Best Paper
University students engage in a substantial amount of multitasking in online classes despite being aware of its negative impacts on their learning. Depending on the learner’s goals, in-class multitasking can be a positive strategic behavior to increase productivity. In a formative pilot study (N=10), we established the structure and scope for our design by exploring students' motivations, perceptions, and challenges in in-class multitasking and identified several promising design elements. Our design facilitates multitasking in online synchronous classes by providing a novel bichronous (blending of synchronous and asynchronous) learning environment manifested in Time-Turner that enables asynchronous guided accelerated viewing of past content during synchronous classes. A summative evaluation of our prototype showed significant improvement in learning outcomes when multitasking (N=20). Furthermore, 95% of users found Time-Turner helpful and expressed interest in having it in their online classes. Our findings show the great potential of supporting positive multitasking in synchronous online classes.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641985
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