{"id":134424,"date":"2013-04-03T15:53:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T19:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=134424"},"modified":"2019-04-17T17:30:05","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T21:30:05","slug":"online-learning-its-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/04\/online-learning-its-different\/","title":{"rendered":"Online learning: It\u2019s different"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"\"

Ironically, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom, said \nHarvard Psychology Professor Daniel Schacter (left). Schacter and postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar's research on effective online learning will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\n\n<\/p>

Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tScience & Tech\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tOnline learning: It\u2019s different\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\tPeter Reuell\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tVarying lectures with tests improves attention, note-taking, and retention\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\t\t

The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such \u201cvirtual\u201d classes cut through the maze of distractions \u2014 \u00a0such as email, the Internet, and television \u2014 that face students sitting at their computers?<\/p>\n

The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.<\/p>\n

By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and Karl Szpunar,<\/a> a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Szpunar. \u201cThe question, basically, is how do we optimize students\u2019 time when they\u2019re at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?<\/p>\n

\u201cSome students I\u2019ve talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hourlong, online lecture because they\u2019re trying to combat all the distractions around them,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s going to save them time. This is one way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there\u2019s an absence of rigorous testing to back that up.\u201d<\/p>\n

To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.<\/p>\n

In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.<\/p>\n

In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cIn our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It\u2019s a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment \u2014 but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again \u2014 showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cYou need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they\u2019ll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s in the classroom or online, students typically don\u2019t expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on,\u201d Szpunar explained. \u201cBut if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they\u2019re able to absorb the material much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.<\/p>\n

Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures,\u201d he said. \u201cTesting intervention hasn\u2019t been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the very least, what this says is that it\u2019s not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they\u2019ve learned at some later point. I think it\u2019s going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren\u2019t paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, said Daniel Schacter, the William R. 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Schacter and postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar's research on effective online learning will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\n\n","mediaId":134426,"mediaSize":"full","mediaType":"image","mediaUrl":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040213_schacter_0526_605.jpg","poster":"","title":"Online learning: It\u2019s different","subheading":"Varying lectures with tests improves attention, note-taking, and retention","centeredImage":true,"className":"is-style-full-width-text-below","mediaHeight":403,"mediaWidth":605,"backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040213_schacter_0526_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">Ironically, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom, said \nHarvard Psychology Professor Daniel Schacter (left). Schacter and postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar's research on effective online learning will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","innerContent":["<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040213_schacter_0526_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">Ironically, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom, said \nHarvard Psychology Professor Daniel Schacter (left). Schacter and postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar's research on effective online learning will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n"],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-full-width-text-below centered-image\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/040213_schacter_0526_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">Ironically, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom, said \nHarvard Psychology Professor Daniel Schacter (left). Schacter and postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar's research on effective online learning will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\n\n<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Rose Lincoln\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tScience & Tech\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tOnline learning: It\u2019s different\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tPeter Reuell\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2013-04-03\">\n\t\t\tApril 3, 2013\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\t6 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tVarying lectures with tests improves attention, note-taking, and retention\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p>The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such \u201cvirtual\u201d classes cut through the maze of distractions \u2014 \u00a0such as email, the Internet, and television \u2014 that face students sitting at their computers?<\/p>\n<p>The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.<\/p>\n<p>By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and <a href=\"http:\/\/karlszpunar.com\/Karl_Szpunar_Webpage\/Karl_Szpunars_homepage.html\">Karl Szpunar,<\/a> a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Szpunar. \u201cThe question, basically, is how do we optimize students\u2019 time when they\u2019re at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome students I\u2019ve talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hourlong, online lecture because they\u2019re trying to combat all the distractions around them,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s going to save them time. This is one way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there\u2019s an absence of rigorous testing to back that up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.<\/p>\n<p>In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.<\/p>\n<p>In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cIn our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It\u2019s a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment \u2014 but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again \u2014 showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cYou need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they\u2019ll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether it\u2019s in the classroom or online, students typically don\u2019t expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on,\u201d Szpunar explained. \u201cBut if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they\u2019re able to absorb the material much better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures,\u201d he said. \u201cTesting intervention hasn\u2019t been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the very least, what this says is that it\u2019s not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they\u2019ve learned at some later point. I think it\u2019s going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren\u2019t paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p>The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such \u201cvirtual\u201d classes cut through the maze of distractions \u2014 \u00a0such as email, the Internet, and television \u2014 that face students sitting at their computers?<\/p>\n<p>The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.<\/p>\n<p>By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and <a href=\"http:\/\/karlszpunar.com\/Karl_Szpunar_Webpage\/Karl_Szpunars_homepage.html\">Karl Szpunar,<\/a> a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Szpunar. \u201cThe question, basically, is how do we optimize students\u2019 time when they\u2019re at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome students I\u2019ve talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hourlong, online lecture because they\u2019re trying to combat all the distractions around them,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s going to save them time. This is one way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there\u2019s an absence of rigorous testing to back that up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.<\/p>\n<p>In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.<\/p>\n<p>In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cIn our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It\u2019s a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment \u2014 but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again \u2014 showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cYou need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they\u2019ll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether it\u2019s in the classroom or online, students typically don\u2019t expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on,\u201d Szpunar explained. \u201cBut if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they\u2019re able to absorb the material much better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures,\u201d he said. \u201cTesting intervention hasn\u2019t been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the very least, what this says is that it\u2019s not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they\u2019ve learned at some later point. I think it\u2019s going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren\u2019t paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p>The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such \u201cvirtual\u201d classes cut through the maze of distractions \u2014 \u00a0such as email, the Internet, and television \u2014 that face students sitting at their computers?<\/p>\n<p>The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.<\/p>\n<p>By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and <a href=\"http:\/\/karlszpunar.com\/Karl_Szpunar_Webpage\/Karl_Szpunars_homepage.html\">Karl Szpunar,<\/a> a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Szpunar. \u201cThe question, basically, is how do we optimize students\u2019 time when they\u2019re at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome students I\u2019ve talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hourlong, online lecture because they\u2019re trying to combat all the distractions around them,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s going to save them time. This is one way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there\u2019s an absence of rigorous testing to back that up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.<\/p>\n<p>In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.<\/p>\n<p>In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cIn our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It\u2019s a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment \u2014 but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again \u2014 showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cYou need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they\u2019ll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether it\u2019s in the classroom or online, students typically don\u2019t expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on,\u201d Szpunar explained. \u201cBut if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they\u2019re able to absorb the material much better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures,\u201d he said. \u201cTesting intervention hasn\u2019t been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the very least, what this says is that it\u2019s not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they\u2019ve learned at some later point. I think it\u2019s going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren\u2019t paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p>The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such \u201cvirtual\u201d classes cut through the maze of distractions \u2014 \u00a0such as email, the Internet, and television \u2014 that face students sitting at their computers?<\/p>\n<p>The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.<\/p>\n<p>By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and <a href=\"http:\/\/karlszpunar.com\/Karl_Szpunar_Webpage\/Karl_Szpunars_homepage.html\">Karl Szpunar,<\/a> a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Szpunar. \u201cThe question, basically, is how do we optimize students\u2019 time when they\u2019re at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome students I\u2019ve talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hourlong, online lecture because they\u2019re trying to combat all the distractions around them,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they\u2019re doing, it\u2019s going to save them time. This is one way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains \u201cshockingly little\u201d hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there\u2019s an absence of rigorous testing to back that up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.<\/p>\n<p>In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.<\/p>\n<p>In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cIn our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It\u2019s a significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment \u2014 but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again \u2014 showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments,\u201d Schacter said. \u201cYou need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they\u2019ll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhether it\u2019s in the classroom or online, students typically don\u2019t expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on,\u201d Szpunar explained. \u201cBut if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they\u2019re able to absorb the material much better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures,\u201d he said. \u201cTesting intervention hasn\u2019t been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the very least, what this says is that it\u2019s not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they\u2019ve learned at some later point. I think it\u2019s going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren\u2019t paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134603,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/04\/fine-tuning-online-education\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":0},"title":"Fine-tuning online education","author":"harvardgazette","date":"April 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrew Ho, research director of HarvardX and an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, spoke with the Gazette about a recent study that found that interspersing online lectures with short tests improved student performance.","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/andrew_ho_hr.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/andrew_ho_hr.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/andrew_ho_hr.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":115720,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/08\/making-sense-of-memory\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":1},"title":"Making sense of memory","author":"harvardgazette","date":"August 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It happens to all of us: We think we learned of the Sept. 11 attacks from a radio report, when, in fact, the news came from a co-worker; we\u2019re sure the robber running from the bank was tall, when actually he was short; we remember waking up at 7 yesterday,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/120711_schacter_077-cr2_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/120711_schacter_077-cr2_.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/120711_schacter_077-cr2_.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":123132,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2012\/11\/william-kaye-estes\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":2},"title":"William Kaye Estes","author":"harvardgazette","date":"November 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on November 6, 2012, the Minute honoring the life and service of the late William Kaye Estes, Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, was placed upon the records. Professor Estes made pioneering contributions to many cognitive domains over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/estes_william_k_b_w2_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/estes_william_k_b_w2_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/estes_william_k_b_w2_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":59700,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2006\/05\/bad-times-make-for-more-accurate-memories\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":3},"title":"Bad times make for more accurate memories","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Pleasurable experiences are more fun to relive than negative ones, but a new study by psychologists at Harvard University reveals that memories of good times can be less accurate than those of bad times.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":333435,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2021\/10\/are-google-and-smartphones-degrading-our-memories\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":4},"title":"Are Google and smartphones degrading our memories?","author":"Lian Parsons","date":"October 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been 20 years since Daniel Schacter first published his groundbreaking book on memory errors. In a recent talk he discussed some of those new findings, including how technology is helping and hurting.","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IllustratiIllustration of brain running on a hamster wheel.","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Memory-art.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Memory-art.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Memory-art.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Memory-art.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":69293,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2001\/10\/mind-memory-and-the-mozart-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":134424,"position":5},"title":"Mind, memory, and the ‘Mozart effect’","author":"gazetteimport","date":"October 18, 2001","format":false,"excerpt":"They said the inaugural symposium on brain science would change our brains if we stayed awake, and they were right.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105622744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272002,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134424\/revisions\/272002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134424"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gazette-formats?post=134424"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=134424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}