I first read about the “19 Seconds” research in Doug Lemov’s excellent new book Teaching in the Online Classroom. The day after I wrote that blog post, my own Twitter experience highlighted that lesson. Yes, it can be mean-spirited and dreadful, but it can also provide helpful insight and useful resources. I wrote last week, improbably, about the benefits of Twitter. The big picture - learning requires sustained attention, so we should foster it - really does. The precise number “19” doesn’t really matter. In every case, we’re making reasonable and measured changes. Of course, you’ll translate such suggestions to fit your own teaching circumstances. Based on this experience, what realistic guidance can I give my students about multi-screening? I am - REALLY - using them all to write this post. How often do we switch screens? What prompts us to do so? For instance, as I write, I’ve got 7 browser tabs open. Remember: have your web browser closed before you start writing.” “This paragraph is due Wednesday before class. We can include those reminders in homework assignments. “When you start your work, have your book open, your pencil on your paper, and your computer off.” We can explicitly teach students to purge tech from their study areas and habits. And, close all the other tabs in your browser except this one, and your homework.” “Remember our class rules: please turn your cell phones off. We don’t know exactly how prevalent the problem is, but it’s not isolated it’s not trivial.įor that reason, I think we should consider our own teacherly responsibilities here.ĮSPECIALLY during online classes, we can remind students to turn off other technologies. (That finding doesn’t mean that no research has been done after that date, but that it hasn’t reached prominence yet.) Don’t Panic Do Respondįor all these reasons, I don’t think we should get too focused on “19 seconds.”Īt the same time, the other studies highlighted by Scite.ai and do point consistently in the same direction: screen switching really is a thing. In other words: this field simply hasn’t been studied very much.įor instance: the ConnectPapers grid doesn’t highlight any related research after 2017. When I plugged Yeykelis’s study into those search engines, I found some support - but not lots-n-lots. Regular readers know: my go-to sites to answer that question are Scite.ai and. Second: because this study has so few participants, we want to know what other studies have found on this topic. However, for the same reason you wouldn’t take a medicine that had been tested on only ten people, you shouldn’t make dramatic changes to your classroom based on that research. In other words, they didn’t do anything wrong. Research is pricey and time consuming, so it makes sense to do a small-ish study before ramping up to study hundreds or thousands of people. Now, researchers have very good reasons to run studies with only ten people in them. When I did, two points jumped out at me very quickly:įirst: this study draws its conclusions based on research into 10 college undergraduates. If you click the link above, you can read Yeykelis’s study. We need to know exactly what the researchers did before we jump to big conclusions about their work. Whenever we hear shocking “research based” conclusions - ESPECIALLY conclusions that confirm our prior beliefs - we should look hard at that underlying research. Back in 2014, Leo Yeykelis and his intrepid team undertook quite a complex study - including screen monitoring and measures of skin conductance! - to arrive at this conclusion.Ĭlearly, it’s time to panic. The Horror.Īlthough it took a moment’s sleuthing to track down this claim (see Coda below), this statement does in fact have research support. In nineteen seconds, my students won’t have time to find the main verb. Nineteen seconds just isn’t going to cut it.Īs an English teacher, I think nineteen minutes won’t reveal the full joys of a Shakespearean sonnet. I recently read an arresting claim: when students have web browsers open, they switch their screens - on average - every 19 seconds.Īs teachers, we want our students to devote sustained thought to complex topics.
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