Personal and social education
Why learning and multitasking don’t mix By Andrew McCarthy Digital Literacy Coach Dover Campus When technology is used well, it has the ability to transform both the types of learning activities that occur and the content which we teach. At the same time, the proliferation of laptops and other devices provide a constant temptation for our students who are looking for a distraction. The most recent research has highlighted the risks of trying to multitask while simultaneously trying to engage with the learning of something new.
The temptations of technology In research reported in the May 2013 issue of Computers in Human Behaviour, researchers at California State University, led by psychology Professor Larry Rosen, observed students studying over a 15-minute period and recorded the different tasks they were completing. Throughout the observation, students’ on-task behaviour began to decline at around the two-minute mark when the temptation of sending a text or checking their Facebook feed became too much. Over the 15-minute experiment, roughly 65% of the time was spent actually doing schoolwork. If parents were to complete the same timed experiment at home with their children, it is likely that some of this same behaviour would occur. Rosen and others mention this trait as a characteristic of the current generation of students. Parallel research is highlighting that successful students develop the ability to the delay gratification of posting an update or reading a message, and remain focused for longer periods of time. UWCSEA provides the access to a laptop or an iPad in a learning context from a younger age than many public European or American schools. We are therefore grappling with the fore
mentioned issues of distraction and multitasking ahead of most parts of society. We are quickly realising that our Personal and Social Education programme needs to help students develop their intuition to delay digital gratification and try to maintain a focus on learning by completing one task at a time.
A changing skill set As our students grow older and move through school, they will slowly develop the coping mechanism to ‘single task’ on learning. This trait develops in different students at different times. A key finding from research by Psychology Professor David Mayer at the University of Michigan is that “under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.” An important task for our students is to therefore make the distinction between simple and complex tasks and to realise when multitasking and juggling is ineffective. It might seem perverse, but our students can use technology to manage digital distractions and the temptation of multitasking. One new product called Concentrate fits very nicely with our philosophy around students developing strategies to remain focused. Concentrate allows students to develop a list of actions that they would like their computer to perform. The application allows students to block website access, stop applications from opening, block emails and set timers. Together, these tools
are a first step to help students develop coping mechanisms and a single tasking mentality. Over time, we anticipate that parents and teachers can use tools such as Concentrate as a discussion starter around what they think is acceptable, thereby encouraging students to buy in to the process. Concentrate is similar to other applications such as the aptly named SelfControl which is used to block
websites or the time management tool iProcrastinate, which are both very popular with our students. Moving forward, we hope that our Personal and Social Education and orientation programmes will help students develop positive routines both at home and in school. Adapted from a post on the Dover DLC blog: http://doverdlc. blogspot.com. References Adapted to the UWCSEA context and based on the following two articles recently written by Annie Murphy Paul and published on the Mindshift: How does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn? With Tech Tools how should teachers tackle multitasking in class Further reading: Facebook and texting made me do it: Mediainduced task-switching while studying Larry D. Rosen, L. Mark Carrier, Nancy A. Cheever, Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 948–958. Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Presentation available from YouTube. East DLC blog: http://eastech.blogspot.com
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