SURVEY (3/5) “Distance learning” 🕵️
8 seconds. It is now our brain's maximum attention span. At a time of overconnection and infobesity, our cognitive availability and the way we receive and digest information are disrupted. What about the transmission of knowledge? Do we have to script the Netflix generation courses to generate attention and promote learning? Many professors and educational managers are asking themselves this question and are redoubling their inventiveness in the face of their students.
Overconnected so deconcentrated?
The feelings of the professors are unanimous. In recent years, the concentration skills of their students have plummeted. All associate it with the same cause: the hyperstimulation of students, their overuse of screens, and their unlimited access to information. Denis Boissin, professor and deputy director of the Grande École program at Skema Business School, saw this phenomenon emerge 5 years ago: “The oversolicitation of students is very, very clear. At the slightest red dot on their screen, the gaze is averted. And they are unable to put their cell phones in their pocket for 1.5 hours.” A lack of concentration greatly exacerbated by distance learning, regret professors and students alike.
Unable to focus, students? Not so fast, explains American researcher Katherine Hayles. The emergence of new technologies has indeed changed the cognitive abilities of Generation Z. But it is a mutation more than a breakthrough. While until now, our societies have promoted the development of deep attention, new technologies have allowed the emergence of hyperattention, defined by “rapid oscillations between different tasks, between multiple flows of information, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom”. It is this hyperattention that characterizes the new state of concentration of “the Netflix generation” in the classroom, as Mathilde Gollety, director of the Master in Marketing and Communication at Panthéon-Assas University, remarks: “Students are now able to process information simultaneously: being on Facebook, listening to a teacher, responding to a text message”. A “multitasking” that comes at the expense of the deep concentration necessary for learning: “Often, I put myself under the illusion that I can listen to a course and read an article at the same time, but I can't do either one or the other” admits Fiona Steffan, a Master's student in Biology at ENS Lyon.
This is reassuring: students are therefore not unable to concentrate. They have developed a new type of intelligence, a real survival strategy in an environment saturated with information. Defending deep attention as a unique learning model would therefore not be wise. On the contrary, the philosopher and specialist in cognitive sciences Nathalie Depraz invites us to make the most of the new regime of hyper-attention among students and to value attentional pluralism in the classroom.
“At the slightest red dot on their screen, the eyes are averted. “👀
Hyperattention, hyper-fragmentation and hyper-scripting
To ensure student concentration and create a truly learning experience, some teachers are ready to pick up students on their own land. “It is up to me to take into consideration their way of learning” explains Thierry Picq, professor at emlyon, “so that they will remember as much as possible from my course”. A pedagogical renewal initiated by numerous professors, with two watchwords: fragmentation and screenwriting.
No more imposing on students sessions of 3 hours of “top-down” courses. Now, it's a question of sequencing the courses into several parts. Theory, practical case, presentation, group work... The modules of 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour follow one another, interspersed with regular breaks. A way like any other to blend in with the “swipe era” and to give a chance to students who drop out during the session to dive back into it, explains Jean-François Detout, Scientific Director of the Master in Marketing Data and Electronic Commerce at Skema Business School.
Bertrand Augé, professor of management at ESC Pau, goes so far as to talk about scripting his course: “Students manage to keep their attention in front of dense audiovisual content. In the same way, courses should be thought of like a script in order to keep students focused. We need real thought about how we are going to speak, add breaks, script the content, introduce a video or an intervention.” A bias shared by Thierry Picq, according to whom “teachers, in the future, must be screenwriters and put on 1h30 student shows, while captivating their audience”.
“In the future, teachers will have to be screenwriters and put on learning shows. ” 🎭
Making your course “binge-watchable”: a false good idea?
Certainly, students who are fans of binge watching know how to stay focused for hours in front of a series. However, should you borrow from platforms like TikTok and Instagram their tips for attracting the attention of current students? By drawing too much on the logic of fragmentation and screenwriting, we risk falling into the “netflixization” of courses to make them addictive products.
Mathilde Gollety is not reactionary. She is completely ready to revisit her teaching methods. But be careful! “You don't consume a course like you consume a movie” she firmly recalls. To learn, the student must be in an active posture. “Fragmentation or scripting of courses is not beneficial if they rhyme with the economy of student attentional effort.”
Grégoire Borst, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Paris and director of the Laboratory of Psychology of Development and Child Education (LaPsydé — CNRS), also invites professors not to model their course on attention-grabbing strategies that are already omnipresent outside of school. “There is evidence that overstimulation does not help the brain determine what relevant information is coming out,” he explains. A course that sends as many stimuli and requests as a telephone would therefore be counterproductive.
“You don't consume a course like you consume a movie. ” 🎬
From the transmission of knowledge to the development of skills
It is necessary to arouse the curiosity and attention of students, without oversoliciting them. You have to offer them interesting and entertaining content while putting them in an active position and requiring effort on their part. Courses must be sequenced without levelling from the bottom. The professors are complying with the injunctions. Fortunately, social and cognitive sciences offer solutions to deal with the new attention capacities of students and reinvent educational models. No magic tricks, no magic bullet. But there are some lines of thought that need to be explored further.
To adapt to the cognitive transformations of the Netflix generation, American researcher Katherine Hayles recommends a new approach to the humanities, focused on solving problems rather than on the transmission of content. It is therefore a question of completely rethinking research and teaching in a more interdisciplinary approach combining human sciences and hard sciences. Extensive program.
On the contrary, Grégoire Borst invites us to turn the problem around. According to him, the subject of the fall in the attention span of students is a “false debate” that “makes us miss the very basis of the pedagogical paradigm changes that should be put in place”. The real question lies in the intrinsic motivation of students: “when students have a mobile phone in their pocket that gives them access to all the knowledge in the world in 15 milliseconds, and your course is about transmitting knowledge, what is the motivation for students to listen?” It is therefore not the format of the courses that must be changed, but their content. This means completely rethinking the role of the school. To move from a knowledge transmission model to a skills development model.
