Overwhelmingly
students cited staying attentive as the main reason for performing remedial
actions. That response was more
prevalent than typical components of effective undergraduate student learning,
like note-taking or student preparation before class time (Jerz, 2014). Student participants listed mitigating
distractions from their concentration as the impetus for doing remedial
actions. Students
valued maintaining focus as the way to comprehend at a higher level and become more
efficient in their learning. They
indicated their belief that discomfort hindered focus. Students specified that they felt it their
responsibility to contribute in an active manner to make the classroom environment
conducive to learning. Lastly, students valued
working effectively with members of their cohort in the learning process.
Findings, which highlighted
undergraduate intuition on the value of focus, may have some confirmation in
research. Albeit in junior and senior
high school students, Steinmayr, Ziegler & Träuble (2010) found
domain-specific differences (studying language arts and mathematics courses)
between the correlation of academic achievement and sustained attention when
they examined concentration test results.
However, parsing overall quality of focusing ability from quantity of
correct responses on their attentiveness survey, they determined that “ only
the quality of performance score
incrementally contributed to the prediction of school performance above and
beyond intelligence” (p.14). This means that the type of student able
to
“maintain attention on a specific stimulus to a high
degree (concentration) over a long time period” (p. 15) showed academic achievement,
notwithstanding GPA, in some domains of study.
Furthermore, the researchers said, “ a high level of sustained attention
provides necessary resources for all steps of a complex processing plan…
especially relevant in the school context because complex problem solving is an
important prerequisite for school performance” (p.15).
As I noted, students selected focusing as the way to learn more in the
classroom environment. In many
responses, they stated that disrupting this concentration, whether because of
personal conditions like being drowsy or bored, or through their actions by “ fooling
around” had a direct connection to their
learning and course grades. Moreover, students
recognized the value of focus through engagement as a tenet of effective
learning, even to the point of pretending to focus to induce positive teacher
behaviors.
Therefore,
when students explained their answers to how remedial actions influenced their
learning experience, overwhelming students remarked that their actions were to
alleviate distractions. Student participants believed that discomfort
in the classroom caused loss of concentration, which was detrimental to learning. In line with this notion, leaning forward to
see or hear, difficulty using laptops, moving around to say warm or cool
enough, and struggles to interact effectively, all constituted a distraction.
Some
student participants believed that it was their responsibility to remedy shortcomings in their learning environment
(to note-take or view the board better), when possible. A participant said, “Discomfort can be
distracting from learning so it's necessary to ‘correct’ it.” Other students indicated that they valued
group work in their learning experience.
They cited actions to more effectively work with other students as the
reason for their remedial actions. A
typical remark was, “collaboration …in regards to a group project …was key to
the course.” Taking actions to remediate
the classroom in order to facilitate group learning and collaborative processes
indicated a sense of responsibility or obligation to contribute to improving
their own learning experiences.
Moreover, I found that
in the class that I observed students who highly valued their corrective
actions to remedy classroom deficiencies also indicated the importance of focus
in learning (or at least for academic assessment). I utilized versus coding of classroom survey responses (labeling data within the
dichotomy of X versus Y) that identified “the conflict, struggles, and power issues
observed in social action…as an X VS. Y
code” (Saldaña, 2011, p. 107), and found that this group, exclusively,
represented the dichotomy: “sleep in class/not pay attention vs. good grades.”
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