Over the past decade, academic research has increasingly examined issues of multitasking and distraction as people try to squeeze more activities into their busy lives. Prior to the Internet age, some cognition science research focused on how behavior might be better understood, improved and made more efficient in business, hospital or other high-pressure settings. But as digital technology has become ubiquitous in many people’s daily routines — and as multitasking has become a “lifestyle” of sorts for many younger people — researchers have tried to assess how humans are coping in this highly connected environment and how “chronic multitasking” may diminish our capacity to function effectively.
Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat. A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook…
Computer note-taking was a point of contention at my school. Almost every teacher used laptops. But we varied in how much we allowed students to take notes on them during class. Those in the no-computer-notes camp pointed to how often students were distracted by messaging and social media. Those who allowed laptops for notes argued that…
Source: Google Workspace Updates: Office editing mode is now the default editing mode for Office files in Drive on the web Google Drive will now open Microsoft Office documents (.docx, .xlsx., .pptx, etc.) directly in editing mode. In the past, when you double-clicked on a Microsoft Office Document, the file opened in preview, giving you…
Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? In May, right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the “New…
Academic publisher Springer Nature has unveiled what it claims is the first research book generated using machine learning. The book, titled Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research, isn’t exactly a snappy read. Instead, as the name suggests, it’s a summary of peer-reviewed papers published on the topic in question. It includes quotations, hyperlinks to the…
At a conference on innovative teaching and learning, I attended a memorable panel conversation about the skills that students should develop by the time they start college or enter a career. The panel was made up of men and women who headed large and small businesses, and the skills they wanted incoming employees to have…
