Tag: monitoring students

Teaching Tip: Dealing with Students Multitasking in Your OM Class

The amount of multitasking students do during our OM classes and while studying is alarming. More than 85% of students in surveys nationwide say they have their phones on in class, are looking at texts as they come in and during class, and 70-90% say they respond to texts in class. And this is happening in courses with policies that prohibit cell phone use!

But this also happens when students study outside of class.  In one study where students were observed for 15 minutes, they were only on task (that is, studying what they were supposed to be studying) 65% of the time. In another study, where a 3-hour study period was carefully monitored with camera and eye tracking devices, students were distracted by media unrelated to studying 35 times.

Research studies have shown over and over that task switching and multitasking compromise learning outcomes. Students who use devices when they study and/or when they’re supposed to be listening, perform less well on quizzes and exams, and they receive lower course grades overall. Surely, if students knew how these devices were lowering their grades and diminishing their learning they would change their behavior.

But in two new studies cited in Faculty Focus (Jan. 31, 2018), educational interventions astoundingly failed to change students’ behavior.  In response to direct questions about the effects of multitasking, students were fully aware of the potential harms. They believed that their grades would improve if they paid better attention in class and the majority reported that they were motivated to improve their grades. What seems to be keeping the phones on is the high anxiety students feel when they’re off and how dependent they have become on these devices. (And are faculty totally immune?)

Learning is at stake, and we still have a lot to figure out.

Teaching Tip: Why Students Should NOT Skip Your OM Class

class attendance“Skipping class undetected for a game of ultimate Frisbee might become a thing of the past as more universities adopt mandatory-attendance policies and acquire high-tech trackers that snitch when students skip,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Jan.14, 2015). The moves reflect the rising financial consequence of skipping too many classes and, consequently, dropping out. More than 4 in 10 full-time college students fail to graduate in 6 years. Many are stuck with crippling student debt and no credentials to help them pay it back. In response, schools are under pressure from taxpayers and parents to increase retention and graduation rates.

“Attendance is the best known predictor of college grades, even more so than scores on standardized admissions tests,” says an Iowa State prof who studies the subject. The correlation is particularly high in science, engineering and math. And grades, in turn, seem linked to graduation rates.

At Villanova, student monitoring through ID cards has been in place in some form since 2007. At Harvard, lecture halls were secretly (and with some controversy) filmed to gauge attendance. Among lectures monitored, attendance averaged 60%, declining from 79% as the semester began to 43% as it ended. Attendance also fell more than 10 percentage points over an average week. Courses that incorporated attendance into the final grade averaged 87%, compared with 49% for those that didn’t.

As online interactions have grown, schools have realized they have a trove of new data to look at, such as how much a student is accessing the syllabus, taking part in online discussions with classmates and reading assigned material. MyOMLab can help with some of this tracking, benefiting both you and your OM students.