How to keep students focused in a laptop class

The studies people quote about laptops are real, and they are about lectures.

• Faryal Sana and colleagues had students attend a lecture with laptops. Those asked to multitask scored 11 percentage points lower on a comprehension test afterwards. Students who could merely see a classmate multitasking scored 17 points lower, and didn't realise they had been affected.
• Susan Ravizza and colleagues monitored the internet use of students in a real lecture course. Non-academic browsing was common and went with lower exam scores, even after accounting for motivation, interest and intelligence. Using the internet for the class itself brought no benefit either.
• Robin Kay and Sharon Lauricella compared classes where laptop use was left open with classes where it was structured around tasks. Structured use meant more time on academic work and less on email, messaging and games.

In the first two, the laptop was a note-taker in a lecture and nothing asked students to use it for the lesson; in the third, giving it structured work is what helped. Sana and colleagues call a ban "extreme and unwarranted" and suggest building the laptop into exercises in class. A hands-on class is that suggestion taken all the way.

Kay and Lauricella's conclusion is blunt: if you don't use laptops intentionally and meaningfully in class, students will use them for everything else. The answer in a practical class is a steady rhythm of short tasks, each ending in something students can check:

• "Add the style tag. You're done when your heading turns green."
• "Run the query. You're done when you get 12 rows."
• "Fix the formula in C4. You're done when the total matches the one on the screen."

A task with a visible result has a natural end, and the end is where you check who is through. A task with no clear end ("explore the menu for a while") is where the browser tabs open.

The lecture situation in those studies is exactly the part of your class where you explain. So keep explanations short, and for those few minutes ask for screens down or turned away. Then give the task and let the laptops open. Students who know a task is coming in three minutes listen differently from students facing an open-ended talk.

A projector helps here: put the step on the big screen while you explain, so students look up rather than down.

Sana's finding about bystanders matters more than the one about multitaskers: the student distracted by a neighbour's screen did worse, and didn't seem to realise it. A later study by Amanda Hall and colleagues found that neighbours learned less while the laptop user was off task than while they were taking notes, wherever they sat around the screen.

So a rule like "laptops at the back" protects less than you'd think. What protects the room is every screen being on the task. Tell the class about the bystander finding once: most people who drift don't know it costs their neighbours.

Walking the room to look at screens turns you into a monitor and gets you to the stuck student late. Watch progress instead: who has finished this task, and who hasn't moved in five minutes. The second group includes both the distracted and the stuck, and a quiet "how's it going?" helps either.

Keep the fast finishers busy too. A student who is done with nothing to do next is the one most likely to drift: plan an extension at the end of every task, such as a harder variant or a bonus step.

In Workshopy each student's screen holds one step at a time, with Done and Need help at the bottom, so every task has a clear end and a way to say they're stuck. Your screen shows a tile for each student on the current step (working, done or asking for help), so you see who hasn't moved without looking over anyone's shoulder.

With Look ahead on, fast students can continue to the next step; with Keep everyone on my step, the class follows you, and Bring everyone moves the whole room to your step when it's time to explain. Present opens the step on the projector, without names. Workshopy doesn't see what else is open on a student's laptop: it shows progress, not browsing.