College instructors desiring classrooms free from learning distractions often enforce personal-technology-use policies to create what they think is an optimal learning environment, but students tend not to favor restrictive personal technology policies. Which type of personal technology classroom environment maximizes student satisfaction,…

Activities that are effective in supporting attention have the potential to increase opportunities for student learning. However, little is known about the impact of instructional contexts on student attention, in part due to limitations in our ability to measure attention in the classroom, typically based on behavioral observation and…

Framed by literature regarding classroom interactions that affect students' cognitive processing, this study provided an integrative approach to understanding distracting instructor and student communication. Participants qualitatively reported on either a distracting peer (n = 90) or instructor (n = 127). The responses were coded using…