1. HOW PEOPLE LEARN PANEL: ATTENTION AND SOCIAL MEDIA Susan Ravizza

2. How does attention improve or worsen recall of information? Attention and Memory

3. Two kinds of attention  Voluntary – you decide where you are going to place your attention  Effortful  Involuntary – your attention is captured by novel or salient information  Automatic

4. Voluntary attention  Selection of important information  Ignoring distracting information

5. Involuntary attention You just won 5 million dollars!  If drawn to irrelevant information, can hurt memory performance

6. Involuntary attention  Important information might not get into memory  Might “overwrite” information that is already in memory  Can it help improve memory if captured by important information?  Example: Is your memory better for loud commercials?

7. My research  Using “tricks” to capture attention to important information can be useful when voluntary attention may be diminished  Recall improves for items at the end of a list when: Presented at a surprising location Presented in an “important” color

8. Social media & Multi-tasking The iGeneration

9. Media multi-tasking  Prevalence of portable iDevices and laptops in classroom  Students are multi-tasking in class often with social media like Facebook, texting, IM, Twitter  845 million monthly active users of Facebook  483 million daily active users of Facebook

10. Voluntary attention  Students can decide to check facebook or tweet moving their attention away from class material

11. Effect in classroom  A study of texting in class (Ellis, Daniels, Jauregui, 2010)  Undergrads in their first accounting class  Lecture followed by unexpected quiz  Half of the students asked to text their professor 3 times  Other half, no texting  Quiz scores of texters are lower than non-texters Not dependent on GPA

12. Involuntary attention  Many social media tools draw our attention automatically  Buzzing cell phones  Facebook/twitter alert boxes

13. Can social media be used effectively in classroom?  50 ways to use twitter in the classroom  Could help shy students ask questions?  Capture their attention back to class by tweeting material?  May lose control of classroom  More evaluation is needed

14. Summary  Attention to material is important for committing that information to memory  Involuntary attention that is drawn to relevant information can improve memory  Lots of competing sources of information in classroom  Best to find a way to work with this technology