Teaching in the Age of Distraction: Why Students Can’t Focus – And What Educators Should Do About It - Dr. Gloria Mark, Author of Attention Span

In a world of digital overload, short-form media, and AI-powered personalization, staying focused has never been harder. Today, the average attention span on any screen is just 47 seconds. What's causing this decline in focus, and what should educators do about it?

Those are some of the questions we discuss with Dr. Gloria Mark, UC Irvine informatics professor and author of Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. 

Dr. Mark explains the psychology behind attention, including the difference between controlled and automatic processing, the role of self-regulation, and how sleep debt, stress and individual cognitive rhythms factor into a student's ability to concentrate. She also points to a growing trend in education: designing classroom content to accommodate short attention spans, which may be unintentionally reinforcing them.

The conversation also takes a timely turn into how AI tools—from TikTok’s recommender systems to ChatGPT—are changing the way students interact with information, and what that means for deep learning, retention, and even courage in the classroom.

Listen to learn:

• Why shrinking attention spans aren’t your fault—and what’s really driving them
• How schools may be unintentionally reinforcing short-form thinking
• What AI and automation are doing to deep learning and reflection
• The hidden role of sleep, stress, and self-regulation in attention
• 3 powerful strategies students can use to take back control of their focus

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Short attention spans are not a personal failure—they’re shaped by both individual traits and digital environments.

Gloria distinguishes between controlled and automatic attention, noting that much of our behavior—like checking phones or clicking notifications—happens without conscious thought. These automatic habits are reinforced by our environment, particularly digital technologies that train us to switch rapidly and respond to constant stimuli.

2. Classroom strategies that cater to short attention spans may be doing more harm than good.

Gloria highlights a trend in education toward breaking lectures into smaller chunks or assigning only short passages instead of full books. While well-intentioned, these adaptations risk further weakening students’ ability to engage in long-form content and develop deep, reflective thinking.

3. AI tools like TikTok and ChatGPT are reshaping how students consume and process information—often at the cost of deeper learning.

Platforms driven by recommender algorithms use random reinforcement to keep users engaged, conditioning them for rapid content consumption. In the classroom, reliance on generative AI can create a disconnect between students and the material, undermining “depth of processing” and reducing the cognitive benefits of making mistakes.

Resources in this Episode:

• Official website of Dr. Gloria Mark
• See official show notes page for more resources!

Connect with Dr. Gloria Mark

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(00:10):
episode of The TechEd Podcast.
How many times have we talkedabout the fact that growing up,
I had all of those challenges intraditional education? I
couldn't sit still. I couldn'tpay attention. I had such a hard
time sitting through lectures,watching the clock tick by,
sitting in the classroom, I wasthe poster child for a horrible
attention span. Well, guesswhat? That was years and years,

(00:33):
decades ago, as a matter offact, and the attention span
here in the United States ofAmerica and around the globe is
not getting any better. We aregoing to talk all about that
with today's guest, not justwhat's happening to our
attention span, but why it'shappening, and what are some of
those strategies that we canuse, both individually and
perhaps even more importantly,with our students and learners,

(00:54):
in terms of managing theshrinking attention span here in
the United States and around theglobe. It's such a pleasure to
introduce to our audience. Ourguest for this episode is Dr
Gloria mark, the Chancellor'sprofessor emerita of Informatics
at the University of California,Irvine, and author of and we
found this book online,actually, and it's really,

(01:15):
really good stuff. In fact, I'vegot it right here. The book is
called attention span agroundbreaking way to restore
balance happiness andproductivity. And it's a
pleasure to welcome to thepodcast that book's author, Dr
Gloria. Mark Gloria, thank youso much for coming on. Well,
thank you for having me. Yourresearch absolutely, absolutely
fascinates me, and for thereasons that I mentioned in the

(01:37):
intro, I've struggled with theshort attention span my whole
life. I can also tell you thatin some ways, and as much as it
was a bane while I was goingthrough traditional education,
in some cases, it can be ablessing in this day and age as
well. So I know we're going totalk about that balance, but
let's start with this. You'vebeen at this for a long time.
Your research goes back severaldecades, looking at how people
specifically interact withdigital devices. So what have

(01:59):
you found to be some of thatmost surprising findings in
terms of that research thatyou've done over the course of
two decades and more? Well, I'mnot

Gloria Mark (02:09):
sure I would call this surprising, but I would say
it reinforced my intuition ofwhat's going on with our
attention spans. So I found overa 20 year period that people's
attention spans were shrinking,and we we started measuring
attention spans empirically, andwe started back in 2004 and we

(02:35):
found people's attention on ascreen, on any screen before
switching, is about two and ahalf minutes, okay? And then
over this 20 year period, wefound attention spans gradually
getting shorter. In 2012 wefound them to be 75 seconds on

(02:56):
average. And then from the yearsstarting from the years around
2016 averaging 47 seconds. Wow,so that that was, I guess it's a
surprise, because when you seethe actual data, it's
surprising. You might expectthat the study would contradict

(03:18):
your intuitions, but this time,it was actually shorter than I
even expected.

Matt Kirchner (03:23):
Well, and think about over that period of time.
I mean, you go from 2004 whichis just over 20 years ago, where
if I, if I heard you correctly,two and a half minutes was our
attention span, where we couldpay attention to a screen before
having to flip over or move overto whatever the next thing we
were looking at was at least onaverage. And now just 20 years
later, that has been, I mean, itwas cut in half and almost cut

(03:43):
in half again. What's incredibleto me is not just the fact that
that's happened, but the shortperiod of time over which that
has happened. Now I can tell youas somebody who, as I mentioned
again in the intro, I was thekid in school that was always
like, why can't you payattention? Why can't you sit
still? So I've dealt with thisattention span issue my entire
life, and I can tell you, atleast going through traditional

(04:06):
education, maybe it's changed alittle bit, but, but you were
made to feel like there wassomething wrong with you that
you couldn't pay attention forlonger than whatever that period
of time was, and that and that,you know, you needed to do this
work on your on your ownpersonal self and improve your
attention span. I almost feltlike a failure in some ways, for
not being able to have theattention span that maybe some
of the other students did.
Should we think about it thatway? I mean, is it a personal

(04:28):
failure, or is there a way of,kind of thinking about that a
little bit

Gloria Mark (04:33):
differently? It's not a personal failure. So first
of all, there are individualdifferences, right? I'm a
psychologist, and psychology isbased on the idea that people
have individual differences.
Some people have very good selfregulation with their attention.
Some people have very poor selfregulation, but it should not
reflect on you as an individual,right? These are traits that.

(04:58):
That we're born with, and if aperson has poor self regulation,
it doesn't mean they can't doanything about it. And there are
also things in the environmentthat lead us to have short
attention spans, and so we cando things about changing our
environment. So please, if youknow anyone out there feels like

(05:20):
they're a failure or feels thatthey can't perform well because
of short attention spans, pleaseunderstand that there are things
you can do to focus better, and

Matt Kirchner (05:35):
I know we're going to get into a number of
those things over the course ofthis episode of The TechEd
Podcast. Really looking forwardto that, not just for our
audience, but quite honestly,Gloria for me personally as
well. Now you mentioned somethings in our environment that
have an impact on our attentionspans. What are some examples
that you can

Gloria Mark (05:51):
share? Well, for one thing, it's technology. So
as you pointed out, I've beenstudying technology for a very
long time. So people develophabits, and a lot of these
habits are just automatic. Sothere's different kinds of
attention. There's consciousattention when we're really you

(06:12):
know, it's called controlledprocessing, which means we are
in control of our attention.
There's also a lot of times whenwe do things automatically. We
do what's called automaticprocessing. So what do we do
automatically? We see oursmartphone lying next to us on
the table. We pick it up and weswipe it open without thinking,

(06:37):
or we see a notification on ourcomputer screen, a news
notification, social medianotification, we click on it
without even thinking. And sothese are examples of how
there's so many things we doautomatically. We're just not
conscious of it. And these arehabits. They become deeply

(07:02):
ingrained habits in us that makeus hard to have longer periods
of focus. You

Matt Kirchner (07:10):
know, you think back to even like the studies
related to Pavlov's dog and abell going off and this
automatic response, and I see,you know, one of my things in
meetings these days, and ourteams and our ed tech companies
will tell you that that I amalmost dictatorial in terms of
like, when we're in a meetingtogether, virtual or in person,
this is not the time to bechecking email, not the time to

(07:32):
be looking at text, not the timeto be, you know, whatever's
alerting you on your phone. Andwe'll our rule is, actually,
we'll stop the meeting for youif you've got something that's
so important that can't waituntil the end of the meeting
that you have to look at or youhave to respond to, and we mean
it honestly, then we'll stop themeeting for you. Really, really
important to me, to make surepeople are locked in, and you
can just tell the tension thatputs in people that are used to

(07:54):
every time the phone vibratesand they're looking at what that
text is, or what have you thatresponse to, whether it's the
bell that goes off on the phone,the vibration on the table, and
it really almost is likeautomatic and subconscious. It's
fascinating to watch, at least.
That's my, my non psychologydescription of it. And I, I'll
admit that I was for a while,probably still, I'm a little bit

(08:14):
addicted to tick tock. Love ticktock. I actually, I've kind of
gravitated, for a variety ofreasons, over to YouTube shorts,
which works exactly the sameway. But are those types of
things like where we'reliterally we have complete
control over the content that'sbeing delivered to us. I can
watch something for five or 10seconds, and if it's not
interesting, I can flip to thenext thing. Is that contributing
as well? Do you

Gloria Mark (08:36):
think? Oh, absolutely. So let's, let's take
the example of Tiktok. Sure,Tiktok has a recommender
algorithm, and it learns veryquickly what kind of Tiktok
videos you like, and then itvery quickly sends you other
videos that it believes you willlike. And so that helps us,

(08:58):
helps keep us glued to theplatform, and it's really hard
to break away when you know thatthere's a video coming up that's
going to be hilarious, right?
And so that actually creates aform of conditioning that's
randomly reinforced, which meanswe don't get a hilarious Tiktok
every single time, but it comesup randomly, and that's enough

(09:21):
to keep us glued to the site.
It's like a slot machine in LasVegas. You know, every single
time you pull the lever, you'reyou're not going to get a
reward, but every so often itwill happen, and that keeps you
glued, keeps you doing it. Sothat's what helps keep us

(09:42):
addicted to these sites. Now, ifa person has really good self
regulation, and they can be onsocial media for five minutes
max, and be able to pull away,that's okay. The problem is not.
Going on that site, the problemis not being able to pull out

(10:04):
when we have more importantthings to do. And if a person
feels that there's someone withpoor self regulation, and I
don't mean you, I just

Matt Kirchner (10:14):
mean anyone, he could mean me, because I think
I'm a good example, we continue.
But I mean

Gloria Mark (10:19):
there's so many people who who don't have good
self regulation and and there'snothing wrong with them, then
they have to come up withstrategies. So, for example,
sometimes if I just have astring of meetings, and I just
want to, you know, think ofsomething else before my next

(10:41):
meeting, I might pull out asimple game, knowing that in
five minutes I have to stopbecause I've got my next meeting
coming up, and that's like akind of a hook that will pull me
out of being Lost in thismindless game. My self

(11:01):
regulation isn't so bad, mainlybecause I study this and I've
become, you know, I've seenpeople having troubles paying
attention, so I try to learnthese lessons. So again, nothing
wrong with social media ormindless games in moderation.

(11:24):
Moderation meaning a fewminutes, right? But there are so
many other things that are muchbetter to help clear our minds,
like getting up, moving around,walking outside, and these will
cure our distraction, much, muchbetter,

Matt Kirchner (11:43):
some really fascinating insights just in
that last answer in responseGloria. And so we need to pull
some of that apart. We startedwith kind of the discussion
about how a platform like, youknow, like Tiktok, will use AI
to basically continue to serveup and get you hooked on the
content in and in knowing, youknow, even subconsciously or

(12:03):
consciously, that whatever it isthat you're in, whether it's you
know, and I see, you know, I getpolitic, political videos. You
might get videos about preparingfood. I get a lot of those. I
get a lot of the I get a lot ofvideos about dogs, for whatever
reason. The reason is probablybecause I like dogs, and I I
tend to hang on those, on thosetick tocks a little bit longer
than others, and and thealgorithm knows that, so it
gives me more and more of what Iwhat I want. It feels like, and

(12:26):
I've got a number of questionsthat came out of what you just
talked about. But for one, itfeels like, you know, AI is
still, it's really in itsinfancy, right? We're still in
the nascent artificialintelligence guy, you know, God
only knows what's coming. Itkind of sent, I kind of sense
that this problem, if we callit, a problem of short attention
spans, is probably on its way togetting worse, not better. Is
that fair to say?

Gloria Mark (12:47):
It very well could be and without actually doing
measurements, we don't knowwhere it's heading, although I
will say that we seem to havereached a steady state for a
period of about five, six yearsof this average of about 47
seconds. And the AI was stillgoing on at the time, there was

(13:08):
still there were algorithms surewhich are very, very
sophisticated that can help,that can profile us and send us
material that the algorithmbelieves that we would be
interested in. So it's hard tosay in response, if our
attention spans will get worse,right? Maybe we're already at

(13:30):
the lowest point that they canbe. So we just need to continue
measuring it

Matt Kirchner (13:37):
and continuing measuring it in this 47 second
number, if I recall, from thebook and I and we'll make sure
and link, you know, connectionsto the book in Amazon and so on,
in the in the show notes, so ourreader, or so our readers, our
audience, can get their hands onit, because it really is worth
reading. One of the things thatI thought was interesting is,
yeah, the average is 47 seconds.
But if we think about some ofour Mean, Median mode learning
that we did when I was payingattention in high school, which

(14:00):
wasn't all the time, or maybebeing college, the the median is
even less, right, isn't it? Like40 seconds? So like, you know,
while the average is 47 half ofus have a have an attention
span. I get, I guarantee you,I'm in the in the half that's in
the less than four, somewhereless than 40 seconds or 40
seconds and less. And in fact, II've used that as an example,
and I have to, thank you. By theway, I do a ton of keynoting and

(14:20):
speaking as our audience knows awide variety of topics, but many
of them related to stem andTechEd and artificial
intelligence. And I'll go into apresentation or a speech for a
45 minute speech with 120slides, and every single time
the organizer who's loadingthose slides up in the computer
is like, you know, they getworried, right? They're like,

(14:41):
you realize you only have 45minutes, right? And my answer is
always yes. But now I've got,you know, research that proves
that my audience attention span,at least half of them, is going
to be 40 seconds or less. Ibetter go through every single
one of those slides and havesomething changing every 30 or
40 seconds to make sure that Ihang out of the audience. So I,
I think. Thank you for thatresearch. And I want to talk now
you talk about the you know, No,there isn't something wrong with

(15:05):
you if you have a shorterattention span. Yes, we all know
everybody's attention span isgetting shorter that there are
some tools. The first thing, Ithink, in a message for our
teachers and for our studentsis, look, don't feel guilty. And
don't make a student feel guiltybecause of the short attention
span. There are some benefits.
We'll talk about that, but alsosome strategies you talk about,

(15:26):
you know, maybe doing somegetting involved, whether it's
social media or a mindless gamethat you're playing. And I do
both, you know, five minutesbefore a meeting, so you have an
automatic cut off. My biggestchallenge, if I'm on social
media, is getting on. I'musually go to bed pretty early,
getting on 1520, minutes beforebed, and then all of a sudden,
I'm, you know, sudden, I'm, youknow, a half hour past my
bedtime, because a half hourwent away because I kept seeing
this content that I wanted tosee. What are there other

(15:48):
strategies that we should bethinking about in terms of
making sure that we're we'relimiting or being disciplined
about our attention spans?

Gloria Mark (15:57):
Yeah. So first of all, you've mentioned you're on
social media 15 minutes beforeyou go to bed, not always, but
often not all right? Well, manypeople are like you. The blue
light when we're on our devicescan interfere with sleep, and so
it's really important to go offa screen one to two hours before

(16:18):
bedtime. So one of the reasonswhy people, children, adults,
have trouble paying attention isbecause their cognitive
resources are depleted. Soeverybody has a limited amount
of cognitive resources, and youcan think of that as attentional

(16:41):
capacity. And if you have areally good night's sleep, you
start your day with a full tankof attentional capacity. Now, if
you're not getting good sleep,right, if the blue light is
interfering with sleep, or Iknow many people, and I've been
an educator for many, manyyears, and I know that students

(17:03):
tend to go to sleep late andthen they're they have to get up
early to go to classes. Notgetting enough sleep makes it
really hard to pay attention ourcognitive resources. We're
starting off the day at adisadvantage, with less
resources than we need to getthrough the day. So probably one

(17:28):
of the most important things isto get a good night's sleep.

Matt Kirchner (17:32):
Just occurs to me, as you're saying, that
Gloria, it almost becomes aflywheel effect, right? Is that
what I'm hearing that if I don'tget good sleep, I don't have a
great attention span, and if myattention span is waning, I may
be doing things that prevent mefrom getting good sleep. And it
just, you know, you just createthis flywheel effect. Was, is
kind of a, you know, it just aninteresting observation. The
other thing I'll mention on thesleep front, really quickly, I'm

(17:54):
a strong non believer incoincidence, that when you know
coincidences happen and there'ssomething trying to tell me
something, I'm reading a bookright now called out live by Dr
Peter Attia that's been apretty, pretty widely read book
on on how we increase our healthspan over time. And he points to
four things that are importantfor creating for increasing
health span, one of which issleep. And his argument is that

(18:14):
that has been really anunderappreciated side of both
our physical and mental healthfor years.

Gloria Mark (18:19):
I'm really glad you brought that up. We did research
on what's called sleep debt, andwe did this with college
students. So sleep debt refersto the idea that our we get less
sleep over a period of time. Soif a person needs eight hours of

(18:40):
sleep each night, and they'reonly getting six hours, then
they're accumulating debt, sleepdebt. And then, if you have you
know, ideally, when you're indebt for two hours, you should
make up that time and sleeplonger. But that's not typically
what happens. What what happenswith students, and what we

(19:02):
measure in our studies is thatthe sleep debt accumulates over
the period of the week. And soif you're consistently two hours
less of sleep than what youneed, you're ending your week
with a lot of sleep debt. Andwhat do people typically do?
They try to sleep on weekends tomake up for it, and it just

(19:23):
upsets our sleep balance, andwhat we find is a very strong
relationship between the amountof sleep debt and the inability
to pay attention the next day.
And what happens as sleep debtrises the ability to pay
attention gets worse over thestories of the week. And it's

(19:43):
not just the length

Matt Kirchner (19:45):
of sleep true if I if I'm correct, right, it's
also the quality of that sleep.
To your point earlier about bluelight and how much REM sleep
we're getting, and how much deepsleep we're getting versus how
much light sleep we're getting,which is something I've been
actually studying in myself forthe last six months, and found
fascinating. And you start tomake kind. Actions to
activities, especially the lastfour or five, six hours of the
day, and the sleep score I getfrom the the smart watch that I

(20:05):
wear. And it's just absolutelyfascinating. So it's quality and
quantity both. Am I right aboutthat?

Gloria Mark (20:12):
That's That's right, and I love what you
brought out about not believingin coincidences, and I also
don't believe in coincidencesand stress can also affect our
our sleep, but stress can alsoaffect our attention. So there's
there's a lot that's packed intothis idea of not getting enough

(20:36):
sleep, our cognitive resourcesnot being at their optimal
amount stress really plays astrong role, and so people need
to learn to take care of theirstress, because we also see in
our studies a relationshipbetween higher stress and worse

(20:58):
ability to pay attention.

Matt Kirchner (21:00):
Well, there's so much research around that
especially one of the things I'mparticularly fascinated in is
how we kind of raise the floor.
We say it for K 12 students whomay not have the same kind of
opportunities that I did andgoing through my education
pathway. I mean, there's wholecommunities of students,
regrettably, that really havechallenges outside of the
classroom that they bring to theclassroom, one of which is any
trauma or stress that'shappening outside they bring to

(21:21):
the classroom is just one way ofinfluencing attention span. What
are the other things that aregoing on in the classroom around
attention span, whether it'ssomething that's happening in a
student's life outside the hoursof school or something that
takes place in the educationjourney while the student is
actually at school.

Gloria Mark (21:39):
Let me first of all talk about the audios thing, and
that's smartphones. So I did astudy with a researcher. We Shin
Lee, who's a professor in SouthKorea, and what we did was we
tracked students use ofsmartphones throughout the day,

(22:00):
and we use sensors so we couldsee exactly when they were using
their smartphones. We could lookat their locations. I mean, we
we got quite a bit ofinformation about the students,
and we found that for thosestudents who use smartphones in
the classroom, they spent about30% of the time on their phones.

(22:21):
Wow. And it's not just a longbreak, but it's a lot of smaller
interruptions, and so they'renot getting they're not hearing
the lecture, they're not payingattention to the lecture. And
when I talked about theautomatic attention, a lot of
that practice is just purelyautomatic picking up the phone.

(22:42):
You might be the slightest bitbored, so you reach for the
phone and pick it up. We alsofind this correlation between
those students who use thesmartphones most in the
classroom and also who spent themost time on smartphones
throughout the day, with lowergrades. So it really has an

(23:03):
impact. So that's, that's one ofthe main things, you know, of
course, from having taught formany years, I know that I also
have to put in some work to makethe lecture interesting, sure.
And I find that making itinteractive, you know, really
bringing students into thediscussion and making the

(23:26):
material relate to their ownlives, like making it current.
And you know, something thatthey understand right, that it's
not abstract, but trying tobring theory into something that
people can relate to, especiallyon a personal level, that helps

(23:47):
with attention.

Matt Kirchner (23:48):
Yeah, it really puts a whole different set of
pressures on educators in thisday and age, in terms of, you
know, how they present content.
I spend a lot of time thinkingand speaking about this
particular topic, because I'm abeliever that in a lot of ways,
we're going to disrupt thehistorical way of delivering
education. And, you know, we'vegot a model for education now
that has been, you know, reallypredicated on, you could argue

(24:10):
it goes back 400 years, or maybeeven 4000 years, one person with
a tremendous amount of wisdomand knowledge imparting that
wisdom and knowledge to a groupof students through a lecture or
presentation or or mentoring, orwhat have you. And certainly,
you know, in the even 50 yearsago, with students that have the
ability to go to a, you know, goto a video, go to a smartphone,
learn in their mode of learning,whether that was e learning or a

(24:33):
video presentation, they canstop and start again, or going
into a classroom. I've got, youknow, one of one of my children,
is just an incredible classroomlearner. She can just go in and
sit through a lecture and, youknow, everything sticks. And I
was never, ever like that. Idon't know where she got that
from, but it certainly,certainly wasn't for me. And
then you see other childrenthat, you know were like I was,
where it's just impossible tolearn in a lecture. I think the

(24:54):
beauty of technology, in a lotof ways, is that we're going to
have a lot of different ways ofdelivering learning. Learning. I
talk about the idea that in thepast, we would go to school to
learn and we would go home topractice. So you go to school to
listen to your lecture and thenyou go home to write your, you
know, write your papers and doyour exams and do your studying
and review your notes. And that,you know, in the future, we're

(25:14):
going to morph to an age wherethere's a lot more balance
between. We'll go to school, I'msorry. We'll stay home, in some
cases, to learn. I can learn. Ican sit through a lecture
anywhere, depending on how Ilearn best, and then I go to
school to practice, which reallystarts to put pressure on
educators for how we make thattime at whether it's a
university classroom or lab, atechnical college, a high

(25:35):
school, what have you? How do wemake that more interactive? How
do we challenge the studentsthinking and so on. All kinds of
really cool things happening inthe in the world of education, a
long way of kind of teeing upthe next question that I had for
you, Gloria, which is, you know,if I'm a STEM teacher, if I'm a
TechEd teacher, if I'm teachingscience at the university level,
or maybe even other otherdisciplines, what is all this
work that you've done studyingour attention span? How does it

(25:58):
influence and inform how weshould create experiences for
students when they're

Gloria Mark (26:04):
at school. So let me start by talking about a
trend that I'm seeing, and thetrend is that we're seeing
change in school curricula tocater to students shorter
attention spans. So what, whatI've been seeing is that, for

(26:24):
example, rather than assigningbooks, there's seems to be a
trend to assign passages to readso short, shorter forms of the
material. I have also beenlooking at trends where lecture
materials, and that this is,this is not a bad thing. But

(26:44):
instead of, you know, a 50minute lecture, it's broken down
into chunks, okay, so very shortchunks of material followed by
maybe students doing somethinginteractive, but especially when
it comes to assigning passages,as opposed to entire books, what

(27:06):
that's doing is reinforcingstudents short attention spans.
It's not getting them to developa muscle to be able to read long
form content to pay attention.
Right? When I was in school, wehad to read books, totally
right? And when, when I wasgrowing up, we we had to read
books. But if you look atsurveys, you'll see that kids

(27:29):
and and teenagers are readingfewer books. It's not
surprising, but interesting.
It's yeah, and so I think thatwe need to be thinking about
retraining students minds andchanging their mindsets so that

(27:50):
they can begin to appreciatelong form material. If I assign
a book, students are groaning,oh my gosh, we have to read a
book, yeah, but think of it as away to retrain the mind, to get
the mind used to reflection,deliberation, going into depth,

(28:12):
into material

Matt Kirchner (28:14):
that's really, really interesting to me. I, you
know, I think about likeHuckleberry Finn. I forget how
old I was when I readHuckleberry Finn. It was. I
mean, it's still remember allthe stories, and still remember
all the lessons of that book.
Yeah, I think the other one was,like, the good earth by Pearl S
buck about, you know, about,like, China, you know, years
ago. It's just a fascinating andI had a teacher, by the way, in
high school who just deliveredthat learning in a way that

(28:36):
stuck with you, right? And itwasn't it some, you know, in
some cases, like readingtechnical material that got a
little bit grueling. Reading ahistory textbook, you know, a
little bit more difficult forme, but getting deep into a
novel and understanding thecharacters and reading the
story, and the part I, frankly,always struggled with was, what
are the lessons I always neededmy teacher to help me understand
what, what was the story underthe story that I wasn't picking

(28:58):
up on? You know that you read abook about animal like Animal
Farm and, and you think thatbook is just about a bunch of
animals and how they kind ofgovern themselves, and it's
really, you know, in some cases,a greater story about, you know,
something like communism orsocialism and, and, and just
those kind of lessons that welearn from that long form
reading that I think you'reright. I mean, if you're not if

(29:19):
you're not getting deep into thecontent that way, you're really,
you know, a you're not trainingyour mind to be able to
concentrate, and that was nevermy forte, as I've said several
times. But you're also notgleaning all that material and
getting the huge benefit you canfrom from reading that kind of
content. So if I'm hearing youright, is is it a combination?
Do we need to do both? Do we? Dowe a need to meet students where
they are and recognize thatthey're going to have to get

(29:42):
some smaller and shortersnippets of learning along with
some more experiential learning,and we have to get them into the
long form understanding thediscipline of reading a, you
know, a two or 300 page book,and the benefits that is it
both, or is it an or

Gloria Mark (29:58):
I am a. More in favor of it being an or but to
get to the point where wherestudents can appreciate long
form content, we probably haveto start to where they are now,
sure, but what we should not bereinforcing shorter attention
spans. For example, booksummaries. There are plenty of

(30:24):
companies, and there's just ahuge readership for book
summaries, which are 15 minutes.
And this, this includes sciencebooks as well,

Matt Kirchner (30:33):
move way beyond Cliffs Notes from 40 years ago,
right? Yeah.

Gloria Mark (30:37):
And, you know, I've talked to so many students who
say, Oh yes, I I read thesummary of this book. You know
the 15 minute summary, right?
Yeah, that's only reinforcingstudents to continue to have
short attention spans, and it'snot teaching them how they can
deliberate over the material,how they can think more deeply.

(31:01):
You know, there's thispsychological idea that's called
depth of processing, and whatthat refers to is that if you
can actively participate inmaterial, which means you're
you're not just reading itpassively, but you're being
active in consuming it. Forexample, you're taking notes,

(31:24):
you're asking questions. You'reasking your own questions, not
questions that the teacherassigned. You're going to retain
that material better, and you'regoing to be able to take that
material and integrate it intoyour current store of knowledge
and expand your own knowledge,right? But we can't do depth of

(31:46):
processing if we're gettingmaterial in small chunks and in
summaries. But students have toreally and it will be a struggle
if they're used to having shortattention spans, right? It's
going to be a struggle at first,but it's also about changing a
mindset to begin to appreciatelonger material. And it could be

(32:09):
scientific books absolutelydoesn't, yeah, for sure, doesn't
have to be fiction

Matt Kirchner (32:16):
well, and yeah, in a lot of cases, meeting the
student, where they are, which Ithink is one of the benefits of,
you know, education in thefuture is that we can find
different, you know, everybody'sgot different modalities of
learning and differentinterests. And if you can
combine the two of those in away that delivers the learning
outcomes in a way that's,that's, you know, relatable to
the student, you probably havethe best opportunity to to have
a successful academic journeywithout without question. As you

(32:39):
were talking about this. Itreally again, coincidence has
happened for a reason. I read,and maybe you did, as we record
this here in late June, justthis week, we had there's an
opinion piece in The Wall StreetJournal written by Alyssa Finley
that talks about the waningattention span and also goes
deep into active learning, asyou just discussed the value of
taking notes. I totally findthat right, like I my retention

(33:02):
is so much better. If I'mphysically writing the notes
down. I can even remember, like,20 pages ago, what part of the
page on which side of thenotebook the you know, the thing
was that we talked about, and Icould just immediately go right
back to it, it, you know, itclicks like that for me. And
even the act of typing notes,or, worse yet, just recording a
lecture, or worse, even you thathaving like an AI take the notes

(33:24):
for you, there's, there's reallynot that active learning and
that engaged learning, and itfeels like what you're saying,
at least in a lot of ways,mirrors that editorial or that
opinion piece that I readearlier this week. Is that, is
that

Gloria Mark (33:36):
right? That's, that's absolutely right. So I
did an experiment in my classwhen chatgpt first came out. And
now I've always had studentssummarize the articles that I
was going to lecture on in thenext class period. So they had
the article assigned. They wereto summarize it and write their

(33:58):
reflection on it. And so theexperiment was, you know, the
first thing I did when chatgptcame in, I said, you can't use
chatgpt, okay, to summarize. Butof course, I was bluffing,
because how could I possiblyknow? So then I thought about
it, and I said, Okay, I want youto use chatgpt, but I want you

(34:20):
to first do the summaries andreflections yourself, and then I
want you to use chat GPT, andthen I want you to revise your
summary. And then at the end ofthe academic quarter, I had
students evaluate theirexperience, and here's what they
came up with. So first of all,the chat GPT summaries and

(34:44):
reflections did not give theminsight into the article, and
this was a very common themethat that the students wrote
about the chat GPT is creating adistance between them and the
article and. So there it's,there's an intermediary, and the
intermediary is the AI, which iscreating a summary, and you're

(35:10):
getting the AI perspective ofwhat's in that article. And so
it's also not giving studentsthe opportunity to do the depth
of processing that's needed tobe able to do sense making and
to to really understand andretain what's in that article,

Matt Kirchner (35:30):
that whole concept is just, is just so, so
interesting to me. There's abunch of things going through my
head I've mentioned so manytimes on the podcast because it
resonated so deeply with me, myfriend Todd wanick, the CEO of
Ashley furniture industry,suggested I read a book earlier
this year called Genesis. It waswritten by Henry Kissinger and
co authored by Eric Schmidt, theformer CEO of Google and Craig

(35:53):
Muncie, the former VP ofstrategy for Microsoft. And they
go into this whole idea of itbecomes a whole discussion about
what it means to be human, andas we get AI to do more and more
of our kind of day to day,mundane tasks, how are we going
to create purpose, and how arewe going to, you know, live
lives that matter, and this is,you know, this kind of speaks

(36:14):
right to that where it's like ifwe're just going to become
automatons that are using AI toanalyze information and Tell us
what the AI thinks. And AI isn'tthinking even it's at this
point, it's an algorithm that'sjust, you know, performing a
mathematical function. But theAI thinks we should know, you
know, that's one level of livingand not a very fulfilling one.
And if we're going deeper intothe content, if we're letting

(36:34):
that content speak to us, ifwe're not having an AI, for
example, that's interpretingwhat it thinks is important to
us and then delivering that tous and to your students
experience doesn't evennecessarily summarize it in a
way that they find meaningful.
That really, really tells ussomething. I think the other
thought that I had that wasgoing through my head as you
were saying that Gloria is thiswhole idea of not just getting

(36:56):
deeper into the content, but asa teacher, as an educator, as a
professor and instructor, Imean, whatever level of
education we're talking about,you know, now we have kind of a,
you know, an environment that'sbucking up against this whole
idea of going deeper into thecontent of the long form
education. What? What advice doyou have? Obviously, you're

(37:18):
finding ways to do it, to makesure that at a minimum. And I
guess we can, you know, we candebate whether it's we should be
delivering the learning in twodifferent ways, and one that
kind of meets the attention spanwhere it is, and the other one
that disciplines it to godeeper. Or, to your point, maybe
we just need to be spending morefocus on on, how do we do more
long form learning? And but Ithink the answer might be the
same either way, if I'm ateacher that believes in, you

(37:40):
know, continuing at least someversion of traditional
education, where we havestudents reading novels and
scientific materials and whathave you what advice do you have
for those folks that are thatare trying to maintain that
focus, but also recognizing thatthe world of education might be
putting a different pressure onthem?

Gloria Mark (37:59):
Yeah, we're, we're in such a I would say we're at a
turning point right now where AIis just becoming increasingly
more used now. I would say it'sfine for AI to be used in
technical tasks like softwareengineering, medical

(38:19):
diagnostics. I mean, it canreally improve in efficiency. It
can optimize, for example,finding disease. But AI is now
being used in routine, everydaytasks, and it concerns me that
students are relying on AI to dothe tasks that they should be

(38:42):
doing with their own minds. Andwhat's wrong with using AI. Had
talked about it creating adistance between the person the
material, but there's this otheraspect, and that is that AI
creates flawless content. Now,of course, there are

(39:04):
hallucinations and errors. Youknow, we can't dismiss that.
There are plenty ofhallucinations, but the output
that we get is flawless in termsof its grammatical structure,
and the output often looksrobotic. And when I did that
experiment in class, and I hadhundreds of examples from the

(39:27):
students, they also pointed outto me that the output was very
robotic. It didn't seem human,and I just wrote about that in
my sub stack this week, abouthow this can create norms that
our students or any individualhas to produce output that's

(39:52):
perfect, that's flawless, andyou do that by using AI, that's
that's what people are thinking.
Right? And I want us to bringback the idea that making
mistakes is so important, right?
And that's how students learn.
That's how students grow, iswhen they make mistakes and
learn from that. And by havingan over reliance on AI, it's not

(40:14):
giving students the opportunityto make mistakes and to, you
know, be able to to learn fromthat, to grow from that.

Matt Kirchner (40:26):
Yeah, Perfection is the enemy of progress, is
what we say. And you're rightthat. And I don't think, I mean,
first of all, if every studentwas writing a perfect paper,
what did they need to be inschool for? Right? I mean, that
isn't the goal. The goal is to,you know, to analyze, to make
some mistakes, to fall short ofthe expectation. Understand
where you fell short, and thenand then augment or improve. I

(40:47):
mean, that's in a large partwhat education is all about. And
frankly, if every student ismeeting the bar, it's probably
an example or a indication thatthe bar needs to be raised a
little bit so that we cancontinue to improve and continue
to strive for something,something greater. Also, didn't
know you had a sub stack. You'llhave one more follower after
this particular episode of TheTechEd Podcast.

Gloria Mark (41:07):
Let me add one more thing, yeah, and that's to be
able to make mistakes requirescourage, and I see a reliance on
AI taking away people's courageto make mistakes because the
norms we're creating norms ofhaving perfect output, yep, and

(41:29):
I would so much rather studentshave the nerve to make mistakes
and to be corrected and tounderstand what's Behind those
mistakes. That goes back againto this idea of depth of
processing

Matt Kirchner (41:45):
so that and that gives our educators some really
good understanding of of howthey might, you know, push back
against the system a little bit,and some examples of this
importance of of going deeper,of not expecting perfection from
students. That shouldn't be thegoal of education. The goal
should be making mistakes andand learning from them, having
the courage to make mistakes andalso having the courage to to at
least lean back a little bitwhen, when a teacher or an

(42:07):
educator feels as though, forwhatever reason, we need to
continue to focus on the aspectof education that says it's okay
to go deeper, it's good to godeeper. And we shouldn't be
using, you know, AI andgenerative AI to do, the work of
the student. It can, it mightbe, might it might assisted in
some might assist the studentsin some cases, but, but
certainly not doing the actualwork and letting AI be a

(42:31):
substitute for for deep thoughtand for learning. And that's
really what, what in so manyways, academia is all about.
It's all about the educators,but it's also all about the
students. In fact, even more soabout the students. And I know
we've got students that listento this podcast that are saying,
Okay, this is all great. I'vegot a couple ideas of how I can
improve my attention span. Whatthree strategies would you

(42:53):
suggest Gloria to a student,whether that's a college
student, university student, ahigh school student, what have
you, that recognizes they havean issue in terms of maintaining
that attention span for longerperiods of time. What should
they be doing to improve that?
Yeah,

Gloria Mark (43:07):
so first of all, going back to the idea of
individual differences, everyonehas an individual, personal
rhythm of their cognitiveresource level, right? I use
this metaphor of a tank ofcognitive resources. Now, there
are peaks and valleys throughoutthe day, and my attentional peak

(43:31):
is usually mid morning. I don'tstart out on top of my game, you
know, when I first wake up, butsomeone else who has what's
called an early chronotype,who's up at five and ready to
go, their attentional peak mightbe earlier. Sure, someone who's
a late type, they won't have apeak until later in the day. And

(43:55):
we find that there, on average,there are two attentional peaks,
but they're also valid when wejust get depleted. And so it's
really important for students tounderstand what their own
personal rhythm of attention is,and to use that to guide them to

(44:15):
the extent that they can makedecisions. And I'm talking
probably more about collegelevel, because they have a
little bit more flexibility intheir schedules to be able to do
those hardest tasks at thosepoints when their attention is
at full or high capacity, sure,and to understand, to recognize

(44:37):
that when you're drained, it'stime to take A break, and that's
it comes to my second point isthat it's so important to take
breaks. We, you know, to if wetry to push ourselves through
the day with constant focus, wecan't do that because being
focused is also correlated withbeing stressed. Just because we

(45:01):
we need to summon up theresources we need to be able to
focus sure and so take a break.
Take breaks regularly, to theextent that you can take breaks
once an hour, and to also beable to take an extended break
during the day to clear yourmind. And you know, exercise is

(45:21):
great. I'm, I'm an Exercisefanatic. I every day I do
exercise and it just clears mymind. Awesome. And so, so
that's, that's the second thingthere. There are other
strategies too. And one strategyI like very much, it's called

(45:43):
using forethought, and it'sabout imagining your future self
as a motivator to stay focused.
So if a person is tempted to goon social media, create a
visualization of how you seeyourself at the end of the day.

(46:06):
Where do you want to be, but howdo you want to feel? And I want
to feel rewarded and fulfilledand positive, and I want to see
myself relaxing and being withmy family, and I don't want to
see myself 10 or 11 o'clock atnight working on that deadline,
right? And so bringing up thatvisualization can help keep us

(46:30):
on track. And it's also aboutprobing ourselves to understand
when when we have theseautomatic actions, picking up
our phone, clicking on socialmedia. That's automatic, right?
If you probe yourself, do I needto go to social media right now?
Do I need to be on the phone? Webecome more conscious of our

(46:54):
actions, and at those points iswhen you can use that
visualization. It's a powerfultool. It is to help keep us on
traffic.

Matt Kirchner (47:04):
We could do a whole episode just on on self
visualization and visualizingthe future. It is indeed a
powerful tool. But the, youknow, three really, really good
pieces of advice, figure outwhat your peak time of day is. I
could tell you if I, if they ifI could have taken classes at
five in the morning, that's I'mat my best in the first, you
know, three or four hours of theday in terms of attention span,
certainly really, reallyimportant make sure to take a

(47:27):
break. And exercise is a greatway to step away from whether
it's social media, the screentime, what have you. Then also
that whole idea of forethoughtand visualizing that future you,
in some cases, 10 years ahead oftime, but in this case, at the
end of the day, and recognizingthe more attention I can put
into something now, the lessdistraction and the less rushed
I'm going to be at the end ofthe day. Really, really good

(47:49):
pieces of advice. We've gotprobably time for one last
question here for Dr Gloria markand Gloria, that question is
this, and as much as we talkedabout visualizing the future, I
want to take a moment tovisualize the past and go back
all the way to that 16 year oldGloria. You're maybe a sophomore
in high school yourself. And ifyou had the opportunity to give

(48:09):
that young individual one pieceof advice, what would you tell
her? I

Gloria Mark (48:14):
would say, don't be discouraged when things go
south. For you, when things gowrong, have faith in yourself
that you know it's going to workout. Slow down, you know, keep
the faith that you'll be okay. Imean, I can't tell you how

(48:35):
stressed I was, and you know,there's so many there are joys,
but there are alsodisappointments. And I would
tell myself, you'll be okay,you'll be fine. Just, you know,
work out and trust that things,things will be okay. Don't
stress. You've got your yourwhole life for stress, right?

(48:58):
Exactly, and we should, shouldnot spend too much time at
stress.

Matt Kirchner (49:02):
Yeah. Good advice for our for our current selves
as well, but certainly that that16 year old, don't get
discouraged. Everything is goingto be okay. Keep the faith,
don't stress. Absolutelyimportant, important advice.
We've gotten so many greatpieces of important advice on
this episode of The TechEdPodcast with Dr Gloria Mark, I
want to let you know that numberone, Gloria, thank you so much

(49:22):
for being with us. It's been anabsolute pleasure. We're gonna
link the show notes up at TechEdpodcast.com/mark that is TechEd
podcast.com/m a, r, k, so checkthem out there. Gloria, we'll
make sure the book is linked up,and we'll make sure some of the
other resources we talked aboutare there as well when you're
done at the TechEd podcast.com,checking out the show notes, be

(49:45):
sure and check us out at socialmedia. Just don't do it in the
last two hours before you go tobed. We don't want that blue
screen time, but check us out onsocial we are all over. You'll
find us on LinkedIn, Facebook,Tiktok, Instagram. Doesn't
matter where you consume yoursocial media, you will find.
Mind our channels, and we wouldlove to hear from you here at
The TechEd Podcast, and love tosee you again next week. Thank
you so much for being with us.
My name is Matt Kirkner, andthis is The TechEd Podcast you.