Nursing as a Profession (Lecture)

In this seminar course, the professor felt that students were always engaged when they were taking about their past experiences. However, the professor felt that the students “checked out” as soon as she started talking. She had important content to share, however. She didn't believe that the students had ill intentions; indeed, she didn't believe that they knew that they were checking out at all. She wanted to help them learn to self-monitor their own attention levels.

She decided to use a Punctuated Lecture. She told students that she had some information to share with them that would take roughly fifteen minutes and noted that she would be using a slide deck because some of the information was visual. She asked students to take notes on the information. About ten minutes into her lecture, she showed a slide that read “on a scale of 5 to 1, with 5 being the highest level and 1 being the lowest level, rate your current level of attention to the lecture.” She noted some uncomfortable shuffling as students began to look up and read the question. Several acknowledged after class that they had not been paying as much attention as they should have been and stated their determination to do better in the future.

Sociology (Large Lecture)

In this course on sociology, the professor believed that students were being distracted by personal technology. He noticed that some students were checking social media sites as well as their personal texts during class. He knew that this habit distracted them from learning and believed that it distracted other students around them. He decided to use Punctuated Lecture to help draw student attention to the issue. During a lecture on inequality and stratification by social class, he paused the lecture for a minute and asked students to use their clickers to respond to a series of items:

Because students responded with clickers, their responses were anonymous. He thought this anonymity coupled with the large class size allowed for fairly honest responses. He noted that most students believed that they were listening to the lecture and looking at the lecturer when the lecture paused; his visual scan of the room did not confirm this assessment, however, so although he believed they thought they were paying attention, their multitasking was contributing to a lack of self-awareness. A few students acknowledged checking social media and texts. However, many students noted that they were distracted by other students' technology.

The professor used his own assessment as well as the survey results as an opportunity to discuss the importance of paying attention to the lecture for learning and for course success. He also described some of the recent research on multitasking that suggests that it detracts from learning. Finally, he talked about course citizenship and reviewed the course policy on technology use during class.

He began to implement the activity regularly. He alerted students when it seemed that they had not accurately self-assessed, and he congratulated them when they had and when their attention seemed to be at high levels. He noticed improvement in attention and fewer technological distractions over time.

Microeconomics (Video Lecture)

The professor of this online microeconomics course used the Punctuated Lecture to help students pay attention to the course video lectures. During a lecture on pricing, he discussed the factors that went into developing the pricing of the iPod. At about ten minutes in, he asked students to stop the video and respond to a quiz in the learning management system (LMS). The quiz asked students to rate their level of engagement in the lecture on a scale of 5 to 1, with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. He also asked students to reflect in their course journals on what they were doing during the lecture. He was surprised with several students' candor. Some reported caring for small children, others folding laundry, and others surfing the Internet. He sent a note to the class thanking them for their honest disclosures but also stressed the importance of giving full attention to the lecture. He continued using the activity and noted a decrease in reporting of distracting activities that coincided with an increase in quiz scores. These results helped him conclude that students were learning to better self-manage in his online course, and he shared this insight and the evidence of their improvement with them.