Preventing Digital Distractions

Preventing and Responding to Digital Distractions

If you are frustrated when you see students using their devices to check texts, scroll through Instagram, or do other tasks unrelated to your course, you are not alone. And you are certainly not alone if you are unsure how to work effectively with students who digitally multitask in these ways.

The research on what is called “digital distraction” suggests that university instructors have been struggling to respond effectively to student multi-tasking with devices for close to two decades (Campbell, 2006). In this resource we explore concrete strategies that help us (and our students!) in this complex situation.  

We begin this exploration by first considering one instructor’s response to this common but complex teaching challenge. Let’s meet Sam.

 

Sam is teaching Introduction to Psychology in a large lecture hall. She has tried a variety of ways to keep her students engaged and has even had some one-on-one conversations with them about their device use, but every time she looks around the room she sees them on their phones and laptops.

She gives the problem some thought and comes up with what she thinks is a respectful and realistic three-pronged approach: 

  • She will spend some time at the next class meeting explaining to the students how distracting the phones are to their learning and cognition. 

  • She will remind all students about the phone policy on her syllabus and explain that while she knows some students like to use laptops to take notes, she is now putting in place a no device policy (unless they have an accommodation). She will be empathic and thoughtful in communicating this. 

  • She will share a new three strikes policy that has serious repercussions if students can’t break their addiction to their devices.  The third time a student is caught on a device, they will lose 5% of their final grade. She will explain that this is meant to help them stay accountable for their behavior.

 

What do you think of Sam’s plan?

Take a moment to consider her ideas and decide how effective they will be in changing her students’ behaviors.  

 

Classroom Policies and Behavioral Change  

As you’re evaluating Sam’s approach, it might be helpful to pause and consider how you have made positive changes to your own behavior, such as changing the frequency of your exercising.

You probably know that to change the amount of exercise you get and to stick with that plan, you need to take a few key steps: observe your current level of exercise, make realistic decisions for yourself based on beliefs that you can change your level of exercise, and stay committed to those new decisions by drawing on the support of others, rewarding yourself, and working with your own emotional reactions as you monitor these new practices and experiences.

Research on behavioral change will confirm that this kind of experiential, thoughtful, and planful work is what allows us to make and maintain new, healthier behaviors (Nielson et al., 2018).

Simply having another person such as a doctor or loved one remind us, nag us, or scold us to exercise just won’t work. While we know this and have experienced this essential truth around behavioral change, we often persist in resorting to explaining and reminding when it comes to trying to change our students’ behaviors. And this is just what Sam is doing in the scenario above.  

Sam’s solution to the problem of digital distraction is not unusual, but when we dig into it, we see that it has little in common with the thoughtful, effortful work toward behavioral change that is described in the paragraph above. Instead, it involves explaining things to students, reminding them, doing more explaining, and finally telling them about her new policies.

Simply telling students about digital distraction (and threatening punishment when they do become distracted), won’t help them! If we want students to change their thinking and their behaviors around their devices, we have to move beyond communicating our ideas to them.

Instead, we should structure meaningful opportunities for them to explore what they think, believe, and want in relation to digital distraction in the context of the university classroom. What would this new approach look like? Read on! 

 

Designing a Learning Experience about Digital Distraction 

There is a growing body of research on the problem of digital distraction, and we can use this research to help students rethink the relationship between their device use and their learning.

A reliable strategy for getting students engaged in useful thinking about the research is to have them predict the findings of a study about digital distraction. Here are the key steps that ensure that they have that opportunity - and an example you can use in your own classes.

 

Step 1

Give students a short description of a study and parameters to help them make a prediction. The example below is based on a classic study on digital distraction (Glass & Kang, 2019).  

Example: 118 students in a cognitive psychology course were instructed to use their digital devices in some new ways. On certain days they had restricted access, meaning they could use their cellphones and laptops only to answer in-class questions about the lecture. Other days they had full access, meaning they could use their devices for any purpose they chose. Each day students were also asked to report if they had used their devices for non-academic purposes. Exam scores were collected for all students.

Come to a group decision: which of the following are the true results of the study? 

  1. On exams, students performed better on material taught during restricted access to their devices than on material taught during full access days.  
  2. On exams, students performed the same on materials taught during restricted access days and material taught during full access days.  
  3. On exams, students who resisted the temptation to check their devices in class on full access days outperformed students who did access their devices.  

Ask students to debate and discuss their predictions in small groups and then have the groups share their ideas with the whole class and with you, explaining their predictions.

This experience is crucial because it allows your students to hear their own thinking, surfacing both their correct and incorrect ideas. Remember, simply telling students about the study won’t provide an opportunity for them to clarify for themselves what they do and don’t understand about the effects of digital distraction.

It’s very important for them to articulate and work through their own thinking about the research on digital distraction. 

 

Step 2

Share the true results of the study with your students and point out where their ideas differ from those results.

(In the case above, exam performance was poorer for material taught in classes that permitted electronic device use both for students who did and did not direct attention to an electronic device for a non-academic purpose during those classes. This might be a very surprising finding for students, who may not realize that they are affected by seeing others use their devices in class!)

Be careful here not to make students feel foolish; use this time as an opportunity to help everyone realize how easy it is to discount the real impact of multitasking. You might share that you yourself found the results of the study surprising! 

 

Step 3

Now that students have made new discoveries, they are ready to use these new ideas to consider their own behaviors. Take about 10 minutes to have students engage in structured reflection using prompts like the ones below to help them articulate how their thinking has changed and make a plan to use specific strategies to focus and avoid distraction moving forward.  

  • Identify one misconception you had about multitasking. Why did you think that and how did it affect your behavior? How has your thinking changed? 
  • Now that you are more aware that media multitasking can have powerful and often negative impacts on our minds and our learning, what is one change from the following list that you can make to help you take back control of your device so that it doesn’t have control over your mind?​ 
    • turn off notifications from social media​ 
    • leave my phone in my bag with the ringer off​ 
    • use mindfulness techniques before entering class​ 
    • give myself planned breaks to check my phone ​ 
    • reward myself after class for not having my phone with me ​ 

 

Step 4

Make the most of this experience for your students.

Give them opportunities to consider the implications of what they’ve learned about multitasking and digital distraction for the discipline they’re studying with you, be it sociology, health policy, public administration, business, education, biology, social welfare, journalism, and so on.

And be sure to build in moments of reflection throughout the course where students revisit their plan, monitor their progress, and revise their plan as needed.​  

 

Studies for Students to Explore the Effects of Digital Distraction 

  • Jacob, A. L., Barkley, E., & Karpinski, A. C. (2014). The relationship between cell phone use, academic performance, anxiety, and Satisfaction with Life in college students. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 343-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.049 
  • Kang, S., & Kurtzberg, T. R. (2019). Reach for your cell phone at your own risk: The cognitive costs of media choice for breaks. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 8(3), 395-403. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.21 
  • Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(37), 15583-155837. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106 
  • Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. A. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140-154. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/691462 

 

References 

  • Campbell, S. W. (2006). Perceptions of mobile phones in college classrooms: Ringing, cheating, and classroom policies. Communication education, 55(3), 280-294. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520600748573 
  • Glass, A. L., & Kang, M. (2019). Dividing attention in the classroom reduces exam performance. Educational Psychology, 39(3), 395-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1489046 
  • Lang, J. (2020). Distracted: Why students can’t focus and what you can do about it. Basic Books.  
  • Nielsen, L., Riddle, M., King. J. W., NIH Science of Behavior Change Implementation Team, Aklin, W. M., Chen, W., Clark, D., Collier, E., Czajkowski, S., Esposito, L., Ferrer, R., Green, P., Hunter, C., Kehl, K., King, R., Onken, L., Simmons, J. M. , Stoeckel, L., Stoney, C.,  . . . Weber W. (2018). The NIH science of behavior change program: Transforming the science through a focus on mechanisms of change. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 101, 3-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.07.002