• Students in the micro-break condition consistently outperformed those in the traditional break condition on end-of-session quiz scores.
• Both groups showed decreases in performance over time (a typical vigilance or attention decline), but micro-breaks helped slow that decline, especially during the middle part of the session.
• Traditional longer breaks produced a temporary boost only immediately after the break, whereas micro-breaks helped maintain a steadier level of performance.

The authors interpret these results using cognitive load theory and spaced learning principles—suggesting that short, frequent breaks help manage working memory and sustain attention better than a single long break.

It’s important to note that there were no delayed tests of knowledge, so we don’t know the effects on retention of knowledge, but this research is promising. Our minds naturally wander every few minutes, so building in these breaks throughout your learning activities encourages students to spend time thinking about the content they just encountered developing more elaborate memories.

Read the full article here:

Sharpe, B.T., Trotter, M.G. &amps; Hale, B.J. 2025. Sustaining student concentration: The effectiveness of micro-breaks in a classroom setting. Frontiers in Psychology 16: 1589411. .1589411.

• The was a small but statistically significant increase in grades (0.086 SD).
• Effects were strongest for lower-achieving students, first-year students, and non-STEM majors.
• Students who experienced the benefits became more supportive of cell phone bans.

So, what does this mean for you? This report is a pre-print and has not yet undergone peer-review, and it is just one study. However, the sample size is large, and the findings are promising for supporting in-class phone collection policies. It’s worth discussing this with your students, particularly first-year students, to talk about the impact of distraction on learning. Just putting the phone away in their bags or setting it to silent does not provide the same relief from distraction as putting the phone in a box in the front of the classroom.

Read the full pre-print here:

Sungu, Alp and Choudhury, Pradeep Kumar and Bjerre-Nielsen, Andreas, Removing Phones from Classrooms Improves Academic Performance (July 25, 2025). Available at SSRN: 

The Nine Cognitive Challenges & Our Suggestions

1. Cognitive Challenge: Student mental mindset — students’ attitudes, beliefs, expectations about the course, their ability, and value of the content.
   Our recommendation: Be intentional about student mindset: From day one, communicate clearly the value of the course, the relevance to students’ goals, and emphasize that ability can grow with effort (growth mindset). Setting this tone helps mitigate fixed-mindset beliefs and promotes belonging and self-efficacy.
2. Cognitive Challenge: Metacognition and self-regulation — students’ ability to monitor their own learning, judge their understanding, regulate study behaviors.
   Our recommendation: Support metacognition and self-regulation: Rather than assume students will monitor their own learning, build-in scaffolds (like study plans, exam-wrappers, reflective prompts) that ask students to reflect on what they know, what they need to do, and how they will adjust.
3. Cognitive Challenge: Student fear and mistrust — negative emotions, anxiety, and lack of trust in the instructor or course that interfere with learning.
   Our recommendation: Foster trust and reduce anxiety: Create an environment of openness and fairness; explicitly explain your course policies, offer supportive feedback, allow revision when possible, and express a genuine belief in student capability. For adult learners especially, acknowledge diverse backgrounds and potential anxieties about re-entry, prior experience, or balancing responsibilities.
4. Cognitive Challenge: Insufficient prior knowledge — students may lack the necessary background or foundation to learn new content effectively.
   Our recommendation: Assess and build prior knowledge: Especially for adult learners who may have varied or interrupted educational backgrounds, assess what they bring and fill the gaps early. Low-stakes pre-quizzes, review tasks, or scaffolded assignments help ensure a more even starting line.
5. Cognitive Challenge: Misconceptions — students may hold inaccurate or deeply entrenched beliefs that interfere with learning new concepts.
   Our recommendation: Expose and correct misconceptions: Don’t assume that prior knowledge is accurate. Use diagnostic tools, ask students to predict, observe, explain (POE) experiments, and explicitly challenge common misconceptions.
6. Cognitive Challenge: Ineffective learning strategies — students may use study approaches that are inefficient or counter-productive (e.g., highlighting, rereading).
   Our recommendation: Teach effective learning strategies explicitly: Rather than assuming students know how to learn, model and embed strategies like retrieval practice, spaced practice, self-explanation, elaboration. This is especially useful for adult learners who may default to habits from earlier schooling.
7. Cognitive Challenge: Transfer of learning — students often fail to apply what they’ve learned in one context to new or novel contexts (near/far transfer).
   Our recommendation: Design for transfer — not just for content mastery: Encourage students to apply concepts in new contexts. Use varied examples, encourage analogy, scaffold tasks that require application, and help students reflect on how what they learned in your class might connect beyond it (e.g., their workplace, future courses, real-world problems).
8. Cognitive Challenge: Constraints of selective attention — students’ limited capacity to focus, susceptibility to distractions, multitasking issues.
   Our recommendation: Manage attention and minimize distractions: In online or in-person settings, pay attention to how easily students can become distracted or multitask. Use frequent re-orientation to topic, build in short breaks, keep one clear focus at a time, and design activities that require active engagement rather than passive listening.
9. Cognitive Challenge: Constraints of mental effort and working memory — limits on how much new information students can process at once; cognitive overload.
   Our recommendation: Reduce cognitive load and structure information clearly: Recognize that students’ working memory is limited. Present material in manageable chunks, use advance organizers (outlines, conceptual roadmaps), use dual-modality (verbal + visual) thoughtfully, avoid “seductive details” that distract, and gradually build complexity as students’ automaticity grows.

This framework reminds us that there is no one “best method” for all students and all contexts. Effective teaching involves diagnosing which challenges are most relevant to your specific learners and adapting practices accordingly.

Read the full article online:

Chew & Cerbin (2020). The cognitive challenges of effective teaching. The Journal of Economic Education, 52(1). 

Key takeaways for faculty:

• Cognitive load and distraction: Meaningful background noise—like conversations or spoken words—can subtly but significantly impair students’ ability to retrieve and articulate information that requires active thinking or controlled recall.
• Task type matters: Simple, automatic recall tasks are less affected by distractions than those that demand deliberate control or creative responses. Faculty designing assessments or discussions should consider the type of cognitive retrieval they are fostering.
• Learning environment design: Minimizing semantic distractions (e.g., background speech in open classrooms or during online sessions) can improve focus, especially during higher-order reasoning tasks.
• Support for inhibitory control: Instruction that helps students practice cognitive inhibition—such as mindfulness, focused-attention exercises, or structured reflection—may enhance their ability to resist interference and retrieve knowledge effectively.

Overall, the paper highlights how seemingly minor background language can interfere with complex thought, underscoring the importance of controlled, low-distraction environments for deep learning and assessment

Read the full article online:

Marko, M., Kubinec, A., Zelenayová, V., & Riečanský, I. (2026). The impact of distractor processing on semantic memory retrieval: The role of interference-by-process and inhibition. Cognition, 266, 106314. 

1. Consider using Kaltura, the UMS video platform, to create, upload, manage, and share multimedia content without ads. You can also track clicks in My Media. Here is a quick video demonstration: .
2. You can tell students about the free , which includes a built-in ad blocker to enhance their viewing experience.