An experimental study with 44 undergraduate students from a Canadian university adds new evidence to previous finding on multitasking: students’ comprehension of lecture content can be impaired when they multitask on a laptop in classroom learning. More importantly, it contributes a new finding to the literature: the students who sat beside the multitaskers were significantly distracted in view of their peers’ engagement in multitasking on a laptop. They scored significantly lower than those who had no view to multitasking peers on a post-lecture comprehension test.
The paper:
Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, 24-31. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003
About the photo: A view from balcony through a wine glass at dusk in Sydney, filmed in 2017.
University Teaching 