By Maryellen Weimer, PhD
With
easy access to all sorts of technology, students multitask. So, do
lots of us for that matter. But students are way too convinced
that multitasking is a great way to work. They think they can do
two or three tasks simultaneously and not compromise the quality
of what they produce. Research says that about 5% of us multitask
effectively. The negative effects of multitasking in learning
environments is now coming from a variety of studies.
The question is, how do we get students to stop? We can tell them
they shouldn't. We can include policies that aim to prevent it and
devote time and energy trying to implement them. I wonder if it
isn't smarter to confront students with the facts. Not
admonitions, but concrete evidence that multitasking compromises
their efforts to learn. The specifics are persuasive and here are
some examples to share with students.
- In an experiment involving 62 undergraduate students taking a
principles of accounting course, half of the cohort was allowed
to text during a lecture and half had their phones turned off.
After the lecture both groups took the same quiz and the
students who did not text scored significantly higher on the
quiz.
Ellis, Y., Daniels, W. and Jauregui, A. (2010). The effect of
multitasking on the grade performance of business students. Research
in Higher Education Journal, 8. http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/10498.pdf
- This research focused on the use of laptops in a 15-week
management information systems class enrolling 97 upper division
students. With student consent, researchers used a spyware
program that tracked the windows and page names for each
software application ran during class time. Students were
encouraged to run "productive windows"—those that related to
course content. Spyware also tracked the number of "distractive
windows" students ran, including games, pictures, email, instant
messaging and web surfing. Students had these distractive
windows open 42% of the class time. Students who tried to listen
to the lecture while using these distractive windows had
significantly lower scores on homework, projects, quizzes, final
exams and final course averages than students who looked at
mostly productive windows. Researchers also found that this
population under reported the extent of their multitasking.
Kraushaar, J. M. and Novak, D. C. (2010). Examining the affects
of student multitasking with laptops during lecture. Journal
of Information Systems Education, 21 (2), 241-251.
- Students taking a general psychology course were asked to read
on a computer a 3,828 word passage. One group used instant
messaging before they started reading, another group used
instant messaging while they were reading and a third group read
without instant messaging. The group that used instant messaging
while they read took between 22 and 59% longer to read the
passage than students in the other two groups and that was after
the time spent instant messaging was subtracted from the reading
times.
Bowman, L. L., Levine, L. E., Waite, B. M. and Dendron, M.
(2010). Can students really multitask? An experimental study of
instant messaging while reading. Computers & Education,
54, 927-931.
- A cross-disciplinary cohort of 774 students responded to a
survey which documented that the majority of them engaged in
classroom multitasking. Their multitasking was significantly
related to lower GPA and to an increase in risk behaviors
including use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.
Barak, L. (2012). Multitasking in the university classroom. International
Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6
(2)
http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v6n2.html
- Students in a general psychology course completed weekly
surveys on various aspects of the class. They reported their
attendance, and if they used laptops during class for things
other than note taking (like checking email, instant messaging,
surfing the Web, playing games). They also rated how closely
they paid attention to the lectures, how clear they found the
lectures and how confident they were they understood the lecture
material. The level of laptop use negatively correlated with how
much attention students paid to the lectures, the clarity of the
lectures and how well they understood the lecture material. "The
level of laptop use was significantly and negatively related to
student learning. The more students used their laptops in class,
the lower their class performance." (p. 910)
Fried, C. B. (2008). In-class laptop use and its effects on
student learning. Computers and Education, 50 (3),
906-914.