{"id":6386,"date":"2021-12-17T17:00:03","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T22:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=6386"},"modified":"2021-12-17T15:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T20:12:27","slug":"when-does-technology-distract-students-the-benefits-of-research-that-contradicts-my-beliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/when-does-technology-distract-students-the-benefits-of-research-that-contradicts-my-beliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"When Does Technology Distract Students? The Benefits of Research that Contradicts My Beliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spoke with several hundred students last week about research-based study strategies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As always, students were fascinating to hear about psychology and neuroscience research: for instance, the benefits of retrieval practice.<\/p>\n

And, as always, they did not love my alarming news about multi-tasking. My advice goes like this:<\/p>\n

“If you want to study less<\/em> and learn more<\/em>, do one thing at a time<\/strong>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No insta-snap-gram-tweet-flix-chat-tok while you’re studying. One thing at a time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Since that talk, I’ve found some interesting research about the LIMITS of that advice, so I thought I’d share it here.<\/p>\n

Tech Problems, Tech Benefits<\/h2>\n

Our reasons to worry about technology use during class seem perfectly obvious. If I am paying attention<\/em> to my tweets, I am not paying attention<\/em> to my academic work.<\/p>\n

Divided attention = less learning. Obviously.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we can easily see ways that technology benefits learning.<\/p>\n

If — during a lecture — students text one another to reinforce their understanding of the material (“What did the prof just say?”), they might solidify their learning.<\/p>\n

If they look up complementary information on the interwebs, their quest might boost their comprehension. (I’ve been surprised how often my students want to do this in class, and I occasionally allow them to do so.)<\/p>\n

So, we need a more precise question than “is technology good or bad?” We need to know — under what\u00a0precise circumstances<\/em> does it help? Or hurt?<\/p>\n

Technology and Higher Order Thinking<\/h2>\n

For instance: does off-topic\u00a0texting\u00a0during a lecture\u00a0<\/em>interfere with both “lower order” and “higher order” thinking, as defined by Bloom<\/em>?<\/p>\n

And, by the way, what role does note-taking<\/em> play?<\/p>\n

A study from 2018<\/a> explores this question.<\/p>\n

The details, of course, get complicated, but the short version goes like this. Students watched a 24 minute lecture about psychiatric diagnoses: PTSD, ADHD, OCD, and so forth. They also took notes.<\/p>\n

Some students received and answered off-topic texts during the lecture — one about every 2 minutes.<\/p>\n

After the lecture, students took a test.<\/p>\n

Some of those test questions focused simply on recalling details: “How long must an individual display symptoms of PTSD in order to be diagnosed?”<\/p>\n

The researchers designed these questions to measure knowledge and comprehension<\/strong> — that is, “Bloom’s level 1 & 2.”<\/p>\n

Four questions, however, focused on deeper understanding: “Compare PTSD and ADHD. How do these disorders differ? Are there ways in which they are similar?”<\/p>\n

That is: these questioned aimed to measure application and analysis<\/strong>: Bloom’s level 3 & 4.<\/p>\n

So: what effect did the OFF-TOPIC TEXTS have on the students’ NOTES, and on their UNDERSTANDING?<\/p>\n

The Envelope Please<\/h2>\n

The researchers’ results surprised them — and certainly surprised me.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, students distracted by texts took less complete notes.<\/p>\n

And, also unsurprisingly, they did substantially less well on the factual<\/em> questions. Texters averaged a 62 on those questions, while non-texters averaged a 71.\u00a0 (If you speak stats, the Cohen’s d was 0.64. That’s an impressively large difference, at least to me.)<\/p>\n

Here’s the surprise: researchers did NOT find a statistically significant difference between students’ scores on the application and analysis<\/em> questions.<\/p>\n

How do we explain this finding?<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: let’s admit the possibility that texting distractions do<\/em> interfere with factual recall but not<\/em> analysis.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I would not have anticipated that finding, but it could be true.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: perhaps the\u00a0timing<\/em> matters. That is: these students took the test\u00a0immediately<\/em> after the lecture. Perhaps application and analysis — unlike mere factual recall — require more time for steeping.<\/p>\n

That is, if the “higher order thinking skills” had been tested the next day, perhaps we would have seen a difference in those scores.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: perhaps the\u00a0number<\/em> of questions mattered. Because the researchers asked only 4 application\/analysis questions, they might not have had enough data to discern a difference.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a greater number of questions would have revealed a difference.<\/p>\n

The Big Picture(s)<\/h2>\n

Based on this research, will I tell students “it’s okay to text during lectures”?<\/p>\n

NO I WILL NOT.<\/p>\n

Here’s why:<\/p>\n

First, facts matter. If off-topic texting interferes with factual learning, that finding itself means that texting during lectures is bad.<\/p>\n

Second, taking notes properly (almost certainly) matters. If texting\u00a0 interferes with good note-taking, that finding itself should dissuade students from doing so.<\/p>\n

Third, I’m willing to believe that texting doesn’t interfere with application\/analysis, but only if other studies — with more questions and later tests — consistently demonstrate that result.<\/p>\n

Another point also jumps out at me from this research. This study contradicts my firmly held belief that multitasking vexes learning.<\/p>\n

I genuinely believe that IT’S A GOOD THING when research contradicts my firmly held beliefs.<\/p>\n

If research never contradicted my beliefs, then I would never learn anything from it.<\/p>\n

In fact, I would never need to look at research\u00a0because it shows me only what I already know<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Research might prove most useful<\/strong> to us when it contradicts our beliefs.<\/p>\n

Who knows, maybe I’ll go back to those students and update my advice…<\/p>\n

\n

Waite, B. M., Lindberg, R., Ernst, B., Bowman, L. L., & Levine, L. E. (2018). Off-task multitasking, note-taking and lower-and higher-order classroom learning.\u00a0Computers & Education<\/i>,\u00a0120<\/i>, 98-111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spoke with several hundred students last week about research-based study strategies. As always, students were fascinating to hear about psychology and neuroscience research: for instance, the benefits of retrieval practice. And, as always, they did not love my alarming news about multi-tasking. My advice goes like this: “If you want to study less and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-6386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6386"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6398,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386\/revisions\/6398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}