Countering Off-Task Multitasking in the Classroom

For her Fellowship project, Eileen Wood was interested in exploring whether classroom diversions caused by technology could be refocused in a way to enhance students' learning experience.

Wood’s research shows that attempting to attend to lectures and engage digital technologies for off-task activities can have a detrimental impact. When students attempt to multitask by using technology to interact with things outside of the course content, their engagement and their grades will suffer. To combat this off-task multitasking, Wood suggests implementing useful interactions with technology as part of the instruction.

"On-task multitasking, or giving students a task related to the content, keeps them better engaged for the entire class,” says Wood. “As an instructor, you can integrate opportunities for students to use their technology to collaborate with peers and explore new resources related to the topic at hand."

In Wood's classroom, forays into technologically-enabled multi-tasking related to the lesson also result in students collecting new information, sharing it with peers and challenging the concepts being taught. For Wood, giving students the time to ask course-related questions that may veer off-lesson helps prepare them for their academic and professional future.

Read Examining the impact of off-task multi-tasking with technology on real-time classroom learning, published in Computers and Education.