Andy (00:03)
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel the Chief Operating Officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Kelly (00:09)
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today we're joined by Dr. Michelle Miller, professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University and an expert in attention memory and teaching in higher education. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Michelle Miller (00:23)
Thank you, it's great to be here.

Kelly (00:25)
Well, today we're going to focus on how faculty can help students stay focused and engaged in today's distraction heavy learning environment and what research in cognitive psychology can tell us about improving attention, participation, and long-term learning. Dr. Miller is an internationally recognized scholar whose work explores the intersection of psychology, pedagogy, and technology. She has spent over two decades teaching and conducting research at Northern Arizona University, where she also serves as a leader.

and initiatives focused on student learning and success. She's the author of several influential books, including Minds Online, Teaching Effectively with Technology, Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology, and A Teacher's Guide to Learning Student Names. Through her writing, speaking, and faculty development work, she has helped educators translate cognitive science into strategies that can be applied in the classroom. Michelle, thanks again for joining us today. I'm excited to get into our conversation.

Dr. Michelle Miller (01:19)
me to. It's definitely one of my favorite things to talk about and to connect with faculty about this issue of attention.

Kelly (01:26)
Well, then let's get into it and talk about what kind of what the state of the state is in terms of attention. But can you back up a little bit and ask what drew your focus into studying attention and learning? And then what are you seeing in the classroom today?

Dr. Michelle Miller (01:40)
Well, I mean, as far as my interest, and I'll tell you, this is the first thing that I dove right back into after completing MindsOnline over 10 years ago. said, I wanna revisit this attention issue. And so, I mean, like most of my work, frankly, that I put out there in the world, it starts with just that passion I have that comes from cognitive psychology, which I've devoted my academic life to because...

ever since I first encountered it as an undergraduate. It's really, really fascinating to me and I love to share that as much as I can. so I know from that work at our field that attention itself is one of the most enigmatic and complicated things when you actually get into it as far as the mind and in the brain.

And it's got this reach throughout so much of what we think about and what the mind does. I kid sometimes that it's like, the thing that's always the first on the scene, it's like the mind's first responder and nothing else interesting is gonna happen in our minds unless attention is there. So the more we research it, the more that we realize that how our minds work is just so much is mediated by attention. So there is that.

starts with that passion. And then there's that practical angle that there's so much that our students don't know about attention and people in general don't know about attention. And that has real practical consequences that we do see in student learning and how our classrooms work. So ⁓ right after Minds Online wrapped up, I started getting interested in developing some practically oriented teaching resources and collaboration with other folks at my institution who are also very

passionate about this subject that engage students in questions of just how critical attention is, why they should care about it. And something that I feel is very important, which is moving the conversation beyond where I know many of us start, which is you kids should put down your phones. mean, I don't think that the conversation really should stop there. So really kind of saying, how can we demonstrate what we're telling students about how focus is important, how once you have kind of accepted that message,

Okay, great. I want to put down my phone more or be more engaged in class. How do I do that when there's so much that's pulling me away? And then kind of pivoting off of that is it's always a good jumping off point to, and what are some really good study techniques grounded in cognitive research that can help you make the most of that hard-won, focused time that we all need?

Andy (04:19)
I think it's a really interesting perspective because there's a very good argument to be made that there's never been a time where more and more things compete for our attention. So let's just keep it on some sort of device, pick your device, even on that device, where do you go? How do you look at? There is constantly just a choice of messages that you could pick or choose depending on how you feel at that moment. With that, we're constantly being interrupted with

other messages that are telling us to take our attention away from what we're doing now and go do something else. And students oftentimes, whether it's a laptop or phone or somebody talking next to them on a laptop or a phone are constantly being interrupted. How is this environment affecting students' ability to stay engaged throughout the learning process?

Dr. Michelle Miller (05:13)
Here too, I like to also see it as a continuum that it's not just a student thing. my goodness. We just have to acknowledge, first of all, that this isn't just our students, it is all of us. I know for me, I feel that in my daily life that there's this porous boundaries around who can get a hold of me, what gets through it anytime. It's no longer, okay, when I'm in class, you know, my kids

My kids babysitter can't get a hold of me. Nothing gets through until ⁓ I come back to my office and open up the phone. So with that reality in mind, ⁓ staying engaged. It unfortunately isn't just as simple as we have to put the phone away. Some of the research out there that I find a little unsettling does demonstrate phenomena such as

we may be even more disrupted and distracted by notifications when we can't respond to them. I talk about this in some recent writing I've done. One study, it almost seems kind of diabolical to me. They took the research participants' phones away and put them where they could hear them but not see them, and then contrived to have them doing an attention task where actually their brainwaves are being monitored. And my goodness.

all the measures of inattentiveness and distraction through the roof. It's like, yeah, that can happen. So if I just drop my phone into the backpack and go, I'm going to be tough and not pay attention to it, and I can hear it or I am aware of it, then I'm in the same position or worse. even ⁓ there's a little bit of research on sort of the fear of missing out. This is among younger technology users, but I think the take home there is it

even if I'm off of, my social media, I'm still worried about who's liking my posts, what are people saying about me. So there too, just cutting the cord, so to speak, isn't necessarily a quick fix for that. So yeah, our students are grappling with something that can be challenging even to those of us with kind of the maturity and the experience to be able to deal with temptations of all kinds. And now they're in this situation.

And for some of them, they've also perhaps come from high school where these decisions were made for them. And they're looking around as we naturally do in a new environment saying, well, what's okay to do here? Well, if it's anything goes, well, maybe why wouldn't I be on my phone when things are getting challenging or uncomfortable or here's a concept that I'm having difficulty staying with, but I don't want to raise my hand. That's the environment. And that's what

I think we find ourselves in and find so challenging as instructors.

Kelly (08:05)
Michelle, I want to dig a little bit deeper into that. I know you're talking about the overall ⁓ idea of you can't just toss your phone aside. If it's still on, you're going to be distracted. So I want to talk about actually in the classroom. I know I've been in front of the class before, and I can visibly see students that are distracted. I sometimes feel like I'm talking to myself. They're not engaged. ⁓ So besides running across the room or screaming,

⁓ What are some techniques or other ways that you can set boundaries for appropriate technology use in the classroom strategies that maybe have worked and then things that haven't worked from your perspective?

Dr. Michelle Miller (08:48)
Yeah. And I have to say, the timing on this is so wonderful because we engaged just yesterday in my teaching practicum seminar, which has a group of very sharp graduate students all learning the literature and the techniques behind college teaching. And so we had quite a crackling discussion about exactly these issues yesterday and what are the different routes and the pros and the cons that go along with all of them. Now, I'd say across the board.

⁓ kind of taking those perspectives into account plus a real and growing literature on different policies and approaches to exactly this problem. The first thing I think as in a lot of aspects of teaching as I share with my students is to at least separate out and have that mindful distance from which is, you know, my interpersonal experience or even frankly my ego as a teacher walking in and yeah, to say how much of this is concern for learning.

⁓ who's distracting their neighbors as well as themselves potentially with the misuse of in-class technology and how much of it is like, I sat up half the night preparing this lecture and I know my stuff and I'm just seeing these rows of laptop lids, what's going on here? So I try to pull myself out of it. So while that isn't grounded in the form of literature, that's very much grounded in my wisdom of experience as an instructor. But once we've kind of crossed that boundary to say, here's where it really is about

the learning and the experience in the classroom. You know, the literature, the research that's out there, probably no surprise, shows that it's kind of a mixed bag as far as strict technology bans. And for many people, quite reasonably, that's their first instinct. It's like, I'm going to put something in my syllabus. And hinging too much on a strongly worded syllabus policy is always a little risky when it's something important. if we say, OK, no technology in class, like for example,

One of my students talked about his experience as an undergraduate with, if we see a phone out, I'm charging up and taking it away and calling you out in front of a hundred other students. And obviously there's a lot of reasons why that's not the way to go. But also some research talks about, my students also reminded me there were access issues. Let's say that I have an official accommodation and a very good accommodation and a very good reason to need a laptop. We have to take that into consideration.

But, you know, one of the ⁓ interesting practical, more recent studies on this issue, it's done by research team led by Laura Reinhart, talked about in a large psychology class where I think these issues really come to a head, right, when there's a lot of people and you can't really engage everybody all the time. They talked about what happened when they said, okay, this region of the classroom, you can have laptops and take your notes. If you have an accommodation, sit there on this,

part of the class, no laptop. So, you you set your preference and if you don't want to watch anybody else's laptop and all the stuff that's on it, then you have a choice. They found that when you do that in a front back configuration, which I frankly did once in the exact sort of classroom, that students right away will notice that, hey, I feel like this doesn't give me that same access. I literally feel marginalized in this class and student evaluations

took a hit and like it or not that's a real consideration for many of us career wise. So yes students didn't like it they pushed back. What they did is they tweaked it and they separated out to make a laptop no laptop side. Side by side not an issue. So there is that. Other researches you know other kinds of variations on bans or we're not going to allow this or there's going to be a penalty to have your phone out.

I would say part of that, what bubbles up out of that mixed pot of research is, yes, there are some positive impacts, not drastic ones, but positive impacts on learning, evidenced by, for example, better exam grades in sections where that's the case. But students do tend to push back, and students will sometimes say, yes, I think I did better, and no, I don't think that that rule is appropriate. And that's a dynamic that can be pretty problematic.

That's what we can say. I like to go with and also a lot of other experts like the collaborative, let's work together, let's talk about the why of this policy such as we're going to have it. So my hunch is that even a strict, we're not going to take notes on laptops, no phones allowed, that could actually fly without some of those negatives if we did put in the time upfront to say, all right, let's agree on this as a group.

And don't assume just because students are younger, they always have their phone, that they wouldn't be open to that. That's not been my experience. I've had many students talk about setting no technology zones in their own lives and benefiting from that.

Andy (13:49)
think it's an interesting approach to see what students will agree to and try to create the environment. But let's flip over to the instructor side. In the case of a learning environment, what can be done in curriculum design that helps students to stay mentally, physically, and emotionally engaged with both the content and the instructor throughout that learning experience?

Dr. Michelle Miller (14:14)
Yeah, and that's a wonderful question. And I think that's that kind of two-way street that we do need to see in this arena of teaching. Well, first off, I think what we do want to steer away from or even debunk are the idea of kind of magic numbers or magic formula limits. There's some wonderful work out there that people before me actually dug into, for example, the

10 minute rule, which early in my teaching career made it into as kind of received wisdom into teaching advice of like, well, here's how long students can pay attention, whatever that means. they would say, you know, after 10 minutes, nothing is learned. You have to do something else. No, our ability to pay attention in any given situation is not a fixed number. And boy, does it really depend on what you're doing and a

host of other factors. And in fact, in some of the writing that I have coming out, I challenge people to say that we don't even really subscribe to the idea of an attention span in my line of research. So get away from the like, okay, here's my numbers. So designing ahead of time though, for those changes of pace, and I know this is gonna be very intuitive for many of us, but the reminder that we need to do that is always really, really important. So finding the junctures,

where we can essentially, it's not a matter of just like, we have to entertain students like it's a TV show or something. That's not the point. The point is more, okay, where do we shift from I'm giving you information, I'm telling you to you're responding, right? Just think about it. Why do video games engage us? Lots of reasons, but one of them is that, ⁓ I have to do something, right? And that's going to naturally engage my focus. So trading that ball of like, okay,

I'm telling and I'm doing it and I'm doing all the work over here to what are you doing? So having that and feeling free to ⁓ be mindful of the time, but also being mindful of natural conceptual junctures because it can also do and should do double duty from the memory standpoint as well, a very related issue to attention, but ⁓ what do we know promotes memory for the course material?

actually having to use it and think about it and better than waiting until tomorrow or three days from now and then struggling with my homework, let's do it right now. So that is a wonderful multifaceted, multi-purpose teaching move. But we also have to have some presence in the classroom and that's one of the hardest things I see with the beginning teachers to develop. Also be looking around and have the thing in your back pocket of like, if the phones all did come out,

I'm not going to take that personally, but what is it about what's going on right now that we could maybe change the pace a little bit, turn it over, because maybe it's like, okay, I already got this content from you ⁓ and I don't need it, or I have no idea what this lady's talking about anymore. I'll figure it out later. And for now, I'm just going to go do my homework for my other class, right? So ⁓ that delicate dance of preparation and presence, I think can really, really help.

And sometimes too, let's not forget our online instructors. I'm always there to kind of put in a word too of like, yeah, it's fine to be reading lots and lots of content online. That's a good thing, fabulous. But how am I going to interrupt that flow as well to say, okay, page after page after page of text to say in a virtual environment, okay, what do you think of this? What are you going to do with this? Did you get it? Do you need to go back? Those are the junctures that I think are really helpful.

Kelly (18:03)
I love that idea of the intentional pause or if you want to call them like a, you know, a check in to make sure that your audience, your students are engaged and understanding. That kind of reminds me of a online training that I recently did. And if it was a, just a two hour training that I could log on and then, you know, just do it. I probably would have zoned out, but it required like every couple of minutes to answer a question. It was like, come back to your video game example. Like it required me to.

to interact and get something out of it. that same concept, I like how it's applying it to the classroom. Don't just talk at them. Don't just hope that they're understanding the back and forth. So yeah, that's a great example.

Dr. Michelle Miller (18:47)
And can I just interject here, Kelly, and say, ⁓ what a wonderful example of it's not just those kids and whatever's going on with them. If you've been in a training, let's be honest. And we have. There are things that we need to learn that are important, and our organizations are going, please, we put this together for you. And we're folding laundry and answering emails too? OK.

It really does show, but that also means that we can relate and we can be leaders and not just either nags or followers.

Andy (19:23)
It's interesting when I read this question in preparation for the podcast, it made me think of law school. And virtually every class in law school is taught with the Socratic method. And with the Socratic method, you would think everything is equal, like the element of surprise is there, the ability to stay on your toes. And it isn't, it isn't all equal. It's not just mixing it up. And there was one professor who stood above all of my law school's name was Professor Jagan.

Mahi rest in peace great person and he taught tax law Extremely unpredictable the classes that would fill up were the classes He wouldn't teach you had to take tax law so people would avoid those and you never knew going into class what professor Jagan might do and I found myself thoroughly engaged with the material always prepared always kind of if if you're talking about gamification It's almost like waiting for the train wreck

happen, like, my god, who is going to possibly be on the hot seat today? And then, above all, there was one day where Professor Jagan just it seemed very willy nilly starts asking these random questions of somebody we had to sit alphabetically. So he knew where everybody was, pointed at the person kind of made sure he was in the right part of the alphabet. And had like all these personal questions about the person and persons like, my god, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?

And at the time, the vice president and his wife both had graduated from my law school. And that was the chair where the vice president sat. And professor Jacob wanted to make a point that when the vice president was finally elected Senator, he had no clue who he was, even though he went to the law school and sat in his class. So ever since then, he's special attention to get to know that person a little bit in class.

And you're like, ⁓ my God, I thought I had seen everything in a class. And it's not that you needed to be entertained, but definitely the dynamic nature, fast moving nature of it. And you can say tax law. Well, yeah, that's what everybody dreams about learning about. Like, this was not a subject that people dreamed about learning about. Everybody avoided his class. I ended up loving it. So I just found that to...

kind of stick with me as we were talking about attention. I've never paid attention like I paid attention.

Mike (21:52)
Join us next week for the second half of our conversation with Dr. Michelle Miller. And remember, you can reach us by email at podcast@higheredjobs.com or send us a message on X, @higheredcareers. Thank you for listening. We look forward to talking soon.