Distractibility and Its Impacts

Drs. Kevin S. Krahenbuhl & Gabe MydlandDakota State University

Background for Context• Distractibility is invariably part

of our lives• It is seeming to become ever

more prominent thanks in large part to the vast social networks accessible and used in the digital age

• We know that our working memory is limited in its duration and capacity (Peterson & Peterson, 1959; Miller, 1956)

• The direct impact has not been extensively evaluated in social networking distractibility

The Investigation

• Pilot in spring 2013 ran to test out the method and refine it based on its performance

• 2013-2014 collected large data sample from the university for participation– Participating instructors asked to pick a favorite topic of

theirs that students would be unfamiliar with and give a 30-minute lecture on it so students’ didn’t perceive it as irrelevant

• Since then, we’ve been implementing small-scale interventions in an attempt to find practices that might show measurable gains

The Initial Findings

Pre-Test Post-Test 0%

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Baseline Group – Respondus Lockdown

Distracted Respondus

** Pre test scores much higher than normal due to one topic being widely known by students **

Student Perceptions• Survey Responses– Significant differences

between Respondus & Distracted groups with respect to…• I learned a lot today• I paid attention to the lecture

• Interesting Comment• “I guess I wasn’t that

distracted since I improved my score by 5!” (shows disconnect with comparison)

• Interesting distinction between M/F perception on the impact of being distracted– Male respondents in the

distracted group believed that they were less distracted than female participants (difference was significant)

Study Analysis

• Something to consider– This experiment is focused on a

one-time 30-min. lecture– In a typical course, how many

lectures would you have between exams?

– Multiply the # of those by the difference to find out how much distracted students would be behind focused ones• Example: 8 lectures, students

in the multitasking group performed approximately 16% worse on average

• Distracted student starts off 128% behind (8*16) if this trend continues for eight lectures

2 Attempted Interventions

Simple Cold-Calling every 2 slides

• The students in the multitasking group have performed slightly better indicating that this compels increased engagement but the results are not significant

Using Nearpod• For those who don’t have

access to “Respondus”, Nearpod is a free online tool that we’ve run in two small pilot tests and found results have similar outcomes as those of the experiment here using Respondus Lockdown Browser

The Findings

Nearpod Pre Nearpod Post0%

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Nearpod Intervention

Intervention Distracted

Questions?

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What Interventions do you suggest?

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