Applying SOAR Strategies to Curb Digital Distractions While Note Taking and Studying

2022 ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Linlin Luo ◽  
Kenneth A. Kiewra

Students are distracted by mobile technology in the classroom when learning from lectures and outside the classroom when studying. Students are susceptible to distractions because they are not fully engaged in learning. In the classroom, they record notes mindlessly that capture just one-third of important lesson ideas. When they study outside the classroom, they study information in a piecemeal fashion and employ mindless repetition strategies. These weak and unengaging learning strategies open the door for digital distractions. One potential means to engage students in meaningful learning and to offset digital distractions is an integrated strategy system called SOAR, which stands for select, organize, associate, and regulate. This chapter describes SOAR and how instructors can maximize SOAR's components to curb digital distractions by improving student note taking in the classroom and study behaviors outside the classroom. The chapter concludes by specifying how instructors can teach students to SOAR on their own.

Author(s):  
Trisha Gupte ◽  
Field M. Watts ◽  
Jennifer A. Schmidt-McCormack ◽  
Ina Zaimi ◽  
Anne Ruggles Gere ◽  
...  

Teaching organic chemistry requires supporting learning strategies that meaningfully engage students with the challenging concepts and advanced problem-solving skills needed to be successful. Such meaningful learning experiences should encourage students to actively choose to incorporate new concepts into their existing knowledge frameworks by appealing to the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning. This study provides a qualitative analysis of students’ meaningful learning experiences after completing three Writing-to-Learn (WTL) assignments in an organic chemistry laboratory course. The assignments were designed to appeal to the three domains necessary for a meaningful learning experience, and this research seeks to understand if and how the WTL assignments promoted students’ meaningful learning. The primary data collected were the students’ responses to open-ended feedback surveys conducted after each assignment. These responses were qualitatively analyzed to identify themes across students’ experiences about their meaningful learning. The feedback survey analysis was triangulated with interviews conducted after each assignment. The results identify how the assignments connected to students’ existing knowledge from other courses and indicate that assignment components such as authentic contexts, clear expectations, and peer review supported students’ meaningful learning experiences. These results inform how assignment design can influence students’ learning experiences and suggest implications for how to support students’ meaningful learning of organic chemistry through writing.


1989 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Shrager ◽  
Richard E. Mayer

Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Stowell ◽  
Jordan Tanner ◽  
Erin Tomasino

This article provides an overview of using mobile technology in the classroom to enhance assessment of student learning. Although research on mobile devices in education is still in the embryonic stage, students generally have positive views about using their mobile devices for classroom polling and backchannel communication. However, there are also several challenges including the increased opportunity to be distracted when using mobile devices for other purposes, cost of the technology, and privacy concerns. The information presented will serve as a focal point for future research regarding the use of mobile technology in the classroom, and may help teachers to find new ways to reach their students.


Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Kiewra ◽  
Linlin Luo ◽  
Junrong Lu ◽  
Tiphaine Colliot

Students are expected to know how to learn but rarely are taught the learning strategies needed for academic success. There is a long history of learning strategy research that has uncovered many effective and independent strategies students can use to facilitate learning and boost achievement. Unfortunately, researchers have been less successful in devising and promoting integrated and uncomplicated study systems students can employ. A prescriptive strategy system, SOAR, combines four simple and empirically proven strategies that can be readily employed by students for various academic tasks. SOAR is an acronym for the system’s four integrated components: Select, Organize, Associate, and Regulate. Briefly, select refers to selecting and noting key lesson ideas. Organize refers to representing selected information using graphic organizers such as matrices and illustrations. Associate refers to connecting selected ideas to one another and to previous knowledge. Regulate refers to monitoring and assessing one’s own learning. SOAR is based on information-processing theory and is supported by research. Five empirical studies have investigated SOAR strategies compared to students’ preferred strategies or to another strategy system (SQ3R) and found SOAR to be more effective for aiding learning and comparative writing. Specific means for how to employ each SOAR strategy are described such as recording longhand notes and revising them for select, creating appropriate graphic organizers for organize, generating examples and using mnemonics for associate, and using distributed retrieval and error analysis for regulation. Although research on SOAR is just emerging as of 2019, it appears an effective and simple means for directing students in how to learn and study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-61
Author(s):  
Stewart Waters ◽  
Matt Hensley

Mobile technology continues to change and evolve the way people and society function in their everyday lives. Much like the phenomenon that was the Internet 20 years ago, educators now find themselves facing increasing pressure to adapt classroom instruction to accommodate for new and emerging technologies. This article offers practical considerations from our own classroom experiences surrounding the benefits and barriers of incorporating mobile technology in social studies instruction. We provide readers with a rationale for the use of mobile technology in social studies classrooms, as well as general lists of benefits and barriers to using this technology in the classroom to hopefully assist educators in overcoming common fears associated with the use of mobile technology in the classroom.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
David De Jong ◽  
Trent Grundmeyer ◽  
Chad Anderson

More and more schools are implementing a 1:1 mobile device initiative for their students because the future of learning will have technology embedded within the curriculum. Teachers are often given the direction to utilize mobile devices in the classroom, but quite often educators do not understand the significance of this technology or agree with its purpose. The purpose of this study was to explore elementary and secondary teacher perceptions of mobile technology in the classroom. According to the survey results, elementary and secondary teachers feel positive about the uses and the importance of mobile technology in the classroom. These positive perceptions by teachers regardless of gender, age, and training indicate that schools should continue to allocate resources to purchase mobile devices for all students.


ReCALL ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
Chuan Gao ◽  
Hui-zhong Shen

AbstractThis article reports on findings regarding the learning strategies used by a group of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a mobile-technology-assisted environment. The research design is a context-specific case study using Dörnyei’s (2005) categories of learning strategies as the conceptual and analytical framework to guide data collection and analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a questionnaire from a sample of 75 Chinese EFL learners and a small-scale follow-up interview of five participants who completed the questionnaire. Data showed that a mobile-technology-assisted environment effected changes in Chinese EFL learners’ ways of adopting a particular set of learning strategies, which differed in type and frequency from those typical of a teacher-led and examination-oriented language classroom. Metacognitive and commitment control strategies were most frequently used by the respondents in this study. The frequency of student use of metacognitive strategies moved ahead of commitment and environmental control strategies. Satiation and emotion control strategies, rarely used by Chinese students in a teacher-fronted language classroom, were also observable. These findings have implications for the understanding and designing of mobile-technology-assisted learning for EFL learners to develop appropriate strategies for autonomous learning.


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