What is L&D's theory of attention?
Some thoughts on myths, myth-busting, and goldfish.
This week, one of our clients sparked an interesting discussion in the Mind Tools Custom team.
The client had asked us what we thought about using a ‘time locker’ on e-learning content, with the goal of encouraging learners to engage with the material instead of speed-scrolling to the end.
The theory behind this suggestion was that, faced with a choice between staring at the clock and taking the e-learning seriously, learners would reluctantly choose the latter. And maybe, just maybe, they’d actually learn something!
While we appreciated the intent of this idea, my colleagues on the Custom team agreed it had a couple of important flaws.
Firstly, people read at different paces. Forcing faster readers to slow their natural pace would likely be frustrating, and may result in disengagement.
Secondly, learners generally don’t all begin a learning experience with the same level of knowledge and understanding. If I’m already familiar with a particular concept but I’m forced to spend five minutes on it regardless, I might just use that time to check my emails. Or doom-scroll on social media.
Putting these objections aside, what I found interesting about this idea was the problem it was designed to solve — learner (in)attention.
At some point in the last few years, you will no doubt have come across the claim that the average human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish.
More likely than not, you will also have encountered various articles debunking that claim (we did this in episode 158 of our podcast).
This is the popularly held ‘smart’ position to take on attention, and it’s the one you’ll most regularly find in LinkedIn posts from L&D influencers: some claims were made about attention, those claims turned out to be dubiously sourced, goldfish actually have pretty good memories, and we should all just move on.
But, in my view, one of the reasons the goldfish myth has been so stubbornly persistent is that it feels true in the age of the attention economy.
Even if our ability to apply attention to different tasks hasn’t degraded over time, it’s hard to argue that competition for that attention hasn’t become more fierce. Or that advertisers, technology platforms, and media outlets haven’t found increasingly sophisticated ways of grabbing it.
In this environment, how can workplace learning compete?
To answer that question, let’s go back to the issue that our client’s ‘time locking’ suggestion sought to address.
Instead of asking how we can stop learners from button-mashing their way to the end of an e-learning course, we should really be asking why they’re speed-scrolling in the first place.
And the likely answer is that: i) the content doesn’t feel relevant to them; ii) they’re super busy, and just need to get the thing done so they can get back to work.
We could attempt to solve these issues by developing micro-learning, sprinkling in some flashy multimedia, or using gamification. Or, better yet, we could talk to learners to understand what they care about, where they need to support, and when that support would be most valuable.
The ‘talk to learners’ drum is one we’ve banging since we started the Dispatch. It may not have the power of a sophisticated algorithm, but, in the battle for attention, it’s the best weapon we have.
Interested in working with our Custom team? Want to share your thoughts on this week’s Dispatch? Then get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
Last week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we' put the ‘people’ back into People Development and the ‘human’ back into ‘Human Resources, as we explored Natal Dank's book Agile L&D.
In the episode, we discuss the problems with a ‘traditional’ approach to L&D, tools and methods for prioritizing and organizing workloads, and whether ‘agile’ has just become another corporate buzzword.
Check out the episode below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
Of course, one of the reasons learners might be speed-scrolling through e-learning modules is because these modules require thought. And thinking is hard. Sometimes, it can even be unpleasant.
In a recent meta-analysis of 170 studies, researchers found that, across a range of fields, tasks, and populations, mental effort was strongly associated with negative affect.
Of the 15 moderators the researchers examined, only one had a significant effect — effort felt somewhat less aversive in studies conducted in Asia, compared to those carried out in Europe and North America.
The authors write:
‘This insight is important for professionals (e.g., engineers, educators) who design tasks, tools, interfaces, materials, and instructions. When employees and students are required to exert substantial mental effort, it is sensible to support or reward them (e.g., by providing structure, by balancing demanding tasks with tasks that foster engagement, or by highlighting achievements).’
David, L., Vassena, E., & Bijleveld, E. (2024). ‘The unpleasantness of thinking: A meta-analytic review of the association between mental effort and negative affect.’ Psychological Bulletin.
👹 Missing links
🪙 America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny
‘It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I have come to think of it as the Perpetual Penny Paradox.’ So begins this fascinating article from Caity Weaver. As Weaver writes, the majority of pennies produced by the US Mint are given out as change, but never spent. This necessitates the production of more pennies to facilitate cash transactions, which in turn are never spent. And on, and on, and on.
To mark the beginning of a new academic year, Emma Beddington has sourced 100 tips from busy people, parents, experts and Guardian readers to help bring some semblance of order into your life. After spending 30 minutes rooting around for a postage stamp to send my dad a birthday card last week, my personal favorite is the idea of a ‘correspondence corner’ (a drawer or a box) to house cards, envelopes and stamps.
When ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, many commentators predicted that it would mark the end of homework. But, according to Ethan Mollick, little has since been done to adapt teaching methods. Mollick attributes this to two illusions: the ‘Detection Illusion’, where teachers over-rate their ability to spot AI-generated assignments, and ‘Illusory Knowledge’, where students fail to realize that getting help with homework is undermining their learning.
👋 And finally…
‘What’s a Wonderwall anyway?’
👍 Thanks!
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i like ross (d)'s point that even if the research behind the shrinking attentoin spans cliam is spurious...it must be true. i didn't find the debunking of it in the BBC article convincing. all this has made me think more about what an attention span is, and how curiously difficult it is to measure (the bubble pops as soon as you look at it!)