Combatting Cyberslacking

Ever wonder just why you can’t focus in class, no matter how much effort you put into it? Why are my hands itching to hit that Facebook tab? Why can’t it stay closed? While the internet is a magnificent resource in this age of information, it is obviously an ill-advised class habit that we all could benefit from working on. To help shed light on why this phenomenon is so prevalent, researchers from a British University’s management school dug deep to investigate why their students, and beyond in all classrooms globally pursue these kinds of cyber behaviours.

Looking at this glaring issue through what's known as the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the researchers aimed to organize behaviours (underlying distracted internet use) into distinct categories to illustrate the reasons you and I so often hit that like button while the teacher rambles on about some equation or theory. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is a popular behavioural framework that allows one to peer into behaviour performance in different scenarios. As an apt model for this study, it portrays motivation as a key determinant in behaviours and splits up this concept into several constructs (which researchers investigated). Such constructs included lack of attention, attitude, and distracting others.

Attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, perceived threat, and escapism were of several behavioural patterns that lead to cyber loafing. Which stood out? Let’s start with apathy for course material and lack of attention. It’s apparent how these patterns can easily affect one’s attitude towards actively participating in class. That’s step one. What’s next? Social norms, perceived ease of getting away with slacking and escapism. These, alongside the overarching attitude, were most prominent in causing one to cyberslack. Now let’s focus on the opposing forces - which types of behaviours were preventative in nature? Distraction by other students and perceived threat were both patterns that actually reduced clicking on that Facebook tab.

So where can we start to address this issue? It’s evident that cyberslacking is rooted in the lack of interest or care in course work. This is where teachers and students can possibly collaborate to establish an active and engaging environment, rather than a typical dry lecture which can deplete our attention span quickly. Having a balanced class where teacher and student can both equally contribute to the discussion can ideally target the initial apathy for course material, and prevent the cascade to developing a negative attitude and consequent escapism to the cyber world. Ways classes can go about increasing engagement include multimedia based lectures, the use of iClickers and interactive quizzes, and flipped classrooms where students learn the material at home, and come to class to do activities (that are normally given as homework). It has also been a welcome notion where teachers have brought up research and awareness of the downsides of cyberslacking, to counteract attitudes and intentions of doing so. All in all, combatting cyberslacking will need to be a team effort by both students and teachers.

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Source:

• Rana, N. P., Slade, E., Kitching, S., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2019). The IT way of loafing in class: Extending the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand students’ cyberslacking intentions.Computers in Human Behavior, 101, 114-123. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.022