Does e-learning Create a Culture of Multitasking?
An advantage to the classroom, for me, if that I focus on the teacher. When someone isn't a good teacher, certainly my mind wanders, but it's usually to what skills need improving. There are limits to what can be done appropriately in a classroom besides being attentive. Enter e-learning: does it encourage multitasking because students are on their computers, which is where they already spend time playing games, reading email, etc? In Paying Attention to Attention, Michael Feldstein and I wrote, "Multitasking is not only common - many practice it with pride." I know from my own experience how easy it is to be distracted by other demands on my attention.
A Boston Globe article, Multi-tangle, points out that working memory is limited and that everything we do, even the things that seem automatic (with the exception of what we can do in our sleep like breathing), tax the brain. The article goes on to point out that multitasking is becoming part of our culture; which brings me back to my question: does e-learning create a culture of multitasking?
Comments
I am new to this site and currently encourage e.learning and am open to discussing the positive aspects of teaching within ICT KS3 and KS4
Posted by: Jules | October 28, 2009 01:44 PM
Is it that elearning causes increased multi-tasking or that multi-taskers tend to choose online learning?
Posted by: S. Keely | October 29, 2009 12:32 AM
Hi,
This question needs lots of discussion.I always support the e-learning but I am confused that how it can help to make culture of multitasking.
Posted by: Camera Bags | November 4, 2009 05:41 AM
I have read the full article based on the e learning and its effect on the culture of multitasking.I like post's information.I want to do e-learning and its aspects.
Posted by: omega 3 | November 5, 2009 11:56 PM
There was a “Talk of the Town” piece in this week’s New Yorker that struck me as relevant (“Here to There Dep.: Out to Lunch,” November 9, 2009); an excerpt:
“Studies have shown that multitasking, even of the law-abiding kind [the article is about texting and phoning while driving, flying airplanes, etc.], doesn’t work. You just perform each task less efficiently. Marshall McLuhan predicted that technology would sharpen our sense, but, instead, as the writer Michael Bugeja said last week, it seems to split them. (A few years ago , Bugeja, with a colleague, started writing an article called “Media Saturation Kills,” but he got distracted by another deadline and never finished it.)“
Posted by: Jill Duffy | November 6, 2009 03:39 PM
We've noticed a process of using multiple applications that students use when in class but I'm not sure multi-tasking is the right way to describe it. Students can be taking an online class using one application while getting more information via web/phone/im to help with that class. They are still focused on the class but using multiple sources of information at once to help them understand it.
Posted by: Shiv | November 18, 2009 05:39 AM