(341) Assessing the Utility of Distraction Elimination on Student Focus and Retention

Objective : Identify causes for class distraction and assess the impact of distraction reduction techniques within pharmacy students, and their effect on in-class assessments.

Methods: First, second, and third-year pharmacy students voluntarily completed a baseline non-anonymous survey collecting their in-class behaviors surrounding attention span and focus during class time. The students were then educated over less than 5 min on the impact of multitasking and time that takes to recover attention, as well as methods to reduce distraction including using airplane mode, Do Not Disturb functions on electronic devices and turning off notifications. Students were asked to use the technique(s) of their choosing throughout the rest of the class session. The students completed a survey about their experience. To measure the impact of this intervention, exit quizzes assessing content discussed in the class session were included on the pre-intervention and intervention day, and data were compared via a two-tailed paired T-Test.

Results: Seventy-two students completed the pre- and post-surveys with 59 (82%) students implementing an intervention and 13 (18%) choosing not to use interventions. Amongst the intervention group, there was a statistically significant difference in performance in the pre- and post-intervention quiz scores (p=0.0002) and a statistically significant change amongst the time to focus loss amongst the non-intervention (p=0.015). The most common reasons for losing focus were texting (n=33, 46%), e-mailing (n=31, 43%), or studying for other courses (n=31, 43%) and the most common reason for opting out of the intervention was to monitor family status (n=5, 38%).

Conclusions: This data suggest that students performed better on quizzes if they used reduced distraction techniques. Additional techniques to help students maintain focus during class should be explored.