How did I know we'd end up in your blog? What you call multitasking, though, I'd just call rude.

I agree with Kate, Dr. A. It's one thing to multitask on your own time and do homework while say... watching the food network. But once you're in class, I think your attention should turn to the professor.

How would the students feel if the professor was multi-tasking during student presentations? I, personally wouldn't care for that. I think it's just a matter of respect, and many millenials seem to have missed the memo. Maybe they were multitasking...

According to Stuart Twemlow, there's a problem in schools -- teachers are bullying their students. See the article responding to Twemlow, on "Irascible Professor."

http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-10-04-03.htm

I've blogged a bit about this subject. Click my name to read it.

Mike: the students were assembling their ports in class, disrupting the flow of class. Doesn't this mean people are generally bad at mutitasking. Being good at it would mean that people could maintain a conversation on the phone, check their PDA's, IM, chew gum, do a little research, take good notes--all while the lecture and discussion happen--then get good grades on the quiz.

Donna & Kate: You guys are exceptionally wonderful students. Thanks for backing me up with the kind comment (and for even reading the blog in the first place!). I don't really demand respect, per se, but I do think that in classes about communication (like writing courses) it is imperative to call attention to non-verbal expressions (like paper-riffling or eyeballing the clock) as much as written ones.

Steve: Thanks for the great response! You are so right and since you mentioned a quiz, well... maybe I oughta give one now!

Dennis: I don't see the relation between "multitasking" and "bullying." Could you be multitasking right now?

That's a charitable interpretation, Mike... based on the textual evidence, I look like a bully! :)

Indeed, that post of mine meandered a bit.

Even the simple act of raising one's voice to be heard over disruptions caused by students might, in the "zero tolerance" educational culture, be misconstrued as "bullying." And that, I feel, is silly. The words I used to link back to your site were ill-chosen... I've edited accordingly.

And yes, I had multiple browser windows open, was answering e-mail, and for a while even talking on the phone. How'd you guess? :)

"Corporations see "multi-tasking" as the skill of a productive worker."

From my experience as a corporate manager and executive, I view the ability to concentrate as at least as important as the ability to multitask. Analyzing a pricing issue, writing a computer program, developing an effective sales presentation--all of these things require sustained concentration. Yes, you need to be able to deal with interruptions, but you also need to be able to return to the project from them, without loosing the thread.

Also, regarding multitasking and air traffic controllers: multitasking is inherent to the ATC job. A controller may be dealing with perhaps 10-20 airplanes simultaneously, and may also be performing computer-related tasks (ie, entering assigned altitude information, handing off flights to another controller, etc). Some reduction in multitasking occurs when the controller is assigned an assistant for data entry tasks, but it's hard to see what could be done beyond this...

The multi-tasking issues appears to have brought out everyone. We hear that term so often these days that a kind of reification has taken place--it begins to seem like there really must exist a skill set that allows some individuals to deal with a variety of chores simultaneously. When I interviewed the V.P. of a major corporation for one of the program reviews, he mentioned three skills that he looked for in college hires: excellent writing, facility with computers, and "multi-tasking." But I'm sure he could not have meant doing many things at once. He must have meant the acquired ability to turn attention from one task to another, in other words, the ability to quickly re-deploy attention. Any other meaning to the term, as in the example of students preparing to leave while they purportedly listen to your leture, is just nonsense. Attention, as it turns out, can't be subdivided. Wilhelm Wundt, in a famous experiment in the late 19th century, showed that even it required (on average) 1/10th of a second to make the switch from one bit of sensory stimulus to another. His article on this has the wonderful title, "The Speed of Thought." Of course, pragmatist philosopher and functionalist psychologist William James debunked the way Wundt divided consciousness into discreet elements, but I doubt that James' "stream of consciousness" allows for multi-tasking. After all, if consciousness flows into putting together the portfolio, it has flowed away from taking notes, even mental ones.

I e-mailed John asking him whether he had the Wundt article, but I thought I might as well post my request here. I couldn't find it online anywhere, though I presume it is in the common domain by now.

A while ago I blogged an article about a man who had been blind for decades, but who suddenly regained his vision. He has difficulty processing visual input - even facial expressions seemed like distrations to him. Here's the link: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=1624 (You can also click on my name.)

Excellent commentary! I think the rate of task switching is what some would same today's millennials have got in high octane. Like microprocessors -- they're Pentium 4's while we're all running 386s or something.

Thus, Steven Downes great article (be sure to read the debate below it) on The New Literacy, where he claims that today's generation might very well be polyfocal and almost able to "read" two tasks at once the way a soundtrack overdubs a film image. Of course, others (like Michael O'Brien of the the Catholic Education Research Center) claim that all this technology-enhanced multitasking is leading to a New Illiteracy.

We can't take our minds off of multitasking. We're giving full, sustained attention to the issue. Since posting yesterday I've thought about the issue. We can obviously do some things simultaneously. For instance, I'm typing and reading what I write. And, I spend most of my driving time with my mind on other issues, yet I still return to the driving problems as they arise. That is the beauty of habit--you can do even relatively complicated tasks with a high degree of efficiency and with no real use of attention. "Habit is second nature, or rather, ten times nature," according to William James, who made habit an element of American pyschology (for a collection of his quotes on this, see but I recommend his chapter on habit in the shorter version of "Psychology.")

But I think attention is the real issue. We have far more to call out to our attention than Wundt's 19th century sophomores, but I doubt that we have more attention. [Dennis--I have a reference to the article in my office, though I think it is to the German article. I know it must have been translated. I need to find it.]

Hi Everyone
I am Ish from mp2 (www.mp2.cjb.net). Well it gets to my notice that the research work on multitasking as primarily done till date is very rare and needs speculation.
I would say the nned of current date is to understand the fact that multitasking has become an essential element in today's world. One has scarcity of time and electronic gadgets available at ones disposal that were not there earlier. In my opinion researchers should not look in for ways to make multitasking effecient through conditioning. In a similar sort of effort done my me ir reveled some high pitch results. Infact even in university of mischigen it was tested that after 6 trials on multitasking the performance raised significantly ....so why not learn multitasking and enjoy rather than accept it as a performence decrementer
Any Opinions
Regards
Ishroop

ei, can u give me the effects of multitasking to employees. researches if any.

Dear Sir,

Rational management is crucial to attaining the desired output from us millenials. A few of the analogies used by those commenting on your blog might be helpful in imagining the context of the millenial student. You yourself indicated a possible cause of this problem of multitasking: the average millenial is trained to constantly interact with new external stimuli. Indeed, this is not a generational problem. A universal value in our society today is that a realtime interaction-interrupting phone call, especially from a cell phone, takes reactive precedence over the realtime (and geographic-present) task at hand. Granted, however, is that millenials are particularly bad at unconciously following this behavioral norm (to my unending frustrating when trying to have a normal conversation with my friends).

Importantly, in some of the commentary posts, your readers have compared us to a computer processor. This analogy can be expanded upon; a critical determinant of processor performance is the speed of external stimuli imputs. Thus, investing in a Pentium 4 chip is a waste of money if one only has a dial-up connection or is using the computer to play solitaire rather than, say, edit digital video. Thus, multitasking does have substantial benefits in a modern lifestyle marked by an over-abundance of button-pressing, a result of the increased preference for mechanized labor to take care of menial tasks of everyday life with a minimal amount of direction or supervision.

However, you are right in insisting on the necessities of concentration and 'thought' in undertaking the task of literary analysis.
However, just because the brain CAN multitask doesn't mean that it HAS to. Even on the fastest computers, running too many programs at once can indeed slow down the completion of all tasks, perhaps what your were eluding to when citing studies which found an inverse relationship between multitasking and job quality and personal health. However, if given one task to perform, the quicker chip will be just as capable of and, notably, will perform at higher speeds when going through the numerous complex operations (be they mechanical or analytic) necessary for task completion.

The simple answer to assuring that your students are enabled to perform at peak cognitive levels from the very beginning of your classes to the very end of your lecture would be to limit 'external' stimuli to every extent possible. Rather than allow them to turn in their portfolios at the end of class, use your power as thier leader to demand that your students must turn in assignments at the beginning of class without exception. Wait to pass out exams until the end of class. Limit computer use for notes [as many of my fellow students at UCLA are busy multitasking during class (Wikipedia is a favorite) when they are allowed to use computers to take notes], and make hard rules about cell phone use (such as an automatic dismissal policy for the offending student if their cell phone rings during your lecture). Indeed multitasking can be a problem, but with the experiences millenials have undergone throughout our childhoods, you can be sure that the interactive parenting styles of Mom and Dad have prepared your students to respond positively to the more structured environment engendered by the limited-stimuli classroom.

However, do all this and you run the real danger of creating a classroom of students who will take your class very seriously and demand that you do the same. This is not to be underestimated; you had better make sure that your lectures are jam packed with valuable material and challenging information from the very beginning to the very end in order for you to be able to justify these semi-draconian measures to your students. On the other hand, isn't there something slightly comforting about the knowledge that your every word isn't been hung on and processed by the hall full of students in front of you, at least for the warm-up period at the beginning of class? Alright, so you might need to repeat some information before a test, or respond to simple questions during office hours, but I assure you that some of my professors would prefer these insignificant frustratations to the pressure of having their every word deconstructed and analysed by the computer-like capabilities of the minds sitting right in front of them.

Its a double edged sword, Professor, and you can't have it both ways. Raise your expectations of your students and, being millenials, their expectations of you too will rise.

I see that your post is from 2003. Perhaps you will never read this. Oh well, I have been intellectually challanged by your blog none the less. All the best.

Chris