Managing student digital distractions and hyperconnectivity: communication strategies and challenges for professorial authority

ABSTRACT

Recent debates on the use of technology in classrooms have highlighted the significance of regulating students’ off-task and multitasking behaviors facilitated by digital media. This paper investigates the communication practices that constitute professorial authority to manage college students’ digital distractions in classrooms. Findings from interviews with American professors illustrate how they constitute their authority through distinct communication strategies including the enactment of codified rules, strategic redirection, discursive sanctions, and deflection. Furthermore, results highlight the multiple constraints and tensions in instructor communication to manage digital distractions in everyday and routine interventions. Insights generated in this paper contribute to deepening understanding of the (re)construction of contemporary pedagogical authority in times of digital hyperconnectivity, as well as its adaptions and challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Authority
• digital distractions
• technology
• classroom management
• communication
• multitasking
• hyperconnectivity

Acknowledgments

Pauline Hope Cheong is at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University. This research was supported by the Business Academy Aarhus University of Applied Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Arizona State University and the Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University. We are grateful to the following students for their research assistance: Dara Fife, Yashu Chen, Juncheng Yan, Bhoomika Bhagchandani, and Rui Shang. We are also thankful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful recommendations for the paper.