Human minds have always been troubled by the problem of distraction. It can come in the form of a pleasant temptation to check our favorite app, an external intrusion such as the sound of a truck passing outside, or in the form of thinking about household responsibilities [3]. Access to technology is one of the most notorious classroom distractions these days, as students accustomed to regular communication and connection via mobile devices can be easily distracted by a notification from a social media app, an email, or a text message from friends on their phones.
Weekly Ed-Tech Spotlight:
iClicker Cloud’s “Focus” feature prompts students to return to their iClicker Student app, if they leave it, and shows students their engagement-level reports after each class. If you use iClicker, consider surveying your students to ask whether they would like you to turn on this feature, to help them stay concentrated on the class activities!
Just a small piece of information such as knowing that there is an email sitting unread in the inbox can hinder focus and reduce attention. With an email and Twitter open in the background and (by design) regularly prompting for attention, it might take us double the time to achieve a given level of productivity [4]. For this reason, many instructors simply ban devices in the classroom. This deprives the class of a potentially valuable learning tool, though--indeed, you may be depriving students of their note-taking mechanism by doing so.
So what can be done to focus students’ attention better?
One point to be aware of is that attention is reciprocal. When you pay attention to your students, they are more likely to pay attention to you [1]. In that sense, the first step to get students' attention in class is to pay more targeted attention to them. In his book: Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It (2020), the scholar James M. Lang recommends three ways to get students’ attention in class including:
(a) Recognizing their individuality. At the start of the semester, you might ask them to tell you about their strengths, skills, and values they bring to your class to convey that you are interested in them as students and individuals.
(b) Use their names regularly. Names have a tremendous power to capture attention. Try to respond to student questions or comments by name. NameCoach is a tool UofM now offers that allows you to learn how to pronounce all your student names.
(c) Speak to all corners of the room. Most classes are returning to in-person teaching this fall. Many instructors stay in front of the board or by podium computer when they teach. While it’s a good strategy to direct all eyes on you, especially in large classes, it separates you from students, which leads them to being more distractible during the lecture. A good practice to make them more attentive is to make deliberate movements around the room. The wireless microphones now in many LSA teaching spaces will support this approach. Try to stand near different groups of students while you teach and join them in their spaces during a class activity. Nothing will get a student's attention like finding the instructor nearby [1].
Using active learning techniques can also help keep students engaged, and having their devices or laptops open will make such activities more robust. However, as Lang states, no matter what teaching techniques you are using, attention will flag at some point in every class period. That’s how attention works: It rises, falters, and renews [3]. Most instructors have specific attention-renewal strategies that they use to bring students back on track when their attention starts to falter, such as giving students a quick writing assignment or using a poll, a paired discussion, a video clip, or even popping a cute animal picture up on screen. In a literature course, you might ask students to put down their books and notebooks, close up their laptops, and listen to you read a poem aloud. In a writing-intensive class, you might throw out a discussion question and ask students to write down their responses on paper or in a Canvas discussion forum instead of asking for raised hands. Lang points out that, to help students sustain their attention and to be fully engaged in your class, you need to pay more attention to attention and make it a priority in your classroom. It might be helpful to have a list of several varied attention-renewal strategies before you walk into the class and be mindful to use them regularly.
If you would like to discuss how to design your course and teach it in a way that cultivates students’ attention, or have any other course design issues you’d like to speak with someone about, please feel free to reach out to the LSATSLearningTeachingConsultants@umich.edu or request a consultation here.
References
Distracted Minds: 3 Ways to Get Their Attention in Class- The Chronicle of Higher Education
Distracted Minds: The Role of Tempo in Good Teaching -The Chronicle of Higher Education
Distracted Minds: Why Your Students Can’t Focus- The Chronicle of Higher Education
Distracted Minds: How to Fix Your Attention Shortage- The Chronicle of Higher Education
Research
Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted: Why Students Can't Focus and what You Can Do about it. Hachette UK.
