Communication Currents

As many college professors stand before their class and look out into the sea of electronic devices, many of them may feel much like the teacher in a Charlie Brown episode, sounding like a muffled trombone to an absent audience. The attention span of the generation known as “digital natives” is one that is definitely hard to grab.

It is not necessarily their fault. In an interview done with Dr. Star Muir, communication professor at George Mason University, he spoke about how this new generation of students is changing the classroom and what teachers can do to adapt to these changes.

Muir, who received his Ph.D. in rhetoric and communication studies from the University of Pittsburgh, knows first-hand the changes that have occurred in the classroom when it comes to technology and the students who are products of it.

“The professor is no longer the only source of knowledge in the classroom.” In and outside of school students have laptops, tablets, and smart phones at their fingertips ready to receive information at a moment’s notice. Any information can be checked and possibly disputed because of the Internet. Because of this, students are more likely to do so.

The students are no longer, “just there to receive,” Muir said. This availability of the Internet causes students to second guess the teacher and many will speak up because of this. This can be helpful in opening up discussion in class but can also be disruptive to the learning process.

Growing up in the Internet age has also caused a loss of focus in today’s students, Muir said. It has caused students to have “continuous partial attention”. They now have a hard time focusing on just one subject at a time. Muir spoke of his teenage daughter and her study habits as she is approaching college years.

“She is listening to iTunes, she has Facebook open, she has her mobile phone with text, and there is a TV on in the background. There are multiple things she has going on simultaneously and she is scanning and paying attention to things as they happen,” said Muir. This repeated kind of activity causes students to have difficulty focusing on just one activity such as the teacher giving a lecture at the front of the room.

Muir explained the effect this increase of Internet use has on the brain by giving an example of how research is done today. Students do not look through a card catalog and read multiple books anymore. Most people will Google the information they are looking for and are presented with a series of links.

“The mind starts to say, wow! Another link, cool, that is what feels good. That is where I get my reinforcement,” Muir said. The brain then gets a release of dopamine and it trains the brain to prefer this type of information receiving. This makes it very hard for teachers to compete for attention in the classroom. There are, nevertheless, ways to use technology and teaching methods that work with this new way of thinking and learning.

Muir is a faculty cohort member with the center for consciousness and transformation at Mason. They focus on meditation and a practice of well-being to achieve a more successful focused lifestyle. Muir is interested in helping students to train themselves to be more focused.

“Students these days don’t have environments where it is conducive to focus or meditate,” said Muir. Teachers can try one of the techniques he uses in his rhetorical communication class to help students learn to focus better. He likes to have writing exercises that follow the contemplative thought process. 

Muir does this by changing the atmosphere of the classroom by either playing soothing music on Pandora or even playing classical guitar himself. According to Muir, this puts the students in a more contemplative frame of mind before writing their assignment and allows them to better plan their work. When teachers are assigning work they should keep this in mind and try to develop techniques that allow students to practice better focusing methods.

There are many other ways for teachers to communicate and hold the attention of this digital generation. Muir states that with the, “changing of the guard,” to a younger generation of teachers, we will see more of an attempt to use these techniques and practices that they themselves have grown up with. The technology boom in the classroom began with an overload of PowerPoint presentations and teachers asking for blog postings to integrate new ideas.

Muir suggests that students do not necessarily like these methods and they can also be difficult for teachers to manage. What is more popular now is the use of video from YouTube and other sources to show visual examples that can be integrated into the lesson plan. One suggestion Muir gives in regards to the use of videos and new technology is professors should screen for content before showing a class.

Everything can be accessed on the Internet and some media can be very offensive to people in both language and content. Despite the risk of possibly offending people, if a disclaimer is given and the situation is treated correctly, videos and digital media can be a very successful teaching aid.

Some advice Muir has for teachers today is to not be afraid to adopt new technology into the classroom. He says, “One of the hardest things to do, but one of the more important things, is don’t be afraid to bring technology into the classroom. Also, don’t be afraid for the class to know you are not the smartest person in the class when it comes to something.”

Muir says if there is something an instructor does not understand, he or she should feel free to ask a student as opposed to fumbling around wasting valuable class time. Technology should be used to benefit the class and the students learning process. If used creatively and correctly it can change the whole learning process of a class and can aid teachers in presenting information in a way that is more conducive to the digital natives’ way of thinking.