The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hosted by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our eleventh episode is on attention, sleep and learning and our guests are Dr Sophie Forster, Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience, and Dr Giulia Poerio, Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.

Recording

Listen to the recording of Episode 11 on Spotify.

Transcript

Wendy Garnham: 

Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is Attention, Sleep, and Learning. And our guests are Dr Sophie Forster, Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience, and Doctor Giulia Poerio, Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.

Sophie Forster: 

Hello.

Giulia Poerio: 

Hello.

Wendy Garnham: 

Sophie, could you start by telling us a little about your research and what drew you to this area?

Sophie Forster: 

Yeah. Sure. So I study attention. I tend to be particularly interested in understanding what’s going on in our brains when we do things like get distracted or, like, don’t notice things. What drew me to this area, I suppose, my sister was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and I kind of saw how that really affected her at school. And, I always struggled a lot with attention as well. And it wasn’t really until I’d already been studying distraction and how impossible it is to pay attention, and, all of these problems, and publishing papers on ADHD that I realized that I also have the extremely heritable condition that my sister is diagnosed with. So, yeah, that was kind of how I got into it.

Wendy Garnham: 

And same question to you, Giulia.

Giulia Poerio: 

So I’ve studied lots of different things including sleep and I’ve done some research on attention or specifically daydreaming, mind wandering, similar to some of the work that Sophie’s done. My interest in sleep has kind of really been because I sleep quite poorly. And I noticed the effects that it has on things like, you know, cognitive function, emotions in particular, and, all of those sorts of things. So I recognize how kind of important it is for people’s well-being and it affects everything. And we spend a really long time doing it. So it’s really, really important. So I’ve recently started working on, a grant that looks at sleep, in depersonalization and derealization disorder, so symptoms of dissociation. So a lot of my work at the moment is focused on that.

Wendy Garnham: 

Not a problem that I’ve experienced yet not being able to sleep.

Heather Taylor: 

Giulia, how has your research shaped your approach to teaching and supporting students?

Giulia Poerio:

 I don’t know whether this is like I’m allowed to say this, but, I encourage students to—so I teach a module on sleep and mental health, for 2nd year psychology students. And, I encourage them to understand what their own individual sleep preferences are like, particularly around the timing of sleep. So if they’re a night owl or like a morning person. Most of us are tend towards evening type if we’re in adolescence. So I say to students, if you are an extreme evening type or you’re an evening type, don’t come to my lectures if they’re early in the morning. Catch up on, kind of re-recording when you want to. Because students coming in completely sleep deprived for a 2 hour lecture, at a time that is not suitable for their body, I personally think is a waste of their time.

Heather Taylor (03:30): 

I’ve heard about this. [Have you heard about this?] Yeah. From students. And I can’t remember who it was, actually. But you know what I mean. You’re sort of like if you’re going to be lecturing on this and saying how important it is to recognize what your sleep patterns are and when you’re most awake and alert and so on, then, yeah, they like it. Obviously, they like it. We should look at the attendance rate. So I actually reckon your attendance won’t be worse as a result of it. It might even be better. 

Giulia Poerio:

I mean, I have a problem with students being forced into going to lectures and the attendance thing anyway because, you know, a lot of students experience sensory problems. I experience a lot of sensory problems myself, and I would never be able to concentrate in a lecture ever. And so I think uni should be about understanding what your learning preferences and styles are and, you know, taking control of that and doing it that way. I mean, that’s probably not very popular with universities but that’s my personal view.

Heather Taylor: 

It’s popular with students. Yeah. 

Wendy Garnham:

As an extreme evening type, I wonder if I could use the same philosophy for meetings at 9 o’clock.

Giulia Poerio: 

Yes. One of my old supervisors, he had, delayed, sleep wake face disorder, which is extreme evening chronotype. I never saw him before 3 PM in the afternoon. And if I did, he’d done an all nighter, to be up in the morning. But, yeah, I tend to not have, morning meetings either.

Heather Taylor:

We were talking about that, but I’m like a super early person. Like, I’m, like, a 4 AM. 5 AM feels like a lie in, and I think and you’re right. I wasn’t like that when I was well, until I had to be, like, but I wasn’t like that when I was younger if I had the choice. So would it such a mismatch between me and them because I’d have them all in at 7 AM, you know, if I could. But I wouldn’t, obviously, because they’d all hate me and no-one would turn up and no-one would do any work. But, yeah, it’s tricky when you’re, like, got this do you know what I mean?

Giulia Poerio: 

Well, there is research on this. So there’s some research that looked at what the ideal times for university lectures would be based on undergraduate students’ chronotype. And they suggested that students should be waking up at some on average, considering all of them, the individual differences at 9, half 9, starting lectures anywhere between 11 and 1, and then going to bed at, like, half past 1 in the morning.

Heather Taylor:

Oh that’s fine. I’m awake in the middle of the day.

Giulia Poerio: 

Yeah. So but that would prevent if we did that, that would prevent students from being chronically sleep deprived.

Heather Taylor: 

So, same question to you then, Sophie. How has your research shaped your approach to teaching and supporting students?

Sophie Forster (06:02): 

So I think my research, because I study attention, I think I’m aware of, firstly, like, the massive impact on attention on learning , in terms of, like, like, just their studies where they followed even just children from the point they start school to the point they finish school. And, attention is 1 of the main things that predicts how well they’ll do, you know, if they attention age 5 will predict how well they’ll do age 17. Even when you control for other things like baseline maths and English, it just has such a huge impact, and it’s because it’s really the way that your brain is choosing what information goes in. And I think the second thing is there’s a bit of a misconception about attention that it’s, like, all down to the person. You know, we talk about things like people having an attention span or whatever, and this is like, oh, how long can you pay attention to? And that kind of puts too much pressure on the students, you know, that they’re just meant to pay attention to whatever we throw at them. And actually, that’s not how attention works. It’s like, it would be kind of rubbish if that was how it works. Because if you imagine, like, for example, let’s say you’re having, a picnic in the park, you know, and you’re talking to your friend, and you might feel like your friend is what you should be paying attention to. But at that moment, someone throws a ball and it comes towards your head. So if you had this amazing attention span, you’re getting hit in the head with a ball at that moment. Right? Yeah. It’s like your attention needs to have this reflexive element to react to things. So being distracted isn’t, like, a bad thing, it’s attention working properly. But what this means as teachers is it’s kind of our responsibility to engage the reflexive parts of attention. You know, it’s not just down to them, it’s down to us, so we have to, like, work for it. Does that make sense? Yeah. That was a Yeah.

Wendy Garnham: 

That sort of reminds me of active learning. Yeah. So trying to really, like, bring the students into that sort of hands on engagement experiential side of things maybe.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think I agree with you. I think it’s a bit transactional. Like, if I know that I’ve got a lecture that, say, I did last year and they didn’t seem that into it and, actually, a lot of the time, they’re not into it because I’m not into it. You know, like, if I’m not enthusiastic, they’re not going to be. So I have to figure out a way that I can get enthusiastic about it. I also have to think about, right, that was a bit heavy, that bit, so I’m going to have to chop it up with something else. You know, like, keep changing what we’re doing. And I and I’m quite easily bored, but I’m also quite easily, if I like something, I find it quite easy to stay with it, but if I don’t, I’ll just zone out. So I kind of feel like I do it based on whether I’m getting bored, you know, when I’m making it and when I’m writing it and when I’m delivering it. And it tends to work that way, but I think there is that, yeah, I agree with you. There’s a transaction. And, actually, I think if we just relied on it all being about the students’ ability to pay attention, no-one would really try and do anything good in their teaching. They just deliver. You don’t need a teacher then, actually. You could just give them a handout and go read that, and then you’ve got all the information. You know? So I like the idea that it’s a transaction, that we have to get there a tick. I don’t I mean, I don’t want to do like a TikTok and a dance and whatever. You know, I don’t I don’t want to go too far. 

Sophie Forster:

It doesn’t and it doesn’t like, it’s not like there’s only one way. I think, like, interactive stuff is a great way of getting people’s attention. If you’re really good at, sort of, telling anecdotes, or if you’re funny, or whatever it is, but something that’s a bit easier to attend to, right? And just being aware of those points and peppering them in, and sort of thinking about it in terms of, like, if you think about your lecture through the lens of, like, if it was a broadcast on TV and one bit of it just cut out, what would be the moments where if people miss that, they’re not going to understand anything else? You know? And if there’s moments like that, sort of being like, okay, I’ve got to really be like, okay, everyone? Even just sort of saying, okay, you re and I think that the other thing is not doing that. It’s ableist because, I mean, there’s huge individual differences in how much people can pay attention. And maybe some faculty are on the end of a spectrum that they find it easy so they don’t have this awareness. And it’s and they sort of think it’s about effort, you know, that if you’re I’ve heard people say, oh, a serious student won’t need, you know, it’s not really about effort. It’s just it’s individual differences. So, yeah. I think that’s my hot take. Being boring is ableist.

Heather Taylor (10:35): 

Yeah. That’s a yeah. That’s quite a good slogan.

Giulia Poerio: 

Yeah. Can I can I ask Sophie a question? Do you have thoughts on like how to re-engage people’s attention when they’re when they veered off? So like and how much of responsibility is that for students? So one of the things that I noticed that I can’t believe students do is try and write down everything I’m saying, and they’re paying almost too much attention. And then they miss something, and then they’ve gone off, and then they can’t get back in. Like, do you have thoughts on how I could improve that in my teaching?

Sophie Forster: 

Well, I Yeah. It’s difficult, isn’t it? But I I sort of think it’s okay if people in a lecture, I don’t know. For me, I sort of think the aim that people will take in a 100% is not realistic. So I tend to sort of repeat stuff that I think is like, I tend to give it multiple ways to go into that. Yeah. And again, it’s like it’s sort of like, what are the bits that are unmissable? What are the bits that if they don’t get that, they might as well have not been there? And sometimes I even resort to being like, if I’m really stuck, I’ll be like, okay, I’m really sorry. This next bit, I’ve tried really hard to think of a way that isn’t boring to explain it, and it is just really boring. And you are just going to want to tune out, But just let’s all just ramp up. Oh, that’s it. If you’ve got, like, you know, this much attention, use it all now. And then it’s why I’m because, I mean, I find that helpful Yeah.

Giulia Poerio: 

So you’re seeing when signposting to pay attention. Yeah. That’s really helpful, thank you. I’ll take those tips.

Heather Taylor (12:04): 

Yeah. Sometimes you do have to tell them this is going to be dry. And I Yeah. And it just is, but you need it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what? Eleanor uses, Eleanor is someone else who works here. Eleanor uses, summary slides throughout her lectures. So if she’s going to talk about 3 or 4 different things within a lecture, at the end of each thing, she’ll summarize what she’s just said. So I think, I still haven’t applied that, actually, but I think that’s good for you know, when you say people get lost and they can get really stressed out if they get lost and then they’re zoned out and then they think, oh, why am I here? I need to know this to they don’t. And, also, they can watch you back later. But, anyway, I think the summary bits are like, oh, okay. I missed that bit. Or, oh, actually, I did understand the key bits I was meant to understand. So I think that’s another good way to do it. Yeah. 

Wendy Garnham:

I think just sort of setting expectations as well. Because I know in in mine, I tend to sort of put too much in sometimes, but I just tend to put the minimal amount on my slides. So, like, the main headings or the main sort of point. And then I tell them at the beginning, like, I’m going to talk to that point. I don’t expect you to get it all down, but they’re all recorded. So you can always go back and fill in details later. But we’ll be doing, like, interactive things during the lecture and that will give you a sort of a deeper understanding of what that key point means. But if you want the specific details, you’ve always got that recording then to go back to technology, permitting. But, that seems to work quite well as well. So they’re not taking down lots and lots of text from a slide but they’re taking down a main point then you do, like, a little sort of activity or you give an example or whatever. But because everything’s recorded, they’ve then got that backup to go to and that I think that seems to work well. I  used to put a lot on the slides and, yeah, it just you end up with students asking to go back to an earlier slide and it just disrupts the flow and 

Heather Taylor: 

They also all seem to have this idea that would they need to take notes. They’ll go, you know, come and see you – I can’t take notes in the lecture and keep up. Don’t then. No-one said you had to. It’s not necessary to embed information, in fact.

And you might remember things on a bit of a deeper level if you just pay attention at the time. You could scribble some notes down afterwards if you want. Some of them might not need to. I appreciate people don’t want to double up on everything, so they don’t want to sit in a 2 hour lecture and then do 2 hours worth of note taking, but they can’t do it at the same time. If they’re telling you they can’t do it, don’t do it then.  Why’d you keep trying to do it? [I never did it]. I didn’t. No. Yeah. I used to watch him back and go the odd thing. You know what I mean? Write the odd thing down. Also, they can watch me I tell them because they do it anyway. They can watch you at double speed afterwards.

Giulia Poerio: 

Oh, yeah. I tell them that. I’m like, slow me down, speed me up. Like, you know So they can pause me.

Heather Taylor: 

Exactly. So they can just watch it, and then the bits that they didn’t really get, they can go back to afterwards, you know? So, yeah, maybe that’s the expectation we need to tell them. They’re like, you all think you have to take notes. No-one said you had to take notes.

Sophie Forster: 

Because they also yeah. I always get students complaining that I don’t have enough text on my slides. But then it’s because I mean, it’s literally impossible to listen to somebody talking and read text that is different words. 

Heather Taylor:

Like, that’s just that’s not want you to say the same words, but that is the least engaging  yeah. They don’t really want that. Yeah. 

Wendy Garnham: 

Well, then if you did that, they’d then complain that you were just reading slides.

Sophie Forster (15:35): 

Well, so I have that exact problem, which is that I deliberately put loads of text on my slides so that they don’t have to write down everything I’m saying because all the core information is on the slide, and some of them don’t. I’m like, why are you writing down what I’m saying? Because it’s literally already there. I think that you can’t win because everybody’s so individual in their learning. But what you can try and do is accommodate stuff. So next year, for example, I’m moving all the text from the slides to the notes section.

You know, and that was a suggestion made by one of the students, which I really liked. But I really struggled to know what the optimal thing is. And maybe there is no optimal. 

Giulia Poerio: 

I agree it’s about maybe the students’ expectations though. Because you wouldn’t just watch a film and then be, like, writing down. Oh, the camera pans to a scene of someone opening a door and somebody comes through the door. You know? Like, you wouldn’t get much out of that film, would you?

Wendy Garnham: 

That brings us to our next question. And I’m going to ask you, Giulia, for this one first. What is one key insight from your research that you think could improve the student experience in higher education?

Giulia Poerio: 

I guess everybody’s really different. And the key challenge for individuals is to learn about themselves and self discover whatever that might be, and learn what makes you, and what you like and what you don’t like. And don’t feel like you have to do things that society or the university or other people expect from you if that doesn’t fit with who you feel you are.

Sophie Forster: 

I think an insight maybe from the field of mind wandering, which is also, an area I work in, is just that, like, there’s lots of studies of mind wandering in lectures. And from those studies, it’s fairly established that a lot of your students aren’t listening. If you just look at the amount of time people spend mind wandering, especially as time goes on, I think by the end it’s going to be more than 50% of the time, right? It’s like a lot. It’s not it’s not we’re not missing a little amount, so you just have to be giving a lecture in that knowledge. A lot of the signal is getting lost. So that’s yeah. Stuff needs to be repeated. Stuff needs to be flagged.

Heather Taylor: 

A common, like, annoyance for me is that someone asks me a question via email that I’ve said a million times in a million different ways. Right? But and then it what also annoys me is other students are going, why’d you keep saying that? You  know? Yeah. But you’re right. I think that, we can’t just assume they’ve taken also, sometimes, they’re just really anxious as well. You know, even coming into a big lecture theatre, they’re just really anxious sometimes. Some of the students are in a seminar room. They’ve got a lot going on And, you know yeah. I don’t know. I think I don’t know. That’s an important thing for me to remember. 

I think also this is unrelated to what we’re talking about now. But you know when you say you let your students attend if they want to or not? [Which is technically not allowed], but Yeah. I get last time, I got so personally offended by the lack of attendance towards the end of term. And I normally don’t. Right? But it really, like because I think they forget that you’re a person. Right? And I’m a person who’s prepared something. I’m standing up in front of a very big room with not many people in it saying it, and, you know, like, it damages my self esteem. You know? It didn’t used to. It’s just this term, for some reason, it wound me up. But I think, again and I did keep reminding myself of this even. Like, it’s not about me. It’s about them. My feedback from my module was fantastic. Right? So that cheered me up, you know, once I got to that bit. So I love them all again now. But, yeah, I think it is really important to remember both of your points anyway. You know, you’re about again, about you focusing on it being about them getting to know them and you about saying they’re not going to necessarily remember or pay attention to everything we say. I think it is really important, at least for me, but maybe I’m just overly sensitive, to remember that it’s not about me. It’s not about me at all.

Giulia Poerio (19:46): 

Yeah. I would rather students look after their own well-being than come to my lecture,

and when it’s deadline season. Like, why bother coming to a lecture if you know you’re not going to be able to concentrate because you’re worrying about something else or your mind wondering about your other concerns.  So just go, I’ll catch up on that lecture later. And now, which I didn’t have when I was at uni, everything’s recorded. So fantastic. Like, why put yourself through that if you don’t have to?

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. I suppose there always needs to be – to differentiate though between people that are doing it because they’re prioritizing certain needs and they are doing the work lately. I know we’ve got students like that who don’t always attend everything, but they always have watched it or read it or whatever it is before the next session. They come full of questions, you know. But we get other people and we might assume that they’re doing that, but they’ve actually just dropped off. Like, they’ve disengaged for the whole term. And so it’s a really it’s almost like a really tricky thing to know when you need to intervene with someone. I mean, we have the, obviously, attendance policies and so on in place, but sometimes you’re intervening and there’s not a reason you really need to intervene. They’re managing. But, actually, I think in a lot of cases, they’re not, You know? And something needs to happen. And it’s a tricky thing. I really like it in your module because I think it’s speaking to what you believe in and what you’re lecturing on. I feel like I don’t know if it would work across the board. You know? It would make me super popular with students though.

Sophie Forster: 

But do you not think that, like, it’s a university is also about becoming an independent person and if you decide you don’t want to go to lectures. It’s not school. We’re not in school anymore.

Heather Taylor: 

No. No. I do agree with you in that. But I think as well, 18 is, like I know technically they’re an adult, but 18 is I didn’t, you know, I’m 41 now. I’m much more adult now than I was when I was 18, say, so there’s stages of adulthood. But, also, I do agree with you with that, but I think sometimes a lot of other things are going on. And if we just or if I, at least in my experience, just let it all slide, I’d be missing lots of people that actually needed support and needed me to reach out and go, why are you never here? 

Sophie Forster

Do you do that, do you look at people’s attendance rates and then you can see whether they’re, like, engaging on Canvas, and then you contact them?

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah.

Heather Taylor: 

We have a smaller cohort. 

Sophie Forster

So I was going to say, like, how does is that something as convenors we should be doing? 

Heather Taylor: 

I wouldn’t with the size of groups.  Oh, go on Simon

Simon Overton (22:13): 

I know the answer  to this.

Yeah. This is, producer Simon. So this comes out of a really unfortunate case and I forget which university was it? Bristol or Manchester, where a student, had not been attending and hadn’t been noted. So as coordinators, what we do, during term time, we, every 2 weeks, we get a little report of people that have been absent, and we send them an email, but it’s kind of a it’s not a horrible email. But it’s very it’s very sort of officious sounding. So we send that to them. But what I do is I leave it a few days and then I will send them a personal email and just say like, how’s your studying going? You know, are you alright? And I find that that gets much better responses. But I think that’s kind of that for me, that’s, a reason to be concerned about attendance and to make sure that people are coming along. And again, because they are such young adults or be adults, I think sometimes they do need a bit of extra looking after because it might be the first time for them.

Sophie Forster: 

 I wonder whether attend attendance versus engagement is a different thing. So if you’re engaging online on Canvas, and you can see that they’re watching the lecture recordings or their engagement is high and their attendance is low.

Giulia Poerio: 

I usually so I have a final year module that is smaller. Right? So it will have, like, 60 max on it. And so for that, it’s more feasible, and I guess I do establish more of a rapport with my students. And, I do usually, especially in the early weeks, I will check who hasn’t shown up and kind of check-in on them and email them. Because and quite often, when I email them, it will turn out that it’s an issue. And sometimes me reaching out actually is what encourages them to, it kind of almost helps them a bit because they’re sort of like, okay. Somebody cares and is checking in on me. So I think it can, you know, I do it in a nice way. I’m not like, where are you? It’s more like I’m just making sure everything’s okay. You know? And do you need any help to come back?

Wendy Garnham: 

That’s one of the underpinnings of the doughnut model that we use in Foundation Year is the idea that we have to reach out rather than them sort of coming and telling us. But I think also there’s a sort of another issue for me which is just the ones who attend a lot seem to have the strongest friendship groups. And I think those who don’t attend tend to drift on the outskirts of the friendship groups, and they’re often the ones that report feeling quite isolated, quite lonely. So I think sometimes attendance, if you view it in a different way as being, you know, you’re sort of getting to know people, you’re using it as an opportunity to network with people on your module. I mean, obviously, there are there are barriers for some to do in that, but at least it sort of gets that expectation that you’re all in it together. You’re all here to sort of, you know, take what you can from a teaching session. But that’s sort of one of the other reasons why we sort of we monitor attendance is just and do that reach out. You know, you’ve your attendance has dropped quite significantly. I suppose a bit like you were saying, Simon, just, you know, is everything okay? Don’t forget there’s loads of support. Just, you know, let us know. And we use the 1 to 9 system, so we just get students every 3rd week to send your academic adviser a number between 1 and 9, and anything below a 5 they’ll get back to you, they’ll arrange to meet with you, we can see what’s happening. And that the  uptake in terms of students responding has been fantastic. And it just, you know, they don’t have to explain anything. They don’t have to go into detail. They don’t have to put anything in an email. They can just send you a number. And that can then just trigger the whole sort of sequence of support.

Heather Taylor (26:10): 

I do think it is still worth weighing up with. We’re saying we’re reaching out to them for their well-being, we want them to attend for their well-being. But research would suggest that their well-being is being impacted by us getting them to attend things without them having sufficient sleep. They’ll probably get more stress as well if they can’t attend, like, as in paying attention because also because they haven’t had sufficient sleep. So it’s really tricky to balance because we can’t have every student learn between 11 and 1. We struggle to fit them in between 9 and 8.

Giulia Poerio: 

No, starting between 11 and 1. So you start

Heather Taylor:

Oh, starting.  But still it’s hard in this. Do you know what I mean?

Giulia Poerio:

 Practically, it’s not feasible.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. But, you know, if we were if we so we’re sort of like reaching out, trying to look after their well-being for things that’s already happened. You’re actually trying to stop things from happening. You’re trying to stop their well-being from deteriorating. So it’s a really tricky balance.

Wendy Garnham:

Yeah. But it probably does. I’m just thinking, like, in terms of, when I used to teach in secondary schools and there it’s like an extreme where they have to be in school at, like, 20 to 9 in the morning and, like, the number of sleep deprived children coming into school is ridiculous. So, yeah, it’s sort of I think the whole education system needs to 

Giulia Poerio: 

And actually society because most people don’t fit 9 to 5 either. You’re really lucky because society is, biased towards morning, really early morning types.

Heather Taylor:

I know people think that morning people are really good. 

Giulia Poerio: 

No. But they do think they do think evening people are lazy. People think you’re lazy if you’re an evening.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. But I’ll stop by 4, you know? Like, that’s a long that would have been a long day, though. I don’t have  to go into 4.

Giulia Poerio: 

But you’re definitely working. You’re definitely working that out, like, the hours that people would expect you to be working.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s the thing. I think if they get an email from me at 6 in the morning, they’re like, wow. Heather’s so on it. But you’re not going to get an email from me at 6 o’clock at night, but most of you probably do send emails at 6 o’clock at night.

Simon Overton (27:59):

So in my normal role as coordinator in in Global Studies, we’ve been reviewing the courses for the year in Anthropology and in International Development. And in both of those meetings with mostly different sets of, faculty members, it’s gone to the same thing. Now, obviously, we talk about AI because we always talk about that. But it’s very much gone back to attendance and engagement, and how that drops off. And a lot of people feel, a lot of the lecturers feel that, that the timing of their lectures is really important. And everybody’s after certain sort of times. And a lot of them have tied together the time of the lecture with the, attendance overall. It’s just funny for me. It’s really it’s come up so many times. One thing that was quite interesting for me was that, students who live off campus and are expected to come in even for 10 o’clock, they’re paying a higher price for getting on the same bus, which I had not really thought about as well, which can be really, really tough for them. The other thing that we struggle with a lot, and we try to avoid it through timetabling, is when you have a sort of a split shift. So you have a lecture in the morning and then nothing for 5 hours. And then something else in the evening. And we can sort of mitigate that by switching around, seminar times and things. So I suppose my question is, how much do you feel that there is a correlation between engagement and the time that sessions take place?

Giulia Poerio: 

Sounds like an empirical question to me. I don’t know because I teach at the same time, every week. So personally, I can’t speak to it in in terms of whether I’ve noticed that I taught 11 till 1, which I think was quite a good slot, for attendance. But I would imagine that they would be, you know, very early and very late, I think, is difficult. But I don’t have data on it, so I can’t 

Heather Taylor: 

You should look at that.

Giulia Poerio: 

It’s an empirical question, isn’t it?

Sophie Forster: 

I’ve had different lecture slots and it for sure makes a difference. I mean, but you just it’s you teach a bit differently if you’re but the it’s just like, for example, if it’s in the morning, a lot more people are going to be using caffeine. Do you know what I mean? So it’s like, it just, and it’s, and if it’s the end of the day, people are just going to be a bit tired, you know, mostly, and, or I’m going to be tired also. Like, it just, but so I think it for sure. And it’s also just, like, if it’s really early, like, I think I had 9, you’ll have people not show up and you’ll even I don’t know. It’s just it’s yeah. It for sure makes a difference.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. Thursday mornings are a nightmare as well because it’s a big student night on a Wednesday that doesn’t finish till, like, 4 AM. And so, and I’ve had students come to 9 AMs from straight from there. Yeah.

Giulia Poerio: 

Well, that’s dedication.

Heather Taylor: 

It’s kind of not nice because of this smell of alcohol at that time in the morning. But, yeah, that is dedication. Yeah.  

Sophie Forster: 

That’s definitely what I did when I was. Yeah. So stupid. I literally never don’t know why I went. Yeah. I would always show up, and it never occurred to me that, you know, I might as well not be there.

I think this is the thing as well students are so anxious about the attendance policy. If they don’t, if the pin didn’t work, I’ll get a million emails saying, oh, the pin didn’t work. You know? All of this and, you know, they’re there. They’re engaging. So 

Giulia Poerio: 

You know something that Wendy was saying earlier though that I was thinking, it reminded me of, so I think some I’m skipping it well. Something that because it took – I was always really aware of the need to get my students’ attention and to get them to engage, but it’s easier said than done. Right? And I tried to have lots of interactive activities, but it did take a really long time to get them to be working. Like I think for quite a while, they were a bit chaotic and sort of, you know, people roaming around the room aimlessly and, you know, and I think for me, a real turning point was actually pandemic in 2020 because we had to suddenly, we got told last minute we will have to do it all on Zoom. And so I just was, well, you know, if I’m giving a lecture on Zoom, this is like, no. Like, I might as well just record it. So I decided to just record all my lectures and then use all of the lecture slot for kind of a fairly, like, free flow interactive thing , but with a bit more room to experiment. And it really helped me to establish a rapport with the students because it was like I kind of I got to know them a bit more. And I think what I learned in that term was, the things that worked the most were exactly as you said, the things that get them to make friends. You know? And I had feedback, at the end that somebody said, like, oh, you know, I didn’t expect to make new friends in the final year, but I did. And like, we made a really good new friendship group on this module. And like, I was like, really pleased. I was like, that’s a reason to attend, right? Like, if it’s fun, if you get to meet people and if you’re given activities that allow you to kind of that’s just a way of, like, building in a reward to attending, like, making it sort of rewarding. You know?

Sophie Forster: 

Yeah. I think but then you’re doing the attendance not for the academic outcome, for the social outcomes, which actually I think are probably go together though.

Yeah. We do go together. They for sure do. Because, I mean, reward is, like, a really, powerful way of engaging attention. So if you can, like, leverage social rewards to get people to be there, and then they’re going to talk about the content. And maybe if they’ve all been mind wandering at slightly different moments, they’ll be afterwards, like, oh, what was that bit about that? You know? Yeah. And so they just it it’s really helpful to them, I think, to 

Wendy Garnham: 

I think it also sort of values their individual opinions and sort of perspectives as well because we can sort of deliver information to them. But just getting them to think about the theme or the topic that you’re covering and feedback can be really powerful.

 I know one of the things that I tried this, last term was, getting students to do a little activity in I think it was the 2nd lecture, and they had to sort of put their ideas and experiences on a little card. So we were learning about the self and I just I hadn’t really sort of intended it to have the effect it had but I just said, you know, just for now I want you to just write a little paragraph which is all about you. Just, you know, I’m going to ask you to do this and put it into practice and then we use that as a sort of starting point for the lecture. But what I did after, I thought, well, actually I’m just going to go through and I’m going to email each of the students and just respond to what they’ve put in there. And, like, the feedback I had was just incredible, like, the students saying I feel heard, you know, I didn’t expect you to email everyone. That was really nice, you know. Thank you so much. Yeah. And it was just, wow, so I’m going to do that now. Every time I’m going to start the same thing. 

But it just I think the little things can be really, really powerful. I don’t think it has to be about, you know, creating, you know, hugely complicated activities or it can be something really quick. Like, we did that in, like, 5 minutes. It took me a long time to email them all but anyway, but it was worth it because then I felt like I’d sort of got that connection with the students. Like, they knew that we were doing things because they sort of mattered or because, you know, I wasn’t just doing it to tick a box. It’s like I really was interested in in what they had to say and I think that that also is another way to sort of try and engage their attention is like, we’re interested in what you’ve got to say or interested in your perspective, your experience rather than I’m just going to tell you what the textbook says or, you know, I’m just going to sort of show you my slides and off you go, see you later. It’s about that sort of I guess that connection, social connection.

Sophie Forster (36:18): 

Yeah. And there’s a lot of evidence to support that just making something self relevant in some way is just tags it as being intentionally important in a really basic way. It’s not like you decide to pay attention. It’s that your brain will just prioritize it. You know, even when they do really sort of contrived experiments where they’re like, learn that this circle is you, this triangle is your friend, and this square is a stranger. And then, like, I say, contrast. I think this is a line of research by somebody else that I very much admire, but I mean very simple. Right? And just by learning these connections, people will attend more to the circle just because you’ve been told the circle is you. And in terms of, like, the brain regions that are usually, involved in your attention being drawn to, like, brightly coloured things or, you know, they’ll have the same effect just from being tagged as being. So this establishing a rapport is actually it’s like doing something that helps you to helps your brain to focus, you know? It’s not just about 

Giulia Poerio: 

It’s so hard to think about how to do that in a large group teaching situation, I think, though, because I mean, I have tried to do things like that where I get them to complete measures and then they put on Poll Everywhere their scores, and we can talk about the group as a whole. But to do something individual for upwards of a 150 students, I would love to be able to do something like that. I just don’t, I mean, it’s not feasible, practically, especially with increasing student numbers that you know, so it’s not too bad a lot 

Wendy Garnham: 

My realization, because I had a 155 students, and I thought it would just be a very quick. Obviously, they weren’t all there for the lectures. It wasn’t quite that many I had to respond to, but it didn’t make me realize, like, what I’d started. And then, of course, once you started, you feel you’ve got to finish. So, yeah, it wasn’t a quick process, but I just persevered with it. And, yeah, that just the reward back was massive and just the engagement because I suppose it just be being right at the beginning. I’m not sure if it would have worked as well if I’d done it further down the line, but having that buy in at the beginning and sort of showing that, you know, we do really care about what they’re bringing to the table, that just sort of set the baseline in a way. But, but, yeah, it did. As Heather will attest, as I sat in the office typing many an email.

Heather Taylor: 

Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that. Yeah.

Sophie Forster: 

Another way though I mean, accessing self relevance as a way of getting attention, it can be as simple as just examples you use, you know? And like, if you, you know, if obviously interactive stuff is like almost the peak of like, get, but I mean, even just if you get if you’re saying something and you give an example, giving an example that’s likely to be relevant to the people you’re talking to is probably going to be understood. But then it gets tricky because then you’re like, is it going to be more relevant for some students than others? You know? Is this going to be like and are these sort of benefits going to be, you know, only for sort of the students that are in the most sort of common demographic? And am I really capturing everybody? So then you have to give, like, a variety. It’s hard. 

Heather Taylor: 

I think that with that with the relevance thing, they actually quite enjoy it if you make it relevant to you. So, you know, you’re saying about the anecdotes. I’ve got, it’s always by accident, but I’ll do an anecdote. Right? And I’ve got and I’d and I’d never really thought about it that much, but this year especially, I think I went off on one a bit with the anecdotes. Right? And I’ve got lots of really good written student feedback about the anecdotes, helping them understand and so on. But I think it probably does help them understand, but I think, again, it’s that rapport building. So they’re, I don’t know. I think every year I’m a lecturer, you know, like the 1st year I was a lecturer, so I’ve got to be like a lecturer, Right? Which isn’t me, you know? And, like, try and pronounce my words a bit better and you know what I mean? Wear a shirt. Right? And then as it’s gone on, I’ve just got less and less interested in what I’m meant to be and just being more me. And I do feel that every year, the rapport I build with the students gets better as a result of this, and it breaks down the hierarchies and so on. So I think it doesn’t always have to be relevant to them. They do like a bit of stuff that’s relevant to them. Right? They do like to discuss themselves. Everybody does. But well, not everybody. A lot of people do. But if you can connect with them in some way by telling them some silly little story about you, that also that is engagement. That is interaction.. They will laugh or they’ll go, oh, you or whatever. You know? And then you’ve had a conversation more than a lecture. And I think that’s, yeah. That really works as well. Definitely. Yeah.

Sophie, can you share an example of a change you’ve made in your teaching or practice as a result of your research? What was the impact on your students?

Sophie Forster (41:13):

 Any moment where I’m losing my students’ attention, I’m not teaching them.  Like this is how I see it, you know? And that’s not to say I have to like beat myself up because I’m going to lose their attention repeatedly. I mean, I’m sure my students spend half of my lectures not paying attention to me. Right? I’m not saying I’m this amazing attention getter, but it’s, I guess yeah. So it’s just like I try really, really hard. I try, I try to always. I try to think about how long in between things that might be a bit more engaging, you know, there is. And yeah. And I think the interactive stuff and it’s, I think the biggest thing was just giving them, seeing the benefit of, interactive stuff that actually allows them to connect with theirpeers was something that I was surprised by. I hadn’t quite realized, so 

Giulia Poerio:

 Probably not related to the sleep research that I’ve done, but I was initially an emotion researcher. So I think that feeling is like the most is more important than thinking in many ways and influences our thinking. So I think the things that I try and do is are to influence – not manipulate – but, try and get emotional reactions from students. And so that they don’t they don’t get bored, I think, is the key thing. So I’ll, do things like I will only talk at them for a certain period of time. And then I spend ages finding video clips, YouTube clips, things like that to show them that’s much more, like, it creates, like, an emotive reaction. Like, it might be a sad news story or it might be something from a court case. Or I’ll create materials that are, like, kind of quite fun and illustrate a concept of something. Like, for example, we looked at, the parasomnia defence which is this idea of can you kill somebody in your sleep and they had two case reports and they had to do things. So, what I’m always trying to do is make people’s emotions a bit more variable throughout the time that I’m with them to try and keep them going.

Heather Taylor: 

This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton. For more episodes as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit Podcast | Learning Matters