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Taking on multitasking. Rekart, Jerome L. (AUTHOR) j e a @ i ie .ed Phi Delta Kappan. Dec2011/Jan2012, Vol. 93 Issue 4, p60-63. 4p. Article *HUMAN multitasking *NEUROSCIENCES *ATTENTION span *ATTENTION control *EDUCATIONAL psychology *CLASSROOM environment *MASS media & education *ACADEMIC achievement *LEARNING strategies *LEARNING *PSYCHOLOGY of students *PSYCHOLOGY 611710 Educational Support Services The article discusses the ways in which students in the U.S. media multitask while doing school work and offers solutions to deter these work habits. The author comments on the neuroscience of multitasking in terms of the brain's division of attention and activity, resulting in poorer performance and long-term learning. Topics include the suggestion of frequent quizzing to improve learning, the importance of limiting competing stimuli in the classroom environment, and the strategy of including novel instruction to re-engage students throughout the lesson in 10 to 12 minute increments. Associate Professor of Education and Psychology at Rivier College, Nashua,

N.H. 0031-7217 10.1177/003172171109300415 69600983 Academic Search Complete

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60 Kappan December 2011/January 2012 Thinkstock/Hemera

JEROME L. REKART ([email protected]) is an associate professor of education and psychology at Rivier Col- lege, Nashua, N.H.

The average high school upperclassman reports spending between seven and eight hours a day using vari- ous electronic media, such as television and cellular phones. Of those eight hours, only about 25% is spent watching television, which means the rest is devoted to playing video games, using the computer, text mes- saging, etc. On average, students report that over one-third of the time that they’re reading and over half of the time they spend completing homework on a computer they’re also using at least two other forms of electronic media (Foehr, 2006). Thus, it can be presumed that a typical high school student routinely media multitasks while studying. Contrary to what may have occurred as recently as 20 years ago, today’s students aren’t focusing solely on assigned pages of reading or completing an assignment, but are jumping back and forth from homework to Facebook — updating both their own status (“I’m reading right now”) and checking  �ÑÞ°`>ÓiÈÑwÅ �Ñ Ó�iÅÈÑqÑÓ Ñ>Ñ°� �iÑV>��ÑÓ Ñ>ÑÓiæÓÑ�iÈÈ>�iѲ,Ñ1Ñ�" Ñ9 /»³µÑ

Taking on multitasking

Students will continue to media multitask — to their own detriment. Nonetheless, teachers can limit the multitasking effect

and improve learning.

By Jerome L. Rekart

V93 N4 kappanmagazine.org 61

Given the pervasiveness of media multitasking, examining how it affects learning in and out of the classroom is important. Luckily, research from both cognitive psychology and neuroscience can provide important insights into what happens when students media multitask and how to combat negative effects on learning.

The multitasking brain

When one tries doing several things at once, as occurs with media multitasking, there is no choice but to divide attention. Because the total amount of attention available is limited, the amount of focused attention for any single task decreases as the number of demands increases. Changes in the amount of at- tention for tasks are caused by changes within the brain. When neuroscientists examine the brain’s role in cognition, they focus on areas that show changes in different markers of activity, such as blood oxy- gen levels or the amount of a radioactive substance. Hypotheses about the importance of different brain structures for cognition are then based on relative changes in the amount of these markers. Thus, if an increase in the activation in the frontal cortex occurs when someone learns strings of letters, this suggests that this area is important for this type of learning.

The total amount of brain activity present when two tasks are attempted simultaneously seems to be less than the sum of brain activation that occurs when each task is completed in isolation (Just, Carpenter, Keller, Emery, Zajac, & Thulborn, 2001; Newman, Keller, & Just, 2007). In addition, the patterns of brainwaves look quite different (Mangels, Picton, & Craik, 2001) when individuals are asked to complete one task at a time compared with when they try to work on both simultaneously. Reductions in brain activation and the changes in brain waves that are seen during multitasking are accompanied by de- creases in short-term learning and task accuracy.

Therefore, the impairing effect of multitasking upon learning may be related to reduced brain re- sources that are available to satisfactorily complete tasks when they’re tried together.

Dividing attention reduces total brain activation and could “recruit” brain regions normally involved in habit or rote learning — the striatum — rather than regions such as the hippocampus that are nec- essary for acquiring the type of knowledge that’s critical for academic success (Foerde, Knowlton, & Poldrack, 2006). This means that dividing attention by multitasking impedes learning and performance in the short-term and may, by underutilizing brain structures necessary for the correct type of learn- ing, affect long-term memory and retention. The implications of these findings make it critical that educators and parents try to impress upon students

the need to focus and reduce extraneous stimuli while studying or reading.

Certainly getting today’s youth to turn off devices that may be antithetical to learning is no small task. Given the Net generation’s comfort level, they may feel as though their performance on school-related work is unaffected by multitasking. Unfortunately,

even when a task is mastered, true media multitask- ing impairs the performance of experts and novices similarly (Lin, Robertson, & Lee, 2009). Further- more, because of multitasking-induced changes in the brain regions recruited for learning and long- term memory, even diligent students who multitask while completing homework may be jeopardizing their long-term success.

Distractibility in the classroom

So, dividing attention away from school has an effect on not just short-term performance, but per- haps long-term learning as well. But are there effects caused by excessive multitasking outside of school that can affect attention and learning in the classroom? An elegant study conducted at Stanford University suggests that time spent multitasking may be affect- ing how students pay attention in general. This study assessed the amount of time college students spent performing one task, computer word processing, for example, while using another form of media at the same time (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).

Separating light from heavy media multitaskers, the study found that individuals who multitasked more often were more distractible than those who did so less often. Heavy multitaskers had more dif- ficulty switching between stimuli than light multi- taskers. This result suggests that frequent media multitasking may be affecting one’s ability to switch focus between tasks that are important, such as a teacher’s lecture, and those that may not be, such as extraneous sounds in a classroom (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). These results may have far-reaching ramifications as they suggest that lifestyle choices may be changing how an entire generation attends to information. What happens when everything one

Dividing attention by multitasking

impedes learning and performance in

the short-term and could also affect

long-term memory and retention.

Individuals who multitask

more often are more distractible than

those who do so less often.

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Deepen your understanding of this article with questions and activities in this month’s Kappan Professional Development Discussion Guide by Lois Brown Easton. Download a PDF of the guide at kappan magazine.org.

62 Kappan December 2011/January 2012

underlie learning as well as giving students a chance to assess their own learning progress and styles. In addition to facilitating learning via the testing effect, frequent assessments also give teachers opportunities to reiterate and reinforce the importance of focus- ing attention vis-à-vis good study habits. In a time of worries about teaching to the test and concerns about long-term retention of information, frequent assessment of information throughout the year may be a critical pedagogical tool that actually reinforces learning and memory.

Strategy: Limit competing stimuli

Today’s students are used to attending to mul- tiple streams of information, which may make them more distractible than previous generations. Teach- ers can respond to such a trend by limiting items in the classroom that may distract student attention. An informal audit, conducted by the teacher who knows her students and class best, is recommended to remove potentially distracting stimuli. This audit should indicate what items in the class are critical for learning and which are not. Example questions to guide such an audit should include:

s�)S�THE�CLASS�WELL ORGANIZED���

s�)S�THERE�CLUTTER�ON�SHELVES��THE�mOOR��ETC���7HAT� can be moved, removed, or organized?

s�!RE�THERE�TOO�MANY�POSTERS�OR�SIGNS�ON� the wall? Do the posters reinforce learning or pose potential distractions?

A careful consideration of the class environment may even uncover that some learning tools may ac- tually be counterproductive. For example, Hem- brooke and Gay (2003) found that using laptops in a classroom may limit understanding and retention of course concepts. Students who used their laptops for course-related learning while listening to lec- tures actually fared worse than students who used their laptops during lecture to surf the web for non- course-related information.

Counter-intuitive findings such as these indicate that it never hurts to re-examine practices and even class layouts with the goal of finding the best fit for optimizing learning. Anything that may unnecessar- ily divide attention or that could prove to be distract- ing should be considered for removal.

Strategy: Introduce novelty

Students are spending roughly one-third of their day immersed in environments where something new, be it a text message or e-mail, can and does pop into ex- istence unexpectedly. How can standard lectures, seat- work, and recitation compete with the flash-bang-whiz novelty of video games and Internet sites? Class periods

encounters has an equal chance of grabbing atten- tion? One possibility is that even irrelevant stimuli, which should be dismissed as unimportant, will grab the attention of students used to responding to ran-

dom clicks, pop-up windows, and ring tones. Stu- dents who spend more time instant messaging are less likely to read and they report being more easily distracted while reading than students who instant message less. An increase in student distractibility presents a challenge for the lecturing teacher trying to maintain the focus of students as well as the stu- dent taking a test whose focus should be on the ex- amination, but is routinely redirected to classmates tapping pencils and sighing in exasperation.

Proposed classroom solutions

Teachers everywhere openly lament shrinking at- tention spans and a lack of focus by their students. Professional educators know that an inability to pay attention will limit the amount and quality of learning that can occur. So, given changes in attentional control and the reliance on study habits that use brain structures that don’t facilitate deep learning, what are teachers to do? Fortunately, teachers can employ several research- based strategies to grab and maintain attention and, in turn, facilitate learning in the classroom.

Strategy: Assess often

Teachers can use course-based quizzes and tests for more than assigning grades. Testing enhances learning. Formative assessments themselves have a pronounced and lasting effect on a student’s ability to learn, retain, and retrieve information. The frequent and routine quizzing of knowledge throughout a term can more than double student performance on final exams.

Though the significant learning gains obtained by testing frequently would make this particular strategy a best practice for all students, evidence demonstrat- ing its effectiveness when individuals are multitasking reinforces its importance as a pedagogical strategy in the modern classroom. The testing effect likely works by reactivating and strengthening brain pathways that

The frequent and routine quizzing of

knowledge throughout a term can more

than double student performance on

final exams.

Anything that may unnecessarily divide

attention or that could prove to be distracting

should be considered for removal.

V93 N4 kappanmagazine.org 63

attentional changes with sound pedagogical strate- gies, such as testing frequently, reducing unnecessary stimuli, and using multiple, novel instructional meth- ods. What should not be overlooked, however, is that most researchers and teachers are designing studies and view- ing students through lenses colored by a different age. Today’s student may be paying attention in a different way, and so one must be careful not to assume that the ramifications are entirely negative. One effect of media multitasking is that students are paying attention to multiple stimuli rather than sustaining focus on just one stimulus. This has been referred to as a breadth approach, and it may yield benefits that have yet to be uncovered or realized. In addition, the ability of mem- bers of the Net generation to use current technology is likely to be critical to their own future success in the 21st-century job market. By employing evidence- based strategies to harness attention and facilitate learning, educators can help ensure that to- morrow’s citizens have the knowledge and skills nec- essary to be successful in a multitasking world. K

References

Foehr, U.G. (2006). Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors, and pairings. Washington, DC: Kaiser Family Foundation.

Foerde, K., Knowlton, B.J., & Poldrack, A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 11778-11783.

Hembrooke, H. & Gay, G. (2003). The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 15, 46.

Just, M.A., Carpenter, P.A., Keller, T.A., Emery, L., Zajac, H., & Thulborn, K. (2001). Interdependence of nonoverlapping cortical systems in dual cognitive tasks. Neuroimage, 14, 417-426.

Lin, L., Robertson, T., & Lee, J. (2009). Reading performances between novices and experts in different media multitasking environments. Computers in the Schools, 26, 169-186.

Mangels, J.A., Picton, T.W., & Craik, F.I.M. (2001). Attention and successful episodic encoding: An event-related potential study. Cognitive Brain Research, 11, 77-95.

Newman, S.D., Keller, T.A., & Just, M.A. (2007). Volitional control of attention and brain activation in dual-task performance. Human Brain Mapping, 28, 109-117.

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, 15583-15587.

should be structured so students aren’t just engaged at the beginning but consistently reengaged throughout a session. For example, rather than spending an en- tire class period lecturing about the fall of the Roman Empire and reading passages from a text, teachers can break the material to be covered into 10- to 12-minute modules with each module covering key concepts using a different instructional vehicle — a film clip, role play, pair-share activities, class debates, etc.

Many individuals have advocated using multiple ap- proaches as a way to address different learning styles and as a best practice for general instruction. However, the novelty of using a modular approach is what’s most important here. Incorporating the novelty throughout a single class session by using a modular approach is likely to engage the brain’s medial temporal lobe, in- cluding the hippocampus, which has been found to be a kind of novelty detector. As indicated when discussing the selective recruitment of brain regions when mul- titasking, the hippocampus is critical for storing the type of new information necessary for academic suc- cess. Thus, by using multiple approaches, an educator not only grabs student attention via novelty detection but, due to a focus of attention, increases the likelihood that the student will store the conveyed information.

Closing thoughts

Research supports the popular notion that the at- tention of today’s student is different from students of past generations. These differences, at a cognitive and brain level, are likely to become more widespread as smartphones and laptops are most likely here to stay. Because of the importance of attention for learning, we need to be concerned about the ramifications of widespread media multitasking. Classic and current research on best practices for teaching and learning suggest that it may be possible to counteract some

Share these findings with students

The majority of time that students are media multitasking is spent away from school. Because of this, it’s imperative that educators share with students and their parents the facts concerning multitasking, the brain, and learning.

“We were told to multitask, so I was attending class while sleeping.”

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