Educational Psychology

Attention Traps: How could educators use self-regulated learning to help their students deal with distractions from social media?

We’re all guilty of it. We know that we have to get this paper finished or read this article by tomorrow but, let’s face it, Facebook is just so much more interesting! In fact, many social media sites can feel downright addictive! An hour or two can be lost before you even know it! How are we supposed to get anything done with all these distractions? Most days we feel like we’re fighting a losing battle, the victor: social media. The draw to social sites is even stronger for today’s youth. It’s hard enough for adults to get their work done online without feeling tempted by the seductive siren call of social media, so how do we expect our students to be able to deal with this temptation? As educators, this makes things a little tricky considering our ever increasingly digital world and the push to incorporate technology in our curriculums. In their 2012 study, Wood et al. found that where digital technologies and mobile devices were incorporated into classrooms there was also significant evidence of student distraction and off-task social activity. Similarly, a 2007 study by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) found that “students who spent more time socializing online were more likely than those who spent less time to report that their social life interfered with their schoolwork occasionally or frequently, and that it was somewhat difficult or very difficult to develop effective study skills and to manage their time effectively” (3). As a result, tenacious “attention grabbers”, such as You Tube, Twitter and Pinterest, just to name a few, are plaguing our students’ concentration and work ethics. Unfortunately, this is an area where instruction and guidance seem to be lacking. As social media encroaches in our daily lives, we need to teach our students how to effectively deal with all these interruptions and attention traps; the widely used approach of avoidance is not the solution. What we can do, especially with the push to incorporate social media and mobile learning in our curriculums, is provide our students with some tools and guided instruction by using self-regulation to combat these pesky distractions and redirect attention to the task or goal at hand.

                Self-regulated learning has long been a buzz-word in the education world. Zimmerman refers to SRL as “the individuals’ ability to control thoughts and actions to achieve personal goals and respond to environmental demands” (Perry, 4). This approach has long been shown to increase productivity, self-efficacy, and motivation in students – three key components that will help them to manage distractions and stay on task. That being said, one cannot simply implement the concepts of SRL without the necessary scaffolding and instrumental support from the educator (Hadwin 2008, 179). I will discuss this in more length further on. With SRL, the end goal is always for students to make autonomous and effective decisions when it comes to their own self-management processes – and in this case, use aspects of SRL to battle distractions from social media and internet use. Taking effect across a student’s cognition, motivation and behavior, SRL spreads across four stages in a continuous cycle: task perception, goal-setting and planning, strategic action, and reflection (Hadwin, course notes: What is SRL?). Some of these self-regulatory processes include: focusing attention on the task, maintaining or increasing motivation, goal-setting and planning, and managing one’s time, resources, and environment (Hadwin & Webster, 3221). In the following paragraphs I will discuss how SRL could be used by students to manage online distractions, addressing cognitive, motivational and behavioural processes.

Cognition

Attention, by nature, often switches quickly from one focus to another, and is easily captured by both internal and external sources (Hadwin, course notes: Building on What We Know). Not necessarily the best trait when faced with the bombardment of eye-catching adds, popups, and alerts each and every time one goes online. These competing distractors from social media often lead to what Welford calls a “cognitive bottle neck” in an already limited system (Wood et al., 366, 372). This is particularly detrimental to students, as they will often engage in distractive multi-tasking, which has been shown to slow productivity and impede learning (Wood et al., 367-368) One strategy students can use to re-direct their attention to the task at hand is by practicing self-talk (Am I being distracted by Facebook right now? Is this what I should be focusing on right now? What SHOULD I be working on right now?) The educator can scaffold the process by using prompts and modeling while students are working online in class. Another possibility is to facilitate co-regulation amongst students by making social media distraction a community issue, and implementing a class contract that encourages students to help their peers stay focused and use social media responsibly during appropriate times (Hadwin, course notes: Building on What We Know). A third strategy could be found in self-evaluations, or self-recording (Stipek, 87), where students record after the fact how much time they spent on social media or how many times they were distracted during a task, bringing awareness to an often absent-minded activity. Lastly, teachers can make sure to activate students’ prior knowledge in order to help them focus their attention on what is relevant; this can even be achieved through online discussion and blogging using advanced organizers which would certainly be appropriate given the situation (Hadwin, course notes, Building on What We Know).  

 Motivation

Authentic context-rich experiences, engagement, and informal parameters are just some of the benefits of the “here and now” model of learning and the incorporation of mobile technology in education (Ertzberger, 77). However, the informality of this form of learning brings opportunities for students to become side-tracked and off task. In her article, Stipek maintains that motivation is a key element in active engagement in leaning (85). The question is, how do we keep students motivated to finish the job? In their 2013 study, Ertzberger and Martin found that learning with mobile devices and social media improved student engagement, motivation and overall excitement towards learning, but did not improve their academic performance (84). Norwood attributes this to the distracting nature of mobile devices, and their interference with learning processes (Ertzberger, 84). Would higher task motivation decrease off-task behaviour and distraction? There are several strategies for students to try in order to increase task motivation. Some of these include: self-reinforcement (after I finish this paper I will reward myself by going on Pinterest); interest enhancement (when I think about it, this topic is kind of interesting and relevant! And more so then a string of status updates!); efficacy management (if I keep at it, I’ll get better and better!); and proximal TASC goal-setting (specific in time, action, standard, and content) (Wolters in Hadwin, course notes: Motivation). Proximal TASC goals can be achieved quickly for more instant gratification, feedback and relief, thereby increasing self-efficacy, motivation, and persistence (Ames, 412). Goal-setting is a valuable routine to establish in any class, and particularly useful in activities that involve the internet. If students know specifically what they are working towards, they are less likely to get side-tracked; for example: “ you have ten minutes to use your smartphones to search for definitions of these five traditional Québécois expressions, and create five new sentences using each expression.”  

Behavior

By actively modifying the environment in which they are studying, students can effectively control the influx of social media-related distractions. For example, students could try scheduling or managing their time (I am going to dedicate the next 45 minutes typing the introduction to my novel study); modifying the environment (I am going to work at the library because I know that they frown on monopolizing computer time with Facebook), and controlling their resources (I am going to turn off my smartphone for an hour so I don’t get distracted by social media alerts while I’m working on the computer). As a force of habit, many will check their social media accounts as soon as they turn on their computer to work, I know I do! The next thing I know an hour’s gone by and I haven’t even started my work! Simply counselling your students to check their social media AFTER they’ve finished their task could be beneficial – tell them to treat it like a reward; self-reinforcement can be an effective way to change behaviours. As a last resort, those students with macs can download a free app aptly called “self-control” that will block social media sites from your blacklist for a controlled period of time: http://selfcontrolapp.com/ Since students are now spending more and more time online, it’s important for them to understand how to manage their online social environments, just as they do in their real-life environments.

Scaffolding for Self-Regulation

Any of the strategies mentioned above would be viable options for students to use in order to help them stay on task while online; however, and here’s where it gets tricky, these techniques should not be explicitly defined or taught. Butler, an educational psychologist, emphasizes that “if instruction focuses primarily on the direct explanation of predefined strategies, students may be inadvertently excluded from the problem-solving process central to self-regulation” (84). In other words, students need to own their strategy choice in order for it to be truly effective. As an approach to this, Butler suggests that teachers first need to identify their students’ current problem-solving competencies (in this case, how are they dealing with social media distractions currently), then apply scaffolded support that helps direct students in developing effective self-monitoring processes (think Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development). This subtle intervention is called co-regulation (Perry, 5), and can take the form of gentle prompting, teacher modeling during class time when working with social media, class discussion about social media and strategies to deal with it, a visible social media contract on the wall where students can see it, self-assessment activities, such as journaling, at the end of a session (How did I do today with handling my distractions? What strategies did I try to stay motivated throughout the task?) or even take home checklists as visual reminders for students (Am I focused on the task right now? Do I have my Facebook page up while I’m working? Is my phone on or next to me? etc.). Finally teachers should gradually remove that support as students become proficient in regulating themselves against these distractions (Butler, 84).

                Once students become aware of what these “attention grabbers” are, and have learned some effective tools and strategies to help them regulate against these distractions, bringing social media into the classroom is not such a big deal. On that note, we also need to remember that one of the greatest benefits about social media, is its allowance for collaboration and interaction among its users, so there inherently needs to be a bit more flexibility when things get side-tracked. After all, learning is supposed to be an organic and fluid experience, rather than rigid and uncompromising. Besides, wondering off topic every now and then can sometimes lead to the most authentic learning experiences and discoveries.  

 

 

 

Sample Activity from my unit plan where SRL is scaffolded to prevent social media distractions and promote monitoring:

Activity: Search YouTube for examples (models) of video projects made by other French students

This activity is designed to get students thinking about their final group project for the unit which will be in the form of a video project. This activity is the lead-in for one of the major components in this project: building a student-generated rubric. Using peer models is a great way to build self-efficacy in your students, and it helps give them a more accurate task perception (this is what a successful video projects look like for people my age and level).

In groups or pairs, students will use You Tube to search for models. Students need to be critical, in other words, what makes a good video project and what makes a bad one? Where could some of them improve? Students will record their ideas, which will later be used to create the student-generated rubric. Be sure to give students explicit and specific instructions, so that they will know exactly what needs to be accomplished before the end of the task and are less likely to be side-tracked: “Using the iPads, you have 20 minutes to search for French student videos that can be used as models for your group project. I want your group to contribute 3 videos each with comments on what you thought was good, bad and could be improved on. You will email me the videos and the comments at the end of the 20 minutes.”

Meanwhile, students will be prompted to monitor their distractions while completing the activity. You Tube is notorious for side-tracking students will all sorts of viral videos popping up along the sides and on screen at the end of each video. This will be challenging. A class discussion about social media distractions is an appropriate opener to this activity. Prompts will be both teacher-delivered and displayed on a poster on the wall as a visual reminder.

Example Teacher Prompts:

How many videos have you found related to the project? How many have you watched that were un-related?

Are you finding it difficult to stay focused? Are you helping or being helped by your partner/group members to stay focused?

What might work to help you stay on task? Set goals? Remind yourself how this will help you with your final project? Watch other students do silly and cool things with their videos? Reward yourself? Watch 5 videos related to the project and then watch one silly one?

Are you distracted or are the people in your group distracted? What can you do?

What have you done in the past that worked to keep you focused?

Example Visual Cues:

Yes/No:

Am I distracted right now?

Do I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing? If not, can I find out?

Can I change my environment? Time? Resources?

Can I ask for help?                                                                                                                                                                   

Am I looking at Facebook? Twitter? Tumblr? Or another social media site that is not a part of our task? Can I close them to prevent distractions until my task is done?

Are my friends distracted right now? Can I do something to help them?

At the end of the session, students will complete a short self and group assessment:

	All of the time	Most of the time	Less than half the time
I was looking at videos related to our group project:
I was focused on our task:
I helped my group stay on task:
To help me stay focussed, I used strategies:

 

I (found/didn’t find) it hard to concentrate because:

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What did I do that worked?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What did I do that didn’t work?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What will I try next time?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The homework portion on this assignment involves watching the videos found by the class and critiquing four of them in a forum/chat on the class website – What was good? What could have made them better? – to use for generating the rubric. Now students will be working on their own at home, with little intervention when it comes to social media distractions. Students will get a take home survey to fill out – which is really just a reminder about how much time they are spending on unrelated social media sites! Give bonus points for honesty and emphasize that this survey is for completion only and students will not be marked on their answers.

Survey Says…..!

Circle one:

1)      I spent ______________ amount of time looking at social media sites not related to school work:      0 minutes               30 minutes         an hour                               two hours           more than two hours

2)      If I were to guess, I was distracted by social media on average once every:

Never                  hour                      half hour             10 minutes         five minutes

3)      If I was side-tracked, the time that I was distracted lasted approximately:

Two minutes                    five minutes                      30 minutes                         an hour

4)      I had my Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/Tumblr or other social media site open on my computer or phone at the same time that I was working on this task:

Yes                                        No

5)      I think that I can multi-task – do homework and socialize online at the same time:

Yes                                        No

6)      I spent ___________________ amount of time completing my homework.

 The next day in class when students come in with their surveys, the results will be written up on the board and discussed. The teacher can use the Think, Pair, Share model or Inside/Outside Circles to facilitate discussion and thought. This would be a great opportunity for the teacher to share times when she felt distracted by social media, and the types of strategies that she used in order to cope with it (teacher modeling). In addition, students could brainstorm ideas/strategies that they could use themselves to help reduce the “cognitive bottle neck” of social media interruptions. These could be incorporated into the goal-setting/planning phase of self-regulated learning for future tasks and projects.

Now we can see how students may go from the instrumental teacher support that this activity started with, to setting their own goals and coming up with their own strategies to try out. In addition, we’ve covered each stage of the Hadwin/Winne recursive model of self-regulation: task perception, goal-setting/planning, strategic action, and reflection with monitoring throughout. Now that students have learned some of these skills, don’t forget to reinforce them throughout the rest of the unit with guided support. This type of scaffolding may need to be repeated over and over until students are able to monitor themselves without constant support.

With ever increasing exposure, and sometimes downright bombardment, of social media, it is now more important than ever to teach students strategies to effectively deal with these types of distractions. In my opinion, this is something that SHOULD be a part of the curriculum for each and every class. In order to be functioning and responsible adults, students will need to know how to cope with social media distractions, and, in addition, how to use all the advantages that come with social media.

 

 

End of Psych Major Project here - but feel free to keep reading the other educational psychology posts I have: Getting "meta" with E-Portfolios and Social Media: Creating opportunities for student autonomy, control of challenge and personalized demonstrations of mastery.

Getting “Meta” with the E-Portfolio

Another form of social media that is often over-looked is the e-portfolio. Ever since I began my exploration of the topic of educational social media, I have been drawn to the idea of student online learning  portfolios, and for good reason. I would be hard pressed to dig up any evidence of my successes in high school. It would seem that all the assignments, projects and papers that I poured my heart and soul into have just “vanished” into academic purgatory, never to be seen again (although I’m sure they were probably recycled – hopefully). In any case, things aren’t much different today. Teachers don’t have the room to store or display the mountains of student projects they receive and the students don’t’ really seem to care where their work ends up once it’s been marked and graded. This is a problem. Learning is supposed to be a journey, but how do we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been? Rather than viewing their high school experiences as jumping over one hurdle to the next, struggling through a series of unrelated assignments and tests, students should be tracking their learning and making meaningful connections between where they’ve been, what they’ve accomplished, and where they’re going. Many studies have concluded the effectiveness of learning portfolios for promoting metacognition and increasing self-efficacy through charting and celebrating progress. Gail Casey, a high school math teacher from Victoria, Australia, implemented e-portfolios in her class using a site called Ning and found that “students not only documented their own learning, but shared ways for others to access information and learn.” Casey adds that these activities can be described as “authentic learning and literacy processes, requiring detailed metacognitive strategies” (67).   

At their core, e-portfolios allow students to a) monitor their progress, b) celebrate their successes, and c) focus on process rather than product. E-portfolios provide a platform where students can collect and display their learning goals, artifacts, reflections, outcomes, and demonstrations of competency, inherently facilitating all sorts of metacognitive and self-regulatory acts in the process.  Think of them as a scholastic Facebook! As students are continuously adding to their portfolios, they are made aware of the shape and direction that their learning is taking (monitoring). They are able to set goals based on their current state for where they would like to go with their learning. In addition, students are able to see the areas where there is opportunity for growth: “I see that I’m doing really well with my English projects, but I don’t have much for science – maybe I should work on this area.” Once a student is satisfied with a certain level of success on a given project, she can post this on her portfolio. After successes have been accumulated across diverse subject areas, the student  be could be able to recognize where her strengths lie and what skills/strategies are the most effective. Teaching students how to recognize their skills and strategies would be a valuable lesson in any subject. As a by-product, this will aid the students in making accurate attributions of their successes to things that are in their control, thereby increasing motivation and self-efficacy (Stipek, 93). Finally, by emphasizing process over product, learning portfolios encourage classrooms to be more mastery-oriented (focusing on building knowledge and mastery) as opposed to performance oriented (focusing on grades, competition amongst students and other extrinsic rewards) (Stipek, 105). As a result, students will be more inclined to set learning-goals as opposed to performance-goals. In a 2013 study done on university undergraduates, researchers found that the experimental group (those who used e-portfolios) outperformed the control group in metacognition and knowledge management performance (knowledge sharing, knowledge innovation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge application, and knowledge accumulation) (Chang et al. 217, 222). The researchers in this study concluded that:  

Since the technology plays an important role in [knowledge management] (Bain & Swan, 2011), and the Internet improves a lot, there are more and more digital tools for portfolio and KM that can be used. Therefore, it is suggested that the future researchers can utilize other instruments, such as Blog, Wiki, Facebook, Plurk, and Twitter, in the experiment to examine whether these instruments can also affect KM. (224).

Again, as is the trend for most online resources, the e-portfolio is seems to be used only in isolated cases – a class here and there.  I believe that in order for it to be effective on a larger scale it needs to be implemented holistically throughout the entire high school career of a student (in an idea world!). Sites such as Edmodo and Schoology are tailored to educational needs and offer students the ability to build their own portfolio page (similar to their Facebook account) with the added bonus of having joint classroom and school-wide pages for collaboration and sharing. This is where the social aspect comes in; by having access to other students’ portfolios, students can build an online community where a shared-knowledge framework is co-constructed by many. Almost any project can be snapped in a photo or scanned and put online. It’s not rocket science, but then again, it does require a few brave souls to give it a whirl in their classrooms. Although the jury is still out on whether social media can lead to personalized learning, there appears to be a link to increased metacognition. More exploration in this area is need; however some of the results so far are looking pretty promising.

 

Social Media: Creating opportunities for student autonomy, control of challenge and personalized demonstrations of mastery.

So far we’ve seen how using e-portfolios can facilitate metacognition, but what else can social media do? Incorporating a social media framework in a face-to-face class has the potential to create a type of connected learning model wherein “adaptive and effective learning involve[s] individual interest as well as social support to overcome adversity and provide recognition” (Casey, 62).  This can be achieved by encouraging students to participate in online chats, blogs, groups, and discussion forums, or as in the example cited by Perry by allowing students to “browse, borrow and build” from each other (25). By designing online projects centered around students’ real-life experiences and day-to-day knowledge, Casey, a secondary math teacher in Victoria, Australia, was able to help her students link mathematics to their daily lives, inside and outside of school. By now, we all know that social media is wonderful for collaboration, but what about the individual? How can teachers use social media to facilitate student autonomy? For Casey, our star math teacher and action researcher, it was all about giving the students choice by using a social network:

The Ning social network provided access to blogs, groups, and forums where students could read, write, create, and publish content. Students could also upload photos and videos. All members of a Ning have their own home page, “My Page,” which provided my students with quick links to their own content and latest activity and a place where other members could leave comments. Within a particular group, members could add discussion forums, which could house further project responses and/or spaces for them to post associated ideas and media (62).

By allowing students the ability to create and customize their own page within a larger collaborative network, teachers will inherently encourage student autonomy with an eye towards joint and co-regulatory activities, such as discussion forums. In shared regulation “learners regulate activity in collaborative tasks by co-constructing understandings about tasks and pooling metacognitive, motivational and strategic resources” (Perry, 5). This is an interesting concept to think about, as some teachers may feel it is entirely up to them to regulate student work and contributions. Did we ever stop to think that maybe, if given tools and choice, that students might do it for themselves? This is certainly possible, as Casey’s action research has demonstrated. Furthermore, as outlined in Perry’s research, when students are given opportunities to make meaningful and important choices in their learning, both their interest and self-efficacy increases, inherently leading to more effort and persistence in the face of challenges (18).

                Another potential increase in task self-efficacy comes in the form of student control over challenge. As teachers release responsibility and allow for autonomy within learning, students will inevitably gain more control over how much they are willing to challenge themselves, which in some cases can be a disaster. However, in classrooms that are mastery-oriented, where success is defined as improvement and progress, students will be more likely to attempt more challenging tasks; on the other hand, in performance-oriented classrooms, where the emphasis is put on products and grades, students are more tempted to go for easy tasks as they are more certain of a “successful” outcome (Stipek, 101-105). Student choice, autonomy and control over challenge is also a key component of self-regulated-learning (Hadwin 2008, 179). Some ways in which students control challenge with social media is by choosing platforms that are already familiar to them for the completion of certain tasks. Considering that the majority of youth is already proficient in several different forms of social media, the possibilities for assignments, when they are given the choice, are nearly limitless (see some example assignments in my blog post Let’s Get Started! Here are a few activities to get the ball rolling!).

In addition, Stipek’s research on motivation notes that students’ desire to learn benefits from differentiated and multidimensional tasks (90). This is further supported by Perry’s research in which she states that “multidimensional tasks engage learners in a wide range of processes and allow for the creation of diverse products as evidence of learning” (16). One of the best features about social media is its ability to allow users to customize and personalize contributions to the shared knowledge network. According to Perry, “[t]eachers who support autonomy are responsive to students’ needs and interests and want students to be active rather than passive in learning” (16). So how do teachers redesign curriculum projects to take advantage of these unique qualities of social media? Lucky for us there are several viable social media options and tools that we can make available to our students. Programs such as Haiku Deck, Show me, Blogger, You Tube, Prezi, iMovie, Flip Board and even Twitter can be used by students to demonstrate their knowledge on a particular topic and mastery of specific concepts or the “big ideas”.  

Post to be continued ....