Are students distracted in class? The answer seems to be yes, although exactly why is a matter of debate. More and more, distraction is connected to technology and social media. In this sense, distraction is the result of failed multitasking linked to the lure of up-to-date interaction with friends or social media feeds. In New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and other provinces, public schools have taken the unusual step of banning smart phones in class. The anecdotal early result, according to teachers, is that student attention and learning has improved. Some post-secondary instructors are moving in a similar direction or, as with most of my colleagues, have clear device use policies.
There might be more going on here than current discussions seem to suggest. In Distracted, American educator James Lang suggests that devices and social media have likely aggravated in-class distraction, but they don’t cause it. Instead, he thinks that students have always been distracted in one way or another and that the reasons for this likely have more to do with the state of the human psyche than new modes of communication. I’m not so sure he’s right, even while I, too, am skeptical about what strikes me as a simplistic – and common sensical – faulting of social media. What is not at issue are the effects of distraction. I’ll take some of the data Lang summarizes to illustrate this point.
Distraction has a negative effect on grades and appreciably so. It turns out that paying attention in class really does promote learning. The difference between distracted and focused students is stark; studies in the scholarship of teaching and learning suggest that distraction can lower grades (depending on the student) by as much as twenty points. For some studies, see here and here. What is more, being distracted is not a victimless crime. Distracted students also distract those sitting next to them. Watching videos or visiting websites or playing a game draws others’ attention. This effect is also measurable. It is not as grave as the student, say, playing the game or texting a friend, but it may be up to one-half of a letter grade. Put differently, sitting next to a student using social media in class can pull another student’s grade from, say, an A- to a B+. That’s obviously an important decline with implications for scholarships or post-secondary or professional applications.
As instructors, what should we do about this? This is an important question, but the potentially more important question is this: why are students distracted? Answering the first question seems to require a response to the second. If we reject both the human psyche and techno-determinist social media arguments, what are we left with? I’d need more space than this blog allows to address this point, but I think that history, as a discipline, is well positioned to make a different kind of contribution to this discussion. I began by asking my students if they were distracted and, if so, why? My approach was pretty far from a scientific study, but I thought the results were indicative. I asked first-year and third-year undergraduate classes the above questions and got back very different responses. All students agreed that they were distracted. Virtually to a one, first-year students viewed technology as the root of the problem. The third-year students did not. A few faulted social media but most pointed to a range of other matters and they took the conversation in ways I had not anticipated. They took distracted to mean not simply in class (although this was part of their concern), but outside class as well, when they were in the library or studying or reading before class. What distracted them was the world and the anxieties associated with it. They were distracted by worries about graduation, keeping high grades to maintain scholarships, the news, or an extension they needed but for which they were afraid to ask, among other things.
When I put all this together, what struck me was that these were not idiosyncratic responses. Both groups of students willingly engaged in in-class discussions of the subject, but the first-year students – perhaps because they were first-year students – stuck to the questions I posed. The third-year students, perhaps because they had more educational experience and were a bit older, moved beyond it. They re-created the immediate question to make it about broader processes of class preparation and learning.
Another interesting point of the discussion was that neither group had definitive responses when asked how they would or should address distraction. The first-year students discussed technology and social media and whether a stricter in-class policy might be in order. Interestingly, the third-year students tended to debate much the same issue even though their earlier discussion had pointed in a very different direction. I think this might be because there were no answers – or at least not easy ones – to the concerns the third-year class raised. For the third-year students, distraction was the product of anxiety that, in one way or another, was connected to the costs of education, their futures after graduation, or the state of the labour market. None of these are things they could control.
What can we as faculty say about this? How can we address distraction in class if the concerns my students articulated are indicative of broader trends? An historical analysis will help us see these concerns as the product of a particular set of changes going on about us. They point to the changing nature of the labour market, apprehension for the future, and the hypercompetitive environment many of my students believe is now part of their academic lives. To this one could also likely look at demographic shifts in the nature of the student body and factors related to institutional racism and sexism or the limits of decolonization. Whatever the precise analysis, the point is that distraction is not taken as a fact with a relatively simple cause, but as the result of a changing series of factors connected to broader social and economic processes.
This likely creates other problems but opens up other responses for institutions and instructors. My own view is that simply being aware of the problem is a step in the right direction. We should have clearly-articulated and well-designed policies for the in-class use of devices. But I’d also argue that no device policy is likely going to address the issue if what my third-year students are telling me has even a semblance of truth to it. I’d argue that an open discussion with students would at least create awareness and let distracted students know they are not alone, and their concerns and worries are more widely shared. One could also brainstorm responses with students. What would help them be less distracted and learn more effectively? The advantage of soliciting potential responses from students is that it returns some agency to students in a situation where they seem to feel that they don’t have a lot.
Finally, I’d urge compassion. Compassion can be difficult because it may not necessarily work. It is not a cure-all and not a solution to every problem. I don’t think it is a solution by itself alone. It needs to be connected to other responses. I still think responding compassionately to students on an individual basis can be part of a solution because it can build positive pedagogical relationships. It models a different kind of behaviour. It shows students that their education is important and that we’ll work on it with them. This won’t solve the problem, but it can help create a space where it can be more effectively addressed.
Andrew Nurse,
Mount Allison University