Mediamultitasking
Perhaps the simplest reason that media multitasking while learning has been a growing issue recently is that students tend to learn new information while juggling two complex tasks. For instance, one can see a clear indication of this issue with juggling complex tasks in a 2006 article published in Computers & Education that outlines a series of studies conducted by Carrie Fried and other researchers from Winona State University in which they examine the amount of time college students use laptops or other forms of technology during a lecture class. To approximate the time students spent on digital technology throughout the class lecture, each day Fried had roughly 130 students from the General Psychology department take surveys, concerning their engagement with the class. Generally speaking, roughly sixty-five percent of the college students allegedly used their laptops at least once. Of this group, about eighty percent claimed to check emails. About seventy percent claimed to instant message. Forty-three percent claimed to be on the internet, and lastly approximately twenty-five- percent claimed to play games. Fried also asked students to report any interruptions or distractions that happen during the lectures. According to the surveys, Fried calculated an average of seventeen minutes spent off-topic per student in the seventy-five minute lecture. To clarify the implications of her findings regarding students juggling complex tasks, Fried goes on to explain, “Students admit to spending considerable time during lectures using their laptops for things other than taking notes. The use of laptops was negatively related to several measures of learning” (6). That is to say, when Fried points out that students are using digital technology while learning, she is trying to demonstrate how the use of laptops is a clear issue within the a classroom because of the large percentage of people off-topic. Research shows with the increased accessibility to laptops, the probability of a student spending time attempting to juggle between listening to the professor and looking on Facebook or Twitter will increase, therefore students will more likely interpret less information given in the course. To make her point clear about the effect of juggling two complex tasking while learning, Fried explains, “Computers and other high-tech equipment are likely sources of overload and distraction” (3). In essence, when Fried refers to laptops have decreased overall performance in the class, what she means is the ability of people to pay attention and process information is limited. Researchers say that if there are too many sources of information, a person can be overwhelmed with the amount of information available. If a student has a laptop out in class, it is more likely that the students around him or her are distracted too, therefore the overall performance is affected not just the one student with the laptop. With this in mind, one can begin to see how this study from Winona State University on the accessibility to technology in a classroom clearly demonstrated how students who are connected while doing work are more likely to be distracted. Research shows that the brain is overloaded with information similar to a desk stacked with paper. If a student does not go through these papers one at a time, the student may not know what papers are worth keeping. Instead the student will keep random pages.
