R3 1.9 May 11, 2023: Reducing the Negative Effects of Multitasking on Online or Distance Learning by Using Retrieval Practice

Can learning through quizzing compensate for distraction?

This issue of R3 looks at an intriguing connection between distracted study, online learning, and learning science, with a recent article on what happens to retention when students read material while answering text messages.

Citation:

Ekuni, R., Macacare, O. T., & Pompeia, S. (2022). Reducing the Negative Effects of Multitasking on Online or Distance Learning by Using Retrieval Practice. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 8(4), 269–278.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000314

Paywall or Open: 

Paywall

Summary:

Students frequently multitask while learning, despite the known negative impacts of distraction on retention and recall. When coupled with less-effective study strategies such as rereading, multitasking might be particularly detrimental, and students probably don’t realize the full extent of the problem. Conversely, highly-effective strategies such as retrieval practice might help offset issues brought about by answering text messages and similar types of distractions. In this study, student research volunteers read text passages while distracted by incoming text messages, then studied with rereading or retrieval practice, and rated their own perceptions of how much they would retain after study.

Research Questions:

1. Does multitasking during study reduce performance on short-answer questions? (Primarily examined as a replication of previous findings)

2. Does retrieval practice counteract some of the negative effects of multitasking during study? (Main question of interest)  

3. How do students’ subjective judgments of their own learning vary across multitasking conditions (multitasking/no multitasking) and study conditions (retrieval practice/rereading)?

Sample:

Sixty Portuguese-speaking undergraduate students recruited at the Universidade Estadual do Norte do Paraná.

Method/Design:

Participants were assigned to read passages of approximately 700 words each on a variety of scientific topics, drawn from Scientific American. The study used a within-subjects design, such that each participant engaged with the material in three different ways: 1) multitasking during the initial reading, then rereading; 2) multitasking during the initial reading, then doing retrieval practice; 3) initial reading without multitasking, then doing retrieval practice.  Multitasking during the initial reading involved responding to three messages sent to the participant’s personal cell phone by the researchers. Retrieval practice involved answering open-ended short-essay style test questions and getting feedback on whether the answers were correct. Rereading involved self-paced, self-directed review of the text passages. Participants also rated how much of the text they thought they would remember a week later (judgments of learning), during the test phase. Recall was tested both after a short delay of a few minutes, and after one week, again with open-ended short-answer test questions.  

Key Findings:

Both retrieval practice conditions (with and without multitasking) produced robust levels of recall, even after a delay. Notably, the difference between the multitasking and no-multitasking conditions shrank considerably when retrieval practice was used. Judgments of learning, however, were much higher in the rereading plus multitasking condition, compared to the other two. One interesting subsidiary finding was that participants spent about the same amount of time initially reading the passages when multitasking as when they were not multitasking, presumably reflecting a tendency to reroute time away from the main task in order to answer text messages. With respect to time spent studying, though, participants spent longer in the retrieval practice activity than in re-reading.

Choice Quote from the Article:

“Students often multitask during class and while reading content, which can impair academic achievement, especially during online teaching, when they cannot be monitored. People also prefer to restudy class content by rereading, which is not very effective in promoting lasting learning compared with retrieval practice, that is, trying to recall information to which one has been previously exposed. We investigated whether the negative long-term recall effects of encoding content while multitasking (reading text messages on a cell phone while reading to-be-remembered information from texts presented onscreen), could be reduced by subsequent retrieval practice (answering multiterm or fact questions about the texts) instead of rereading text information.”

Why it Matters:

I’ve long advocated against bans, sanctions, and syllabus policies as primary ways to manage the problem of distraction and misuse of technology during learning. One big reason comes down to the same point these authors make: bans don’t work for online learning. In my experience, bans don’t work that well for in-person classes either, and I think that over-reliance on instructor-driven policies and enforcement represents a missed opportunity to help students build the metacognitive and self-regulation skills needed to manage technological distractions voluntarily. I think a particularly effective tactic is to combine warnings about the hazards of multitasking with positive suggestions about how to direct focused effort. Retrieval practice tops the list of these suggestions, something that my colleagues and I emphasized heavily when we designed the Attention Matters! module on learning and distraction.

This study strikes yet another blow for retrieval practice as a core feature to both build into our own course designs and teach students to use, any time they can. I wonder as well about the “cognitive illusions” angle, one written about by a number of researchers in context of learning. The illusion of fluency, for example, is likely a reason why rereading is a flawed strategy – as learners repeatedly process the information in a fairly passive way, they build up a feeling of familiarity, leading them to radically overestimate how much they will be able to remember later.

Perhaps we should add to the list of cognitive illusions the “illusion of attentiveness” – namely, feeling as if you’re successfully managing to juggle studying and off-task activities, when in fact, your performance is suffering. Retrieval practice may help repair the damage wrought by distraction after the fact, as it appeared to do in this study. I wonder if retrieval practice also pushes learners to be realistic about how focused they are while working and to choose their actions accordingly. If it were me, I might think twice about stopping in the middle of a quiz to deal with a text message, while if I were just re-reading, I might go ahead and answer.

Most Relevant For:

Faculty designing or teaching online courses; faculty designing or teaching study skills courses; instructional designers

Limitations, Caveats, and Nagging Questions:

As the authors acknowledge, the learning in this study focused mainly on the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, involving open-ended but fairly simple factual questions about the assigned passages. And like many similar types of research projects (such as this one on various modes of note taking, which used TED talks as a stand-in for lectures), the materials used were a good analogue for, but not identical to, the content in a typical college course. The authors also acknowledge that they did give feedback during the retrieval practice activity, which could have in itself yielded additional benefits over and above retrieval attempts alone.

The article also does not offer a great deal of advice on how to apply the findings, or how best to ensure that students benefit from them. It’s not too difficult to come up with ideas, but it is up to the reader to figure out how to use the findings (besides, once again, building as much retrieval practice in as humanly possible, and advising students that distracted study is a bad idea).

It is also up to readers to think about how they’d couch or frame the finding that retrieval practice is helpful for counteracting the impacts of multitasking, if they were sharing these results with students. Clearly we would not want to imply that this article offers a green light for habits such as fooling around with messages and whatnot while studying. Nor is it right to conclude that that retrieval practice is only really needed when the initial read of the material was carried out under sub-optimal conditions. All the same, it is interesting to consider retrieval practice from that perspective, as a sort of insurance policy in case more information slipped by the reader than they realize.

If you liked this like this article, you might also appreciate:

Berry, M. J., & Westfall, A. (2017).  Dial d for distraction : The making and breaking of cell phone policies in the college classroom. College Teaching, 63(2), 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2015.1005040

Darby, & Lang, J. M. (2019). Small teaching online : Applying learning science in online classes. Jossey-Bass.

Junco, R., & Cotten, S. R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers and Education, 59(2), 505–514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.12.023

Lang, J. (2016, September). No, banning laptops is not the answer. Vitae Chronicle Higher Education. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1546-no-banning-laptops-is-not-the-answer

Larry D., R., Alex F., L., L. Mark, C., & Nancy A., C. (2011). An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: Educational implications and strategies to enhance learning. Revista de Psicología Educativa, 17(2), 163–177. https://doi.org/10.5093/ed2011v17n2a4

McCoy, B. R. (2013). Digital distractions in the classroom: Student classroom use of digital devices for non-class related purposes. Journal of Media Education, 4(4), 5–12. Retrieved from http://en.calameo.com/read/000091789af53ca4e647f

Miller, M.D. (2014).  Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miller, M.D., Doherty, J.J., Butler, N., & Coull, W. (2020). Changing counterproductive beliefs about attention, memory, and multitasking: Impacts of a brief, fully online module. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 34, 710-723.

 File under: 

 online learning; multitasking; distracted students; retrieval practice; metacognition