The Toronto Star – Jena McGregor
“It’s hard enough avoiding online distractions if you’re a working professional . . . the news alert about a favourite sports team, the insistent tug of social media sites, the seventh email from a group of co-workers chiming in about where to go for lunch. And that doesn’t even get to the cat videos. Yes, there are plenty of things to claim your attention. But consider how much allure such digital distractions have for people studying in an online course. Professionals, at least, have the threat of job security or losing out on a raise to keep them relatively on task. Students who’ve opted for a Web-based class, meanwhile — particularly one of the “massive open online courses” that are typically free to join and have no penalty for dropping out — don’t face the same consequences if they get behind. (One study has shown that completion rates for such courses are often less than 10 per cent.) It’s that concentration-challenged group of people that Cornell researcher Richard Patterson opted to study in a working paper recently published on the school’s Higher Education Research Institution Web site. (It should be noted that the paper has not yet been published in an academic journal.) Patterson, a PhD candidate in policy analysis and management at Cornell, saw an opportunity to apply behavioural economics research to online education.”(more)