Do students learn better when seated close to the teacher? A virtual classroom study considering individual levels of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity

Blume, Friederike; Göllner, Richard; Moeller, Korbinian; Dresler, Thomas; Ehlis, Ann‐Christine; Gawrilow, Caterina

doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2018.10.004

Cited by 46 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…What is not clear from this, and similar work [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], is why seating position and performance are related. It could be that 'better students' choose to sit in the front and 'poorer students' choose to sit in the back, rendering their relationship correlational rather than causal.…”

Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Indeed, studies dating back to the 1970's have found that students sitting in the front of the classroom tend to perform better than those sitting in the back [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Zomorodian et al [5], for example, analyzed seating position and final exam scores, and found that students who sat in the high-interaction zone (i.e., close to the front of the class) had better final exam scores.…”

Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It could be that 'better students' choose to sit in the front and 'poorer students' choose to sit in the back, rendering their relationship correlational rather than causal. For example, Blume et al [8], who randomly assigned students to either a proximal or distant location to the teacher in a virtual classroom, found that most students learned better when sitting closer to the teacher, although students displaying ADHD symptoms did not get a learning benefit from closer proximity to the teacher. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that a survey study by Benedict and Hoag [9] did suggest that students who preferred to sit in the back but reported being 'forced' to move closer because their preferred seat was unavailable, tended to do better in class.…”

Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the previous studies outlined above, with the exception of two studies [8,17], it is unclear whether the instructors were involved in conducting the experiment. The present study utilizes an instructor naivety method, where the classroom instructors are both unaware of the purpose of the study and they are not involved in data collection.…”

Section: Combined Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of classroom seating location and computer use on student academic performance

2020

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A student's ability to learn effectively in a classroom setting is subject to many factors. While some factors are difficult to regulate, this study explores two factors that a student, or instructor, has full control over, namely 1) seating position, and 2) computer usage. Both factors have been studied considerably with regard to their effects on student performance, and the results indicate that sitting further from the instructor, or using a computer in the classroom, are related to a decline in grade performance. However, it is unclear if the choice of where to sit and whether or not to use a computer in class are mediated by the same cognitive process. If they are the same, then we would expect to see an interaction between the factors, such that, for example, computer usage would most negatively impact the grades of students who sit near the back of a class. This study aims to answer this question by looking at the individual and combined effects of seating position and computer usage on classroom performance. We sampled 1364 students, collecting nearly 3000 total responses across 5 different introductory psychology courses with 4 different instructors on 3 separate occasions. In agreement with previous research, we found that sitting further from the instructor negatively impacted students' grades (0.75 percentage points/row), and using a computer in class negatively impacted grades (by 3.88 percentage points). Our novel finding is that these deleterious effects combined in an additive manner, such that using a computer had the same harmful effect on grade performance regardless of whether the student sat at the front or back of the classroom.

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Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seating Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Combined Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of classroom seating location and computer use on student academic performance

2020

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“…In contrast, self-regulation difficulties have been demonstrated to increase the probability of repeating a grade and being diagnosed with special education needs (Daley & Birchwood 2010;Polderman, Boomsma, Bartels, Verhulst, & Huizink 2010). Research considering learning situations spanning shorter time frames (e.g., single lessons, learning episodes) and learning contexts inside and outside the classroom (e.g., during homework, in distance education settings) further supported the relevance of students' trait self-regulation for their learning outcomes (e.g., Blume, Göllner, Moeller, Dresler, Ehlis, & Gawrilow 2019;Dabbagh & Kitsantas 2004;Trautwein & Köller 2003).…”

Section: Students' Trait Self-regulation and Academic Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Homeschooling during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: The role of students’ trait self-regulation and task attributes of daily learning tasks for students’ daily self-regulation

Blume¹,

Schmidt²,

Kramer³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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As a means to counter the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, schools were closed throughout Germany between mid-March and end of April 2020. Schooling was translocated to the students’ homes and students were supposed to work on learning tasks provided by their teachers. Students’ self-regulation and attributes of the learning tasks may be assumed to have played important roles when adapting to this novel schooling situation. They may be predicted to have influenced students’ daily self-regulation and hence the independence with which they worked on learning tasks. The present work therefore investigated the role of students' trait self-regulation as well as task difficulty and task enjoyment for students’ daily independence from their parents in learning during the homeschooling period. Data on children’s trait self-regulation were obtained through a baseline questionnaire filled in by the parents of 535 children (Mage = 9.69, SDage = 2.80). Parents additionally reported about the daily task difficulty, task enjoyment, and students’ learning independence through 21 consecutive daily online questionnaires. The results showed students’ trait self-regulation to be positively associated with their daily learning independence. Additionally, students’ daily learning independence was shown to be negatively associated with task difficulty and positively with task enjoyment. The findings are discussed with regard to students’ daily self-regulation during the homeschooling period.

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That's my spot! Examining spatial habit formation in a naturalistic setting

Zhu

Risko

2021

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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Although we are constantly making spatial decisions about where to place our objects and ourselves, few studies in psychology have investigated this phenomenon in-depth. In the current study, we examined how spatial decisions are made over time by tracking students' seating choices in classrooms over the course of a semester (i.e., 12 weeks). We found that seating choice became more fixed over time (i.e., a decrease in the distance between seats chosen on adjacent days), though this was disrupted by individuals' time of arrival to class; latecomers often sat further away from where they last sat. We also observed a surprising de-stabilization of this pattern on the last day of class wherein seating choices became more varied. These results suggest that although spatial preference stabilizes over time, this pattern of stabilization may weaken once individuals no longer expect to occupy that space in the future.

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Do students learn better when seated close to the teacher? A virtual classroom study considering individual levels of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity

Cited by 46 publications

References 53 publications

The impact of classroom seating location and computer use on student academic performance

The impact of classroom seating location and computer use on student academic performance

Homeschooling during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: The role of students’ trait self-regulation and task attributes of daily learning tasks for students’ daily self-regulation

That's my spot! Examining spatial habit formation in a naturalistic setting

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