Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.
This post looks at how multi-tasking in impacting student work. Although based on a recent study the post states that there is "a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitaskingwhile learning." The evidence shows "learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts."
After a brief review of a number of studies the post looks at information about the brain and multitasking as well as what might be done to help students prioritize.
Links to resources are provided within the article.