Phones can be useful tools in classrooms to remind students of deadlines or encourage more exchange between students and teachers. At the same time, they can be distracting: Students report using their phones for non-academic purposes as often as 10 times a day. Thus, in many classrooms, phones are not allowed.
Now, researchers in the US have investigated if letting students use their phones for very brief amounts of time – dubbed phone or technology breaks – can enhance classroom performance and reduce phone use.
"We show that technology breaks may be helpful for reducing cell phone use in the college classroom," said Prof Ryan Redner, a researcher at Southern Illinois University and first author of the Frontiers in Education study. "To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of technology breaks in a college classroom."
The shorter, the better
