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Despite students’ claims to be adept at dividing their attention, their use of phones, laptops, and tablets during classroom lectures does have a negative impact, according to a just-published study by researchers at Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. Rather than testing college students against a control group of their peers, the researchers tested two sections of an upper-level psychology course—118 students in all—against themselves. The students were permitted to have their electronic devices out during half the lectures, but were prohibited from using them during the other half. Immediate retention of information was assessed with daily quizzes, and longer-term retention by three unit exams and a final exam. Students’ scores proved to be “significantly worse” on device-approved days, even for those who opted not to use their electronics, demonstrating how devices’ capacity for distraction extends beyond just the actual user. In addition, the study posited that what was—and wasn’...

Representatives of Amazon and Google made it clear at the recent International Society for Technology in Education conference that voice-assistant devices should not be used in K-12 classrooms because of compliance and privacy issues . While privacy issues is still a concern, the devices are finding their way into campus dorms and classrooms. Amazon donated 1,600 Echo Dots to engineering students at Arizona State University, Tempe, and is providing grants to institutions that create class curriculum using Alexa-enabled devices and mentorship. Additionally, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, will give some students the option to connect an Echo Dot device to their university accounts this fall. Jason Hong, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has studied the home use of Alexa and said the device isn’t quite ready for educational use. He noted they could be handy in specific college situations, such as a lab where students need hands-free inte...

Seamless integration of academic content and tools with a school’s learning management systems (LMS) really shouldn’t be an issue. However, institutions regularly face challenges in integrating digital learning materials with all the different campus systems . “When solutions integrate well, the students and professors shouldn’t notice any differences between our platforms and the external content,” said Steve Kessinger, director of information services and technology at Bluefield College, Bluefield, VA. “Integrations should enhance the educational experience, not be a barrier.” Integration should make access to digital content possible from the institution’s LMS interface and not in a new window from a new interface. Students shouldn’t have to log into the LMS a second time to access the material. Seamless integration can also make it possible for students to immediately access content as soon as they register for a class through their LMS accounts. A well-integrated system allows stu...

People recall information better after viewing it in an immersive virtual environment than they do when using a desktop display, according to recent research conducted at the University of Maryland, College Park. Volunteers first studied printouts of two 21-image sets of famous faces, such as Napoleon, Gandhi, Mickey Mouse, George Washington, and Marilyn Monroe. They were then shown one set of faces placed throughout one of two “memory palaces,” either an ornate palace or a medieval townscape. After five minutes to navigate and study the memory palace and then a two-minute break, the subjects re-entered the memory palace, where the faces had been replaced by numbers, and were asked to recall which faces had been in which positions. Half of the participants viewed the scene first using a virtual-reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) and then a desktop computer display with mouse-based interaction; the other half used the desktop first and then the HMD. “The users that used the HMD fir...

All first-year students at The Ohio State University, Columbus, are receiving iPad Pros this fall as part of an initiative between the institution and Apple to enhance the learning experience. The devices are welcomed across campus, except for an economics course  taught by Trevor Logan . Logan banned all electronics from his courses during the spring semester. Instead of complaints, he saw student performance on the midterm exam improve significantly. The students even seemed to like the policy, telling Logan the ban helped them maintain their focus in class and take better notes. They also said it helped them enjoy the class. “I thought I would get much more pushback on this from students, and I didn’t think student outcomes would be so significant,” Logan wrote in a Twitter thread. “Given these results, I’m very encouraged to continue with the policy.” The one concern was the electronics ban might be an issue for students with learning disabilities who rely on technology. Logan ...

As new technologies enter the learning landscape, educators need to ensure their introduction doesn’t create a “digital divide 2.0,” wrote Emory Craig, director of e-learning and instructional technologies, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY, in a piece for EdTech: Focus on Higher Education . Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are already beginning to offer virtual labs and field trips, interactive storytelling, and immersive world-building experiences. However, the cost of some VR headsets and the computers capable of supporting them can be quite high. Lower-cost systems so far tend to confirm the truism that you get what you pay for. While Google Cardboard offers an easy-to-use, affordable option, its visual experience is poorer and interactivity is limited by the lack of a hand controller. Newer, standalone VR headsets that don’t require a smartphone or external computer may prove to be workable solutions. Facebook, which has a stated goal of getting a billion people usi...

With so many students being avid gamers, providing coursework within video games offers a chance to make learning more relevant and show how the concepts being studied can be applied outside the classroom. To that end, Texas A&M University, College Station, gave researchers a $100,000 grant to commercialize 3-D video games in calculus and art history/appreciation as supplements to standard coursework. The games are offered by Triseum LLC , a company that grew from the Texas A&M Department of Visualization’s Learning Interactive Visualization Experience (LIVE) Lab . Triseum’s CEO is also founder and director of the LIVE Lab and an assistant professor teaching game design and development at the university. In Variant: Limits, players work to save a fictional planet from imminent destruction by assisting the game’s protagonist in solving a series of increasingly complex calculus problems. Prompts within the game allow students to refresh themselves on theory or firm up the concept...

Many grade- and high-school teachers remain hesitant to use social media as a learning tool. Just 16% of the 1,000 K-12 teachers who responded to a survey from the University of Phoenix said they use social media in the classroom, while 56% said they don’t use it at all and have no plans to start. Most teachers in the survey (83%) worry about conflicts from social media interaction and 35% said they had experienced issues with either students or their parents through social media. At the same time, some see the classroom as the right place to discuss social media. “In the classroom is the perfect opportunity to talk about how we behave, what is ethical inside and outside our classroom, and what that entails,” said Pam Roggeman, academic dean at the institution’s College of Education. “Its fun and it’s interesting, but it brings with it a large responsibility.” The survey also found that 63% of teachers said they use technology every day and another 25% use it at least once a week. At ...

Another new entrant to textbook publishing hopes to make course materials more affordable by focusing on an online platform. Lead Winds , of Newnan, GA, provides device-agnostic online, chapter-by-chapter access to its textbook, an audiobook version of the title, and study notes for each chapter, as well as video tutorials and videos of students sharing tips on the content. The cost is $35 per student, although if an institution opts for inclusive access as part of tuition, that price tag can be even lower. The company has two titles ready for the summer and fall 2018 terms, The Exceptional Writer  (English composition) and The Exceptional Speaker (public speaking), with more in the pipeline for release in 2019. “This product is designed to meet students’ needs academically and financially,” says co-founder Brent Mayes. “It fits visual, aural, verbal, logical, and solitary learning styles. And it is accessible on all devices, so the materials travel with the students and are presen...

Just over two-thirds of K-3 teachers reported that on at least one occasion they’d refrained from assigning homework because they didn’t think all their students had access to the technology or digital media needed to complete the work. That percentage was even higher for schools serving a greater number of low-income students. In the same online survey of educators and parents, conducted last year by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Center for Early Learning, 40% of parents said that challenges with home technology access hampered their children’s ability to stay on pace with their peers. Based on the survey and in-person conversations with parents, the foundation suggested five strategies for how instructors can help bridge the school/home “device gap”: 1. Inform parents about how their children are using technology and which digital media are being used in the classroom. 2. Recommend specific programs and apps students can use at home to complement what’s being used at sch...

A survey of 1,000 higher-education instructors found that 32% said they suspected students of turning in work that was done by someone else. The study also noted that two of three instructors said they didn’t act on their suspicion because of “insufficient evidence.” Plagiarism-detection services are available to combat ghostwriting services. One online firm, Turnitin, is launching a new product later this year, called Authorship Investigation, that uses machine-learning algorithms to alert instructors to assignments potentially written by someone other than students in their class. Just having such detection technology could deter students from hiring others to do their homework, according to Derek Newton, in his eCampus News report on combating contract cheating. However, he also pointed out other ways to stop cheating that don’t require an investment. Assigning students to do at least one writing assignment during class makes it easier to spot cheating on writing done outside the c...

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a way to detect when students using personalized learning software start to daydream . By using machine-learning algorithms on recordings of student eye movement, the researchers were able to figure out which eye patterns were associated with the mind wandering. The study found that when students’ eyes matched “zoning out” patterns, they were less focused on the work than those students who showed “not zoning out” patterns. It also noted that when students were paying attention, their eyes bounced around the screen more. “When you’re zoning out, you’re just fixating,” explained Sidney D’Mello, leader of the University of Colorado research team. “You’re not moving on.” The study could lead to instructional software that monitors mind wandering in real time. That troubles Jill Barshay, a contributing editor for The Hechinger Report who writes about education research and data. “Do we really want to curb mind wandering?” s...

Last week, the watchdog group Common Sense Media and the Center for Humane Technology —a nonprofit formed by several former Facebook and Google employees—launched a multiyear “Truth about Tech” campaign to increase awareness of the addictive nature of smartphones and other electronic devices and of social media. Beginning with ads targeting 55,000 public schools in the U.S., the campaign aims to engage educators, parents, kids, legislators, health officials, and tech manufacturers on the dangers of constant connection. The aim is not simply to warn but also to encourage changes in behavior and in how devices are designed and marketed. Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and a former design ethicist at Google, told CBS News , “The truth about what’s happening on the other side of the screen is that this is happening by design. There’s a whole bunch of techniques that are deliberately used to keep the auto-play watching on YouTube to keep you watching the next...

Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, challenged readers of his Study Hacks blog (dedicated to exploring “how to perform productive, valuable, and meaningful work in an increasingly distracted digital age”) to cut out all digital interaction that wasn’t crucial to their job or personal/family life for the month of January. After that, they could gradually resume interactions that still seemed to have value. Of the almost 2,000 people who said they’d try the unplugging experiment, many reported exploring new hobbies, as well as discovering just how dependent they’d let themselves become on phone apps and websites. Newport’s challenge is part of a growing debate on the role social media and digital technology play in our lives and their impact on society. At the beginning of the year, the investment management firm Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System sent a letter to Apple , asking the tech giant to consider...

At the end of January, Google for Education unveiled a beta program that will allow instructors and students to craft their own immersive virtual-reality (VR) experiences using a Google app and a 360-degree camera. Many classrooms already employ the Google Expeditions teaching tool to explore the world and outer space virtually via mobile devices and VR viewers. However, a “create your own” experience was the feature most requested by students and educators. The beta will allow participants to upload 360-degree images to the Google app and then annotate them with videos, two-dimensional images, and descriptive text to enhance the experience. Ease of use is designed into the program. “If you know how to type, you’re good to go,” Jennifer Holland, lead program manager for Google Expeditions and G Suite for Education, told Education Week . For schools that don’t have their own 360-degree cameras, Google will loan them devices for the duration of the beta.

A college classroom with the lecturer in front addressing students seated at rows of desks may no longer be the best way to deliver a quality education. In fact, research done at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point found the lecture model is outdated for the digital natives now on campus. To address the issue, the University of Arizona, Tucson, began investigating evidence-based learning and launched a pilot that used objective data to design courses featuring shorter lectures and class activities. The next step was a collaborative learning space (CLS), a large room with portable furniture and tabletop whiteboards that allow students to interact easily with each other. “Faculty across campus began seeking out opportunities to teach in our CLS,” Jane Hunter, director of academic resources and special projects, wrote in a column for eCampus News. “They tried new strategies they had never been able to successfully implement. They found new joy in teaching which, in turn, ignited stu...

Forty-two percent of Black Friday shoppers placed their orders via smartphone this year, while 49% used a laptop or desktop computer, according to Fortune magazine. That marks the first time computers accounted for less than half of all online orders made the day after Thanksgiving. As mobile gains on the shopping front, the same is happening in the classroom. Although students still prefer laptops to mobile devices, that preference may tip in mobile’s favor in as little as three years if ownership trends and technological advances continue at their current pace, according to the New Jersey Institute of Technology . In 2010, 88% of U.S. adults aged 18-29 owned a computer, but that number had dropped to 78% by 2015. At the same time, smartphone ownership in that age group surged from zero in 2010 to 86% by 2015, and tablet ownership shot from 5% to 50% over the same period. As mobile devices become capable of doing more things that computers do, they are likely to supplant them as devi...

At the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, students who enroll in a special course taught by Justin McDaniel, professor of religious studies, get to experience a taste of the monastic life, including a vow of silence. In what may be even more of a trial for digital natives, they also relinquish use of their phone, texts, Internet, computer, TV, and radio for a month. Rather than phone-addicted students running the other way, the pool of applicants is larger than the class can accommodate. The tech abstinence extends beyond just the course, which is called Living Deliberately: Monks, Saints, and the Contemplative Life. They aren’t supposed to speak to anyone, including family, classmates, or even professors teaching other classes (in the event of an emergency, they can speak to family members, police, or health-care workers). They can’t use the web or computers for other classes either, having to acquire printed copies of readings and use handwritten notes to communicate with inst...

Video technology is being used in 99% of higher-ed classrooms, which is leading to an increase in student achievement and engagement , according to a new survey of more than 1,000 educators, administrators, students, IT and media staff, and instructional designers. The State of Video in Education 2017 found that 99% of institutions reported their instructors regularly incorporated video into their curriculum. More than 70% of the responding institutions said they used video technologies for remote learning and teaching. The report also noted that 93% of respondents said they believed video increased student satisfaction and 85% reported an increase in student achievement. Another 70% said video increases a sense of affiliation with alumni and 78% added it makes onboarding new employees smoother. Nearly half of the respondents said a video solution was integrated into their school’s learning management system and 15% use video tools built into the LMS. Ten percent said they had no vide...

Recorded human communication began with cave paintings and then grew into murals and hieroglyphs before developing into written alphabets. In some ways, digital technologies and social platforms are taking communication back toward its visual origins. In a commentary in T.H.E. Journal earlier this year, Cathie Norris, a professor and chair in the School of Information at the University of North Texas, and Elliot Soloway, a professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, noted that K-12 students spend far more time with text-based materials in school and far more time with image-based materials outside the classroom. With an average of about 2.5 billion daily Snaps on Snapchat, and more than 400 million daily users partaking of Instagram’s shared photos and videos, it’s no surprise that today’s digitally savvy students are gravitating toward “picting,” the use of images instead of words to convey information and ideas. Picting is an emergent form of literacy, bu...