Course Design >>

Can we design our courses to maximize students' attention, focus, and retention? Or, what if we developed our instructional practices to minimize stress and student withdrawal?

For decades now, e-mail, texting, and software apps from Facebook, Twitter, Google, etcetera have been able to capture our students' attention for a few seconds or minutes at a time. Unfortunately, many of these apps often interrupt what our students are doing, intending to gain their attention (eyeballs & clicks.) But what if we use some of those techniques to earn our students' attention, focus, and retention? And therefore improve learning & student retention along the way.

Emotions such as immersion and enjoyment contribute favorably to focus and learning outcomes. Researchers have demonstrated that the perceived authenticity of a learning experience can facilitate the sense of immersion for students (Rosenbaum, Klopfer, and Perry 2007; Csikszentmihalyi 1990; Newmann 1992; Rodriguez, Angle, and Snyder 2021).

The above might create competition among other well-designed courses but all for a good purpose: improving learning.

What do you think? Any ideas? What are moral & ethical issues to consider? Do you have some well-designed courses to share?


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