where adjourned. >> good morning to organize regionally my name is key i act as part of the associate vice president and then to see a record number two take advantage and for the first time ever we had 1200 registrations. welcome to our returning attendees those who are turning into the keynote

address. it took a team to get us here so they and others would ask them to stand to be recognized for sense is not possible here with you can do so from home, please do. thank you for helping is various capacities please take a moment to thank them for their work. >> and to take a moment to recognize and also the

e-learning director for leading the congress. and then i can work with them and we also think university of missouri with a high-value teaching and learning at university and then to introduce the speaker so good morning everyone thank you for broadcasting the c-span. and we can stay healthy and safe. university of missouri

st. louis with a vibrant st. louis in person. with rich with history with institutions of higher education together and make that metropolitan region and the 19th annual focus on teaching and technology conference. that is remarkable. where we can exchange ideas and network with the excellence and the region and during those unprecedented times to continue to keep students engaged and on track for graduation and we all know that hasn't been easy. sharing ideas and strategies make the job a little later.

trump student learning it is my pleasure to welcome you to the keynote speaker professor of english and director at the center for teaching excellence. the author of several books and the most recent of which are everyday lessons from the science of learning i'm sure we will all agree our minds are distracted these days. without further delay please join me to bring a warm welcome to professor lang with the keynote address keeping in mind all challenges new contacts. >> thank you everybody. welcome sorry i can be in

st. louis. my wife is from st. louis. i would have loved to have been there. and webinars men trying to do with a five -year-old and to be focused. and to share my screen and talking a little bit to think

philosophically what it is why it's important to what we want to make attention to a teaching. or the bigger picture. so we should think about the idea and ecology have attention the essential task a teaching looking at that is a vast potential terrain and then to identify what is more important in the dream and

then attack on - - direct the attention of your students to that material and content in the scale one - - skills. so that is fundamental as teachers and how we conceive of our fundamental work the author avenue book and what he argues here i will argue as well today the students are not attending to the correct information and become the greatest talent or challenge is channeling and capturing the talent of her students.

that one of the things that we know this research on how people learn but that process starts if they do not pay attention to whatever it is they try to master that's a fundamental part of the learning process so this is a value and then to think very carefully about healthcare cultivating the attention of her students. and with a global pandemic region and with those professional challenges and

then we still need to be thinking about how to sustain the attention of her students. it's opening philosophical that not only our challenge to capture attention but that is made difficult by the fact of a limited capacity resource in our everyday lives as well to pay attention to this but not that. the fact over time and attention is more difficult to pay in a certain type of context we have this on a regular basis. so as michelle miller argues from arizona university that we are the stewards and she argues here the foundation for

everything we want to do as instructors but it is a precious limited resource we need to think of ourselves as stewards of the attention of her students. what we do to support the attention in the classroom and the biggest question and i got talk about distraction is what do i do about the devices so it kind of stewardship are we offering to her students? put your devices away. trying to take a proactive stance? i'm here to support you know

what i argue in the book. >> i like to begin our conversation by giving a historical context to the extent to which we are slowly degrading our ability have attention that you can no longer pay attention because we are so used to those devices and then to help us think more carefully about the kinds of solutions in order to have a stronger value in our teaching. so we go back a long way to aristotle that those that

cannot pay attention and then the substitute hear those arguments and the flute playing on your phone see you can see going back as far as we have back from aristotle to the ancient religious text people are expressing concern about the ability to stay focused especially on something as cognitive as listening along and arguing with those external temptations and we tend to default to those things and we support from the challenging things and go to the more pleasant thing that is easier. writing about this as well and

with the inability to pay attention when we want to we have the desire to listen into the argument but yet still some how we cannot have that playing off in the distance and it was difficult and his prayers. when he throws himself down on the chamber to play. and then i neglect god's angels with the culture the lining of the door. but then it splits into two parts to be identified in two ways one is the external staff.

memory of yesterday's pleasures and anything or nothing all of these things come from prayer. there are two types of things that can distract us and we noticed during the pandemic they have been inside her own hands from our personal challenges making it more and more difficult for us. >> i love this as an example of that technological distraction it is in 19 oh six

so those that are looking at the telegraph machine and as a result not paying attention to one another to think about the relationship and not looking at each other in the eye so that philosophy in context so i will pause after that part and to take questions. so if you have questions along the way and then our moderators will let me know going into the second half so

two times question-and-answer so those external distractions so whatever that might be with the provincial lady in london with a series of novels with the challenges trying to start a literary career as well and tried to have a literary conference for the first time and to say absence of

radiators and church to double down on the attention to focus by taking notes and then later getting postcards for her children and then local bankers in case she runs out of money. so at any point during the conference just know you're not alone from that experience with this historical review so that before and after with the way the contemporary technology has affected the way we think about technology and distraction and from 1741 the book called the improvement of the mind.

if you put yourself in the company of distraction we can issue a more distractible perso person. smear arguing people going to coffee shops those were in england and europe more generally with the heightened activity and with people talking to those places if you are trying to study they strike your eye and your ear from the study pursuit of any subject so there by your soul gets into a habit so in other words if you spend a lot of

time in the company of you distraction you become a more distracted person. so if you see that what has been arguing in 18 century in that context like from the shadows in 2010 with the ability to pay attention, and focus on your mind pushes on with a new kind of mind it is disjointed the faster the better. that concern is a very ancient one of those are fundamentally changing becomes less policy one - - possible for a very long time.

so we never had a call focused on distracted economy. and the idea the was a pre- lapsed area of state to calmly sit and focus on things teaching those mines conveys our minds are distracted so we need to think carefully how to teach to a distracted mind that once tracking thing that has a little bit more of this with a variety of cultures it

is a lament and we are unhappy about the fact we want to see a mind that is better able to pay attention and engage sustain focus. you can make you want a little bit so why do we evolve and with that biologist tell us have distractible minds. coming from an animated video lecture and then pointing out

here to have two different forms of pension and he needs to focus at the same time to have to be aware of the surroundings where the potential for predators and has to be generally aware of surroundings you can focus and also be aware and that the way they evolved and bad evolutionary process.

and then to start a fire with the potential dangers around us with the social groups that evolutionary history as well as the ability to easily distracted so that kind of divided focus is intensified by the fact that we especially as primates are drawn toward knowledge so to show you an

image of that but those resources were information seeking creatures and forest renewal information because again who was usual for us to say then to push ourselves and then to work for a novelty? and to wonder to take the web in the pathway and that is ultimately helpful to us. >> what has happened recently

but also want to downplay the fact that they are getting better and better so what we have now we are dealing with machines that are carefully designed to appeal to our desire to knowledge is looking for something new. so if twitter is tapped out and then you have more e-mails

so it is a perfectly designed machine with a million-dollar industry so there's a lot of time and energy invested to ensure these devices capture and keep your attention. and the machines have gotten better those aspects that have always been there. so to put and time and energy and power into it. >> that i'm no longer able to

pay attention that this was rewritten in her mind and everyone else i have read on the subject but we should step back from that concern. that were so central to our ability to think that somehow in the course of a few years with significant deterioration would require the retrofitting of other functions. and that reorganization of our brain would happen over evolutionary times and not just playing with her smartphones.

it contains membranes and the acute way for short periods of time and that seems to be good evidence and a very distractible and then to bring the attention and to a task. and what this leads me to want the attention of our students how we are cultivating a. and one thing to take away from this talk today and i'm

not suggesting what the research suggest that the normal status distraction to the environment and not the way we do have a list on - - effortlessly and then to ensure that that we stay on track because that attention is achievement how helping

students achieve it. over the course of a learning experience that so we could do for the second half that pushing students way into the air distractions for the human mind is distracted with that monthly reading novels without philosophy and criticism and then to notice when people talk about that distraction he

was if about as far back as you can be but the current technology is intensifying we are looking at because the current technologies are so good at planning distractible majors and there are two things about that. first of all we have to win the attention of your students and to draw them into the experience is fragile and easy to fall away from it and then

lastly leading us into the second half of the talk there's a lot of good arguments with the cognitive furniture and i know you are thinking all these other things that i would suggest looking at these things that winds through attention. one of the things we have been talking a lot about is the importance of community in the classroom facing special challenges many of us are teaching all the online classes and with that normal opportunity and the classrooms and through the lens of attention as well i will send

to you and i hope you are doing the same thing for me. is think about community is an avenue toward creative thinking with those challenges we face in higher education lens of attention suddenly when i get this talk and the

issue that people want to talk about is the device in the classroom. that is less of an issue right now obviously because so much of our teaching on --dash teaching is happening on these devices. i will talk about that today but one thing invite you to consider to the extent to which to help you think about how to support attention in your classroom. your have ever classes with those classroom environments and with those policies and then try to sustain their

attention and with that solution so where is driving them away at which they turn away from the screen? ask them these questions. and with everyone asking them to do. and that's a great time and in all the other classes and asked them what hasn't been helped and from your class or the other classes they have

had over the course of high school and college experience and what they occurred offer you what you might be doing in the classroom that is a great time to ask the same kinds of questions. >> i did this with my own students prior to the pandemic last year to help give me solutions to support their attention in the classroom. and things i never have thought about but i never would have access to that. so for what you can learn from your students and i also invite you to your own experiences and what can you

learn from that what you do with your own students? and think about your own distractions and what drives you back like this one. now i want to pause to see you think there is anything we can address to respond to any particular thing that has come up. so people with adhd or add and the struggles with that. and then continuously being in a coffee shop even they isolated.

>> as a part of my research for the book and essentially what i drew from that is the solution and how best to help the students the most basic principles are similar in one of the things i recommend in the book for example with the face-to-face classroom and i would let this particular semester.

so there's the front section and then the desks i did observing for research on the book as well so why the easiest things is to pay better attention to your students and to walk around and talk to different corners of the room. one of the things that got me thinking about that is my wife is a kindergarten teacher and she has students who come in and they have attention problem problems, one of the first recommendations have a

system that should sit next to the teacher because of physical presence helps to support the attention of the student and it started there. specifically designed for that to generalize that and it helps. and there is a conference room right now and then speaking to their area. even though it will be more challenging so that standing

up versus sitting down while you are lecturing. >> so are you standing up now while you are speaking to us today is sitting down while you are lecturing? >> yes i am standing up now i do that to keep up my own energy and that is a challenge so i know what i'm doing a session like this to be energetic and one of the reasons for students and teachers and so to have that energy and then to be more energetic and then getting a

little more blood flow going pacing back and forth with that kind of movement helps the cognitive function. >> the human brain has evolved with that background noise in that context. >> that's complicated question. and that framework they bring to that experience what relevant or redundant that has

more pedagogical thinking and the environment how are you helping students recognize what matters and what doesn't? and design of the content cultivating and sustaining of attention. >> there are some positive aspects of distraction. when the tasks are mundane. >>. so three things there is so much written and we think were able to do this very well

scientist have shown us we are not very good at it as we think. however we are not good at it doing similar kinds of things and when both things require thought or require our full attention you can have a conversation and do something that doesn't require a lot of your attention so that's why a lot of us to feel like they can multitask because we often can and when we run into problems trying to listen to a webinar in both of those require your attention and then to diminish her ability to retain something to a carefully constructed e-mail with no typos. that's the way to think about it and then to require our

attention first of all it sparks curiosity and then i will jump down the rabbit hole and with that creative thinking and then to juxtapose and then suddenly i think about my project that can be a creative and productive thing. and then into some other place and then recognize these things might come together. and it is great for curiosity

and if you can find structures to help support that and with the chapter i am connecting in teaching. in a small teaching in the afternoon with the strategies because we can channel and interesting waves through those activities. >> this is a relevant point of the physiological aspects and then to be dehydrated. and this is the equity issue. >> if you are hungry and taking care of your sick sibling and anxiety and

depression so of course we want to think about with the principles that we can use to support and sustain attention it is an equity issue and then then you pay attention to me and i will talk about that in the afternoon session and then we need to be aware of all the things talk about anxiety or

learning challenges. it is especially true now what's going on around us. and then to pay closer attention to the students and the challenges there. >>. >> let's do the second half. >> suite ten or 15 minutes. >> and what we can do to

sustain that and with this particular talk we have three things about structure, how we structure the experience so what are we doing to renew it on a regular basis and then to talk about the role and the attention in process so i will argue we should be a playwright and then to think about the idea the attention of our students has limits so

it is a limited capacity resource so one of the great demonstrations so to look at how long did students engage with videos are for large groups they conducted over multiple years so this comes like from 7 million users. how long do students actually watch the video? so you will notice is very striking students had to watch it which was connected on - - conducted entirely online up to ten minutes and watch the entire video.

between nine and ten and 12 minutes i started to watch only half of it. when the videos got longer then they only watch 20 percent. so attention fades over time. psychologist tell it so to pay directed attention requires effort and plays a central role in the ability to focus and it's under our control it is susceptible to fatigue. and then to require more and more effort over the course of

an experience and this is true some more than others students cannot pay attention over the 75 minute lecture and then over the course of a 75 minute discussion with a prolonged mental effort these two directed that fatigues we want to talk about that now of course the great articles posted from harvard business review is especially true as fatigue and then to have a large discussion and this is not normal for us.

because that constant gaze and then to look around all the time and then we returned the gaze that we were on the his video calls and they were on their cameras in the classroom will recognize if we look away then thinking we are no longer paying attention will make the same judgment for face to face so so on the show curb your enthusiasm with an extended period of time and in that

current situation causes attention fatigue right now. so to think about and to think about the fact over 2000 years playwrights are having to think about the attention of human beings over the course of a two or three hour. and then just to look up at the front. so we can learn something from strategies they developed and the program tells you how the experience will unfold.

and then to say to your students to talk about 20 minutes and after 20 minutes and then i'll talk to about 15 or 20 minutes and then to help people understand how long do i need? so being able to lay out the structure and experience and the action rises and falls and to draw the attention of the audience and then just when things are getting interesting but then as we go through these next examples and to

talk about the fact questions that are important think about the way the playwright pulls into initial action and one of them argues if they come into the class and just start talking about the answers to the discipline. so what is the interesting question and beginning with that to get the attention of our students. and then to quickly whether cell phones and devices to find everything they can about that and then to compile a

quick overview. to job the students and to capture their attention and then to launch into the lecture and then to push them forward into the classroom. so what kind of questions to ask in the beginning? with active versus passive engagement.

and so that ten or 15 minute lecture than stopping in doing an activity than going back to that if you are doing lectures a video breaking up into smaller chunks especially online don't always go to breakout groups maybe it's a whole class discussion may be individually and collaborate on the google doc. in the classroom i don't think it's a bad idea to help them get up and move their desk and those transition moments with the harvard business review and then on and off camera and

then look at the entire time. so change renews attention. so how are you offering change? and then doing something different every five or ten minutes and then will go along way to help to reengage so with a colleague of mine did a real interesting thing with all of the teaching strategies over index cards and then she had to start shuffling them around so what was the pattern most likely to promote learning what would be likely

to help support and sustain attention especially if you are struggling if you are teaching right now with engagement write down all the things put it on an index card or a post-it note to shuffle them around to see what emerges and what is the best way to create and experience to hold the attention over the course of this. no matter what we do hosting a discussion that goes on really well so it talks about the pentecostal pedagogy. and to talk about the extent to reengage attention to the

attention of the congregation and say can i get an amen? everybody shouts back now suddenly everybody is back in the room. this is probably more appropriate. what are the strategies that you have to structure those things to help support but also to have things in our pocket to say let's stop here. so here is a new problem trying to reserve for when things got slow or like i said we would do some group work

now. is an opportunity to break and re-energize ourselves. so to think how you structure the experience and what you have in your pocket to be we engaged in the moment? >> only in the experience but also to be familiar with something we pay less and less attention to it and then sitting there listening to teachers with the same kind of basic activities writing so i will encourage you to start to

think like a poet one of the things that poetry does for us is to renew our attention to the everyday world so the poet of the book and i love her poem here pay attention as a great guide for we want our students to be able to do and pay attention and then to talk about it whether that's and the discussion of whatever it might be to talk about what is seen in our discipline.

so i argue for the creation of signature attention activities are things that you create to reawaken the students to your discipline and connection in the everyday world and to practice your most pedagogy call self and that is the goal like a still life painting in a new way that is designed to get us to think of the everyday experience in a new light that is the goal of the signature attention activity. what do i mean cracks in the book i talk about a teacher who gave her students an assignment that said to go to the museum and to look at the

same painting and to write 13 papers and then to look and looking keep looking over and over again and then their lives around them. and then to create that fascinating assignment. >> i had the opportunity with

the introduction to the bible and theology class and what she did it is another great example of that activity to learn about the book of genesis and so what she did to sit across in pairs and they had to read the text aloud and pause after every sentence to think of the extent to which they notice something new in the first few sentences of genesis because it forced them to slow down a look at it and think about it in a new and different way. john dewey had his students

take every day objects and dive into it more deeply to think about that so drawing from that come i like the idea of the everyday object analysis even in their own homes by asking me these questions and the first one is and then to take a close look and describe it. what does it connect to? and those that may know about what can we do with our questions can i ask what i write a paper about and from brown university to provide a little bit more detail on that in the book and this was

produced in some factory on the other side of the world that relates to trade policies and economics and it is particular you can take that with anything in the world and the same is true so what you might do with you are online students to work around them and find things and those spaces that are fascinating as a window on avenue to new and creative thinking. >> so this is my recommendation one of those pedagogical activities to is

fascinating course of content and how do you see that on a regular basis? >> so the one time experience and with the whole course in his signature attention activities think about doing this once a week mms starts to lag. >> think like a playwright what we want to talk about here is assessment very briefly and then to turn out to the audience went to your students pay the most attention in your class and

they said when they are taking a test so that sent me on a journey about the research and i do believe there is a role to play here to do some work for us it would like to make that distinction between intrinsic motivation that's what we want we care about the subject matter and as the enemy of that that is the intrinsic motivator but the extent to which that one kind of motivation back and have a role to play to direct the attention of our students and i invite you to think to that extent this is true in the everyday life to go hand in

hand with those motivators no running is good for us to exercise is good for us we should do it because we want to but how many of us enter a five k because it gives the extra motivation to get ready for that performance? and with that extrinsic motivator you might be feeling tired one night quite as interested initially and then to push us into that engagement and that is an interesting experience in the intrinsic motivation

especially now during this pandemic was so much to do and so much to worry about so putting a little bit of space on what you are asking your students to do can help your students recognize where the students give the most bang for the buck so why not reward your students wake very low stakes with the regular in class so students are doing an activity so these things that your students do for example solving problems and with a

particular task help your students out and to regularly reward. >> i believe this to be an conflict some will be motivated by that a student who is a lot of other stuff going on. so this will help me with my grade for the class so what i'm arguing here the most engagement activity and collected on paper to make that minimal contribution so

then they put them in groups and in class. and then we always tell them and everything you can think of, keywords. and then with that relationship and then to see the things they want to pursue. and i counted as low stakes. and to put effort into it and to really focus on this. i know that's helpful activity for them they will be better at doing that.

so that's my basic argument of assessment it has a role to play in attention and with that exam the idea saying this will help you in a high-stakes assessment we should do that. and then direct students attention to it will be held to that. >> i think we have 15 minutes. >> talk about structural renewal and assessment with the idea to have more structure and with attention in mind to do a better job of keeping your students attention and to talk about

renewal and over the course of the semester and that has a role to play in those to help direct the attention and to promote their learning to get them to focus on things that will help them. >> we didn't discuss are those three elements and other chapters and then to find more of these things in the book how the community supports attention and how curiosity and the role that mindfulness can play and in the book and they can be helpful more for the teacher and to try to be

expecting students to become practitioners of mindfulness. and with all that detail in the book you can see the arguments so just note that really we've come to believe during the course of this research that in the classroom it can be a retreat, and attention retreat. instead of raising out to the aleutian islands. and paying attention and that attention can be a source of well-meaning on - - well-meaning actually with research so our classroom can

be a place a retreat and then to have the opportunity to really focus on something. and for that attention to be valued? ultimately that is the work of the teacher. >> and the distracted mind and with that attention today. >> so now i will wrap up there. now and see what kind of discussions we have. >>.

>> and then to be buried in some great comments in there so i will go through those. and then how it relates to the current environment with covid getting up and moving around with that type of thing with the advice we are getting from those who know more than in our bubbles of any suggestions? >> getting up and moving around right now is not the way to go so we those things we can do right now so that offers a variety of things we all will work in every context

that what we could do a little bit differently so pick a couple things and just for this presentation in the book i think it would be great you just can't expect to work in every context especially right now. >> and the question related to that to what degree of that predictability is needed right now for the students with that chaos and uncertainty to be balance and refocus attention? >> the one thing that can be really helpful applies to the change in the comfort part

some of the things i like to do typically is 1234 but i think we can be doing the same things so if you are sitting in a conference session not like a regular conference session in the good old days but in the future going on and on and this is my last point then you. up at that moment here is my first idea now moving on to the second. natalie miller something important is happening so planning that out first mike and i will happen here it also

has that sense that a change will happen. >> so there were several questions about timing and how long should the video without lecture component is no longer on the age of the students. [laughter] >> and never heard that. that's interesting. >> you saw the videos first of all is probably shorter online than it is in the actual classroom.

if you have a 45 minute video lecture to make so first of all it acknowledges the difficulty to pay attention online but the other thing is i took an online class this summer because i wanted to see where my students were experiencing so i took a spanish class. the instructor did a lot of great things but he didn't repeat the lecture there's one i had not watched i say i have time for that right now maybe i get back to it. if it had been broken up in 15 minutes i can do this question now and then the second one later tonight. if you break it up you give the opportunity for that to

happen. and that could help some students the maybe have trouble getting through the four hour. but in terms of the actual classroom you could probably go a little longer so how an eject on - - how energetic are you and to draw attention i can be pretty energetic in the classroom i can go 20 or 30 minutes of talking but that's as far as i will go. so you just have to know yourself and with the ability to gauge the attention but on

zoom often those videos where many other reasons for recommending that and how to engage the attention. >> i i know you can do about that for reasons that we talk about also privacy reasons that is the best solution. you can encourage people to do stuff in the chat. . . . . >> is the best i can do. post the questions in the chapter the way army.

that's only thing that i can think of this. we are in a challenging situation right now. we'll are. >> so as far as research is gone. are there any issues when filing students and you found the may require a little more octave cognitive capacity the content. >> yes that's another reason maybe to think twice about aunt. as a second language, of course that will take up some of their attention. just think about attention is like buckets. there's only so much that can go in there at once. james: if anything else is taking up space, there will be less space for whatever the content is. so i saw something come up with a check by the way which is a good suggestion.

about taking notes and submitting notes to class or having class notes is another idea. on this course, you want to think about do you record it and make them available afterwards. in making sure like captions for example. and if you giving a presentation in a classroom. make sure that they do have access to translation. maybe they have devices that can help them with translation. think about that. some have cognitive research. they do probably need a little bit more help and support. >> was to be continues now on "c-span2" television for serious readers. >> for hello everyone and thank you for coming