Sesame Street and Laptops in Class

Malcolm Gladwell offers in the Tipping Point concepts to consider in a laptop environment. Gladwell contends, among other things, that small changes in environment can cause large changes in behavior. I would like to explore using his ideas in our laptop environment. One of his examples is the clean-up of the New York subway system. As he recounts it the system in the 80s was essentially a ‘rat hole.’ Its cars were filled with trash, the trains were slow, the level of petty crime and annoyance high. To paraphrase him, many people acted like rats because they were in a rathole. The fix occurred when authorities went after petty crime, notably turn stile jumping and graffiti painting. Using different techniques the authorities effectively ended both activities and, so the account goes, other crime decreased. In Gladwell’s terms, changing the environment changed the behavior and that change because authorities found a way to ‘tip’ the actions and eventually the attitudes.

As I read the book I kept wondering whether the tipping point concept could be applied to the laptop issues that are apparent at Stout. Depending on whom you talk to, on the negative side, the essential issue is that students display an insulting lack of respect by using laptops to distract themselves from the content being covered in the class, or they put themselves in the inattentive position of not learning what they should learn. Still, before I go on, I need to point out that the DLE surveys conducted by BPA indicate a high degree of satisfaction with laptop involvement in learning. Students point to areas such as posting course content, organizing course content, providing feedback, and extending the classroom outside of class time. Interestingly that list of responses essentially contains items that function outside of class not inside class, which is where the usage issue I am focusing on occurs.

Anecdotal and some empirical evidence indicates a wide range of attitudes and actions. Instructors have told me that they have no policy and let students use laptops however they wish, that they have the class make the rules about laptop usage, that they force students who intend to distract themselves to sit in the last two rows, that they have converted to finding ways to focus class activities on laptops’ capabilities, that they refuse to allow any laptops in class, that they have covers up and covers down periods in a class, that they police usage and deny continued usage to individuals who get caught often enough. I have heard much less from students. In at least two places they reveal some of their attitudes. In the Digital Learning Environment Survey Spring 2009 report (BPA, http://www.uwstout.edu/bpa/ir/surveyresults/laptopfin09.pdf p. 31)some students indicate that they are annoyed and distracted by other students surfing. In the Speech Academic Transformation Project report (http://www3.uwstout.edu/ntlc/OnCampusOpportunities/upload/ATP-Final-Report_Fundamentals-of-Speech.pdf) a majority of students reported at least some use. The most frequent responses were occasionally or seldom, roughly 65%. Never received about 20% and frequently received about 15%. Also in the Speech ATP report students indicate that they do not feel that they miss any of the content of the class, essentially maintaining that they can pay attention to two things at once. Overall, the majority of students [roughly 70%] … reported disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that they missed important class information while on non-related websites during class. But that means 30% either agreed or strongly agreed that they missed course content. At least one group has complained to the chancellor about other students’ usage for non-class related sites.

At one point Gladwell discusses children’s attention to television. He is interested in the topic because he is explaining ‘stickiness,’ the quality of any message that makes it memorable. He indicates that in the early years of the Sesame Street program researchers tested how distraction affected comprehension. The researchers discovered that children derived the same level of comprehension of content as they watched the show regardless of whether they were in a room full of toys as they watched (and played with the toys) or in a room that had only the tv to watch.

The study he references was conducted by Lorch, Anderson and Levin. As the authors speculate on the meaning of their findings, they contemplate one possibility that that could explain the children’s retention of information about the show: “we suggest that children monitor the sound track primarily at a superficial level of detecting the presence of auditory attributes which indicate informative content or which indicate changes in content (726).” In other words the children had learned to listen for certain cues, somewhat like the situation of being drawn out of one conversation when you hear your name mentioned in another conversation. Lorch suggests that children learn to listen for signal words or cues “for informative and comprehensible program content” which thus “elicit[s] their full attention (726)”

They further speculate that children pay attention to the visual imagery (the tv show on screen) “until the content becomes either incomprehensible, redundant, or not otherwise visually and auditorily attractive…at which time the children return to their alternative activity (726).” And lastly, for this piece, they indicate that “those portions of the program which were most poorly understood received relatively low attention whereas those which were better comprehended received relatively high attention (725)”.

As I read the previous sentence, I wondered if we could substitute for ‘comprehension’ the terms ‘cared about’ and ‘related to’ and find that the same phenomenon exists in our courses. On the other hand, does this study indicate something about the relationship of comprehensibility and attention? Do we give incomprehensible class times? Granted the students in this study were pre-schoolers, still, is there a chance that considering this work would help us find ways to view the laptop learning issues other than many of the ways now in the culture?

Is it possible to tip the situation so that the emotion goes away? Instructor attitudes seem to revolve around How dare you and student attitudes seem to resolve around Whatever. Can we affect the situation in any way? First, I suppose we could find out how many of each group have that attitude. Second we could propose or activate a strategy to tip the situation so that it feels and acts like an effective learning situation for both instructors and students.

Could we just ask a large number of students ‘Why do you surf while you are in class?’ And could we probe to find out if they are bored, disengaged, listening for cue words, not comprehending the material, actually feeling disrespectful, simply following their instincts? Could we ask instructors about their emotions and policies in laptop classrooms? What complexities both personal and professional would we find in those results?

Lorch et al suggest, not very specifically, that “At least for preschool children, the most effective production strategies appear to be those which enhance comprehension and thus, also, visual attention.” (726) Well, sure, but what would those ‘enhance comprehension’ strategies be? Clarity? Organization? Examples? Narratives? Sesame street approaches?

Academic Transformation Pilot Project for Fundamentals of Speech. [UW-Stout]. June 2009. Prepared by Wendy Marston and Amanda Brown. Available at http://www3.uwstout.edu/ntlc/OnCampusOpportunities/upload/ATP-Final-Report_Fundamentals-of-Speech.pdf
Digital Learning Environment Survey Spring 2009. UW-Stout BPA, July 2009, Available at http://www.uwstout.edu/bpa/ir/surveyresults/laptopfin09.pdf)
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. New York: Little, Brown, 2002.
Lorch, Elizabeth Pugzles, Daniel R. Anderson and Stephen Levin. The Relationship of visual Attention to Children’s comprehension of Television. Child Development, 1979, 50, 722-727.