in your pocket is like an oak tree moving closer and closer to a squirrel.
(Gazzaley and Rosen joke that a text message ping is like a tree throwing a nut at a squirrel to say, “Hey! Come forage over here!”)
They support this argument with several chapters detailing the psychological and neurobiological functions behind our attentional systems; they also map the practical effects that these distractions have on learning and on life.
G&R conclude with two chapters of solutions. While their ideas here aren’t revolutionary, the foraging framework they offer helps clarify how and why each of these strategies might improve our concentration and cognition.
By the way: The Distracted Mind is written with admirable clarity. It doesn’t dumb down the science, and it remains lively, clear, and well-organized.
“A new study suggests that playing action video games can be detrimental to the brain, reducing the amount of gray matter in the hippocampus.” [emphasis mine, ACW]
We have a number of reasons to be curious about this claim.
Primarily, researchers have debated one another with vehemence–and occasional vitriol–on the benefits and detriments of action video games–such as Call of Duty. This article seems to be an interesting addition to that debate.
The article itself is behind a paywall, but you can read the abstract here. Let me quote the first and last sentence of the abstract:
“The hippocampus is critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that action video game players have reduced grey matter within the hippocampus. [… ]
These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game.” [emphasis mine, ACW]
So, does this research show that video games can be detrimental to the hippocampus, as the article’s first sentence claims? Yes, it does.
But, as my highlighting makes clear, it also shows that video games can be beneficial to the hippocampal system.
In other words: the article’s scary headline — and several of its subsequent statements — mischaracterize the underlying article.
After all, if I wrote an article claiming that Leonardo diCaprio is the best and the worst actor of his generation, and you summarized my article with the headline “Watson calls DiCaprio This Generation’s Worst Actor,” you’d be technically correct, but substantively misleading.
You can’t just leave out half of the argument.
To be fair: the study itself is quite complex. It distinguishes, first, between action video games — like Call of Duty — and 3D video games — like SuperMario. It further distinguishes between two strategies that players use to navigate those games.
SuperMario-like games are beneficial to hippocampal gray matter whichever navigation strategy players use. For Call-of-Duty-like games, the benefit or detriment depends on the navigational strategy.
The Lesson for Teachers to Learn
I believe that we, as teachers, must increasingly inform our classroom practice with research from neuroscience and psychology. We should know, for instance, whether or not action video games do bad things to the brain.
(When I spoke with parents at a school in New York just two weeks ago, I got that very question.)
If we’re going to rely on scientific research, however, we need to hone our scientific skepticism skills.
For me, here’s rule number one: ALWAYS READ THE ABSTRACT.
If a book or a speaker or an article make a research-based claim, get the primary source and read the abstract–that’s the first paragraph that summarizes the key points of the study.
(It’s usually very easy to find the abstract: use Google Scholar.)
When you read the abstract, you can see right away whether or not the speaker, article, or book summarized the research correctly–or at least plausibly.
In this case, you can easily see that the article mischaracterized half of the the researchers’ conclusions. So, as a newly-minted skeptic, you know what to do: look elsewhere. This source isn’t strong enough to use as a resource for making school decisions.
(BTW: I have reached out to the website that published this summary. As of today–October 4–they’re sticking to their claims. If they make changes, I’ll update this post.)
Next Steps
If you’d like to hone your skepticism skills, you might check out the TILT curriculum at The People’s Science–developed by Stephanie Sasse (former editor of this blog) and Maya Bialik (former writer for this blog; speaker at the upcoming LatB Conference).
If you’re attending Learning and the Brain’s “Merging Minds and Technology” Conference in November, you’re probably interested in Mona Moisala’s research. After all, Moisala wants to know if media multitasking influences distractibility among 13-24 year olds.
That is: does switching from Instagram on an iPad to Angry Birds on an iPhone to email on a laptop make it harder for students to pay attention in class later on? (Moisala has your attention now, right?)
And, just to make her research even more intriguing, she investigates the relationship between time spent playing video games and working memory capacity.
Here’s what she found:
First: the more that students reported media multitasking, the more they struggled with attention tasks in the lab.
Second: the more that students reported playing daily computer games, the higher working memory capacity they demonstrated.
Third: more daily computer game play also correlated with improved reaction times, and with higher ability to switch from visual to auditory attention.
The Question You Know Is Coming…
Moisala finds a relationship between these uses of technology and various cognitive functions. However, which direction does causality flow?
Does media multitasking cause students to struggle with attention? Or, are those who already struggle with attention drawn to media multitasking?
Moisala’s research doesn’t yet answer that question–although she’s applying for funding to study longitudinal data. (Data showing changes over time ought to reveal causality.)
Some Tentative Answers
Although this research doesn’t answer causality questions, I have some suspicions.
First: I think it’s unlikely that daily video game play increases working memory capacity. Instead, I suspect that people who have a high working memory capacity enjoy the complexity of video-game play more than those who don’t.
Why do I think this? Well: for the most part, we haven’t had much luck increasing working memory capacity outside of psychology labs. So, it would be big and surprising news if playing everyday video games grew working memory.
Second: I suspect that playing video games does improve reaction time and attention switching. Those cognitive capacities are trainable, and video games ought to help train them.
Third: I suspect–although this is purely conjecture–that media multitasking and attentional difficulties feed each other. That is: people with short attention spans are prone to media multitasking; and media-multitasking trains people to reorient their attention more frequently.
Here’s an even better answer: if you come to the November conference, you’re likely to meet people who have researched these very questions.
The upcoming Learning and the Brain Conference (Boston, November) will focus on “Merging Minds and Technology.”
Given that I blog so much about the importance of skepticism, it seems only appropriate to offer up at least some voices that are highly doubtful about the benefits of technology–in particular, virtual classrooms.
Freddie deBoer has strong opinions, and he supports them with data. You’ll want to check out the graph he includes: one of the axes shows the equivalent of “days of learning lost.” That number–especially when it comes to math learning–will astonish you.
Now that I’ve got your attention: what effect does the location of your cell phone have on your attention?
Researchers have recently found some predictable answers to that question–as well as some rather surprising ones. And, their answers may help us think about cell phones in classrooms.
The Study
Adrian Ward and Co. wanted to learn more about the “mere presence” of students’ cellphones.
That is: they weren’t asking if talking on the phone distracts drivers (it does), or if a ringing phone distracts that phone’s owner (it does), or even if a text-message buzz distracts the textee (it does).
Instead, they were asking if your phone lying silently on the desk in front of you distracts you–even if its not ringing or buzzing.
Even if you’re NOT CONSCIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT IT.
So they gathered several hundred college students and had them complete tests that measure various cognitive functions.
The first group of students left all their stuff–including phones–in another room. (That’s standard procedure during such research.)
The second group brought their phones with them “for use later in the study.” After silencing the phones (no ringing, no buzzing), they were told to put them wherever they usually keep them. Roughly half kept them in a pocket; the other half kept them in a nearby bag.
The third group brought phones along, and were instructed to put them in a marked place on the desk in front of them. (These phones were also silenced.)
Did the proximity of the phone matter?
The Expected Results
As is so often true, the answer to that question depends on the measurement we use.
When the researchers measured the students’ working memory capacity, they found that a cell phone on the desk reduced this essential cognitive function.
Specifically, students who left phones in their bags in another room averaged about a 33 on an OSpan test. (It measures working memory–the specifics aren’t important here.) Those who had cell phones on their desks scored roughly 28.5. (For the stats pros here, the p value was .007.)
If you attend Learning and the Brain conferences, or read this blog regularly, you know that working memory is ESSENTIAL for academic learning. It allows us to hold on to bits of information and recombine them into new patterns; of course, that’s what learning is.
So, if the “mere presence” of a cell phone is reducing working memory, it’s doing real harm to our students.
By the way, the students who had their phones on their desks said that they weren’t thinking about them (any more than the other students), and didn’t predict that their phones would distract them (any more than the other students).
So, our students might TELL US that their phones don’t interfere with their cognition. They might not even be conscious of this effect. But, that interference is happening all the same.
The UNEXPECTED Results
Few teachers, I imagine, are surprised to learn that a nearby cell phone makes it hard to think.
What effect does that phone have on the ability to pay attention?
To answer this question, researchers used a “go/no-go” test. Students watched a computer screen that flashed numbers on it. Whenever they saw a 6, they pressed the letter J on the keyboard. They ignored all the other numbers.
(The researchers didn’t go into specifics here, so I’ve described a typical kind of “go/no-go” task. Their version might have been a bit different.)
To do well on this task, you have to focus carefully: that is, you have to pay attention. Researchers can tell how good you are at paying attention by measuring the number of mistakes you make, and your reaction time. Presumably, the slower you are to react, the less attention you’re paying.
So, how much difference did the cell phone on the desk make? How much slower were the students who had the phone on the desk, compared to those whose phones were in the other room?
Nope. Sorry. No difference.
Or, to be precise, the students who had the phone on the desk reacted in 0.366 seconds, whereas those whose phones were elsewhere reacted in 0.363 seconds. As you can imagine, a difference of 0.003 seconds just isn’t enough to worry about. (Stats team: the p value was >.35.)
Explaining the Unexpected
Ward’s results here are, I think, quite counter-intuitive. We would expect that the mere presence of the phone would interfere with working memory because it distracted the students: that is, because it interfered with their attention.
These results paint a more complicated picture.
The explanation can get technical quickly. Two key insights help understand these results.
Key Insight #1: Attention isn’t just one thing. It has different parts to it.
One part of my attentional system brings information into my brain. I am, at this moment, focusing on my computer screen, Ward’s article, my keyboard, and my own thoughts. Sensory information from these parts of my world are entering my conscious mind.
Another part of my attentional system screens information out of my brain. I am, at this moment, trying not to notice the bubble-and-hum of my cats’ water gizmo, or my cat’s adorable grooming (why is his leg stuck up in the air like that?)–or, really, anything about my cats. Sensory information from those parts of my world are not (I hope) entering my conscious thought.
The attention test that Ward & Co. used measured the first part of attention. That is, the go/no-go task checks to see if the right information is getting in. And, in this case, the right information was getting in, even when a cell phone was nearby.
Key Insight #2: Working Memory INCLUDES the second kind of attention.
In other words, we use working memory to keep out adorable cat behavior–and other things we don’t want to distract our conscious minds. Other things such as–for example–cell phones.
The nearby phone doesn’t interfere with the first part of attention, and so the correct information gets into student brains. For this reason, students do just fine on Ward’s “attention” test.
However, the nearby phone does make it hard to filter information out. It’s bothering the second part of attention–which is a part of working memory. For this reason, students do badly on Ward’s “working memory” test.
Classroom Implications
Ward’s research, I think, gives us some clear pointers about cell phones in classrooms: the farther away the better.
Specifically, it contradicts some teaching advice I’d gotten a few years ago. Some have advised me that students should silence their phones and put them on the desk in front of them. The goal of this strategy: teachers can be sure that students aren’t subtly checking their phones under their desks.
While, clearly, it’s beneficial to silence phones, we now know that their “mere presence” on the desk interferes with working memory.
In brief, we need another solution.
(Sadly, Ward doesn’t tell us what that solution is. But she warns us away from this phone-on-the-desk strategy.)
Implications for Brain Science in the Classroom
Teachers LOVE learning about psychology and neuroscience research because it can offer such helpful and clarifying guidance for good teaching.
(I should know: I’ve spent the last ten years using such research to be a better teacher.)
At the same time, we teachers occasionally stumble into studies like this one where psychology gives us results that seem strange–even impossible.
After all: how can you tell me that cell phones don’t interfere with our students’ attention? And, if they don’t interfere with attention, how can they possibly interfere with something like working memory?
The answer–as described above–is that psychologists think of attention as having multiple parts, and one of those parts overlaps with working memory. Because psychologists define the word “attention” one way and we teachers use it a different way, research like this is potentially very puzzling.
(You can imagine our students reading this study and crowing: “See! Cell phones have NO EFFECT on attention! “)
For this reason, we need to be especially careful when we enter into the world of brain science. Definitions of basic words (“attention,” “transfer,” “significant”) might trip us up.
And so, you’re wise to be attending Learning and the Brain conferences, and to be consulting with experts who know how to read such studies and make sense of them.
In brief: teachers should be modest when we try to interpret primary research in neuroscience and psychology. These fields are so complicated that we just might misunderstand even basic terms.
By the way, the same point holds in reverse. Neuroscientists and psychologists should be modest when telling us how to teach. Our work is so complicated that they just might misunderstand even basic classroom work.
This mutual modesty is–I believe–the basis of our field. We all come together to learn from and collaborate with each other. Our students will benefit from this complex and essential collaboration.
If people spend lots of time pretending to beat up and shoot pretend people, will this experience reduce their empathy for human suffering? Will it make them more likely to really beat up and shoot real people?
We might get different answers to this question depending on the variables we decide to measure, and the tools we use to measure them.
In this study, researchers found 15 people who often played violent video games–typically “first person shooter” games involving automatic weapons–and 15 who had never played them.
These participants looked at sketches: some showed people by themselves while others depicted people in pairs. Half of the pictures showed mundane activities–two men carrying a cabinet–while the other half showed violent activities–one man forcibly holding another man’s head underwater.
As participants looked at these pictures, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural responses.
The researchers reasoned as follows: if violent video games impair players’ empathy, these scans should reveal differences in brain networks associated with empathy. That is: gamers and non-gamers would respond similarly to the men carrying the cabinet, but the gamers would not respond with as much empathy as the non-gamers to the sight of human suffering. After all, in this hypothesis, the gamers would have been desensitized to human pain, and so would not have as strong an empathetic response.
How much difference did they find?
One Conclusion, and One More
No difference. Gamers and non-gamers were equally empathetic–and non-empathetic–when they looked at these images.
So: when these researchers answer this version of this question using these tools, they get this answer.
However: when these researchers answer this version of the question using metanalysis, they get a radically different answer:
The evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior.
The Takeaway
I hope this entry does NOT persuade you that video games do, or don’t, reduce empathy.
I hope, instead, to persuade you that it’s hard to answer that question once and for all. We have many ways to ask, and many tools with which to answer, such a question. Only by asking (and asking and asking), and then by looking for converging answers, can we start to move towards a conclusion.
In recent weeks, this blog has written about the dangerous assumption that students can just get all their information from The Google, and the implication that they therefore don’t need to know much factual knowledge. (Those posts are here and here.)
In yesterday’s New York Times, Daniel Willingham took up the same topic. If you don’t know Willingham’s work, a) you should, and b) this article will be a lovely introduction to his thoughtfulness and clarity.
Regular readers of this blog remember Scott MacClintic’s post about “data informed instruction”; quoting W. Edwards Deming, Scott notes that “without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
Of course, gathering the right kind of data can be very tricky. What should we gather? How should we gather it?
Researchers at San Francisco State University have specific answers to both of these questions.
As they pondered STEM teaching, this research team asked some basic questions: how much classroom time is devoted to lecture, how much to pair discussion, and how much to reflective writing or clicker questions?
(The underlying goal: encourage more discussion and writing.)
To answer these questions–that is, to gather this kind of data–they developed a system that can listen to classroom sound and keep track of lecture time, discussion time, and silent working time.
We can hope a) that this system will be tested for other disciplines and other academic levels, and b) that it will be as handy as an app in the near future.
If these hopes come true, then with the click of a few buttons, we can get useful information about our own teaching practices, and fine-tune the balance of our pedagogical strategies.
(The “DART” is currently “under revision”; I don’t know when it will be back up and running.)
Until then, it’s good to know that–despite all the vexations that come with technology–it can still help us hone our craft and benefit our students.
A recent study suggests that 3- and 4-year old children understand as much, and learn as much vocabulary from, digital books as from read-alouds with adults.
This study hasn’t been published–it was presented at a recent conference–so we can’t look at all the details with the specificity that we usually do. (And, skeptics will rightly be concerned that the research was funded by Amazon: a company that might well profit from its conclusions.)
At the same time, the description I’ve linked to sounds plausible and responsible, so I’m not inclined to dismiss this finding out of hand.
The authors’ conclusions conflict with some other findings in related fields. You may remember a recent blog post discussing Daniel Willingham’s conclusion that, on the whole, students learn more from books than from e-readers.
I’ve also been interested in a study by Ackerman and Goldsmith showing that students regulate their learning better with books than e-readers.
But the current study isn’t about college students trying to learn from books; it’s about pre-readers trying to follow a story that’s being read to them. In this one paradigm, the researchers have found that the right kind of e-book can do the job as well as the right kind of adult.
