By Stephen Beech via SWNS
One-minute mobile phone breaks could help keep students more focused in class, according to new research.
A term-long experiment showed that allowing college students to use their phones for just 60 seconds could result in less mobile use during lectures – and higher test scores.
Phones can be useful tools in classrooms to remind pupils of deadlines or encourage more exchange between students and teachers.
But they can be distracting with students using their phones for non-academic purposes as often as 10 times a day.
Researchers in the United States investigated if letting students use their phones for very brief amounts of time – dubbed phone or technology breaks – can enhance classroom performance and reduce mobile use.
Study first author Professor Ryan Redner said: “We show that technology breaks may be helpful for reducing cell phone use in the college classroom.
“To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of technology breaks in a college classroom.”
Throughout a full term, the research team evaluated the effectiveness of technology breaks, lasting one, two, or four minutes, respectively.
In some of the bi-weekly sessions, the researchers introduced equally long question breaks as a control condition. During the breaks, students were not allowed to use their phones but were encouraged to ask questions.
Both breaks occurred 15 minutes into the lecture element of class. In the study, phone use was defined as touching the phone.
The results, published in the journal Frontiers in Education, showed that when technology breaks were introduced, students generally used their phones less often than during sessions with question breaks.
During technology breaks lasting just one minute, phone use was at its lowest, making them most efficient at reducing the time students spent on their phones during class.
The researchers say it is not yet fully understood why that might be.
Redner, a researcher at Southern Illinois University, said: “One possibility is that one minute is enough to read and send a smaller number of messages.
“If they have more time to send many messages, they may be more likely to receive messages and respond again during class.”
The research team also found that in class sessions where one-minute breaks were in effect, students’ test performance peaked.
Higher average test scores (over 80%) were consistently observed.
Redner said: “Our hope is that it means students were less distracted during lecture, which leads to better performance.”
The researchers say that it is unlikely that students behaved differently knowing their phone use was monitored – an effect called “reactivity”.
Redner said: “Typically, reactivity occurs early in a study and its effects are reduced over time.
“We may see some in early sessions, but I am not convinced that we had much reactivity.
“At this point, students are probably used to using cell phones in the college classroom, also under the observation of the professor and other students.”
While the results point to the possible effectiveness of short technology breaks, the researchers said their data is hard to explain in its current state. For example, phone use data was highly variable among sessions, and it is not entirely clear why.
The team says further studies are needed to find the underlying reasons for high variability.
They also said that while phone use decreased in some of their experimental settings, it was not non-existent.
Redner added: “We are trying to find ways to reduce cell phone use and doing so without penalties.
“We hope our findings inspire researchers and teachers to try approaches to reducing cell phone use that are reinforcement-based.”
