10 Ways to Reclaim Student Attention Without Declaring War on Phones

Ten educators share practical classroom strategies for managing phone distractions, low attention spans, and student engagement.

Every instructor knows the signs. The laptop tilts. The smartwatch is suddenly fascinating. A student looks down for “just a second” and disappears into whatever it is that’s waiting there.

It’s tempting to turn student attention into a phone or laptop problem, but distraction is more complicated than that. Students lose focus in classrooms without phones during long lectures, dense readings, passive activities, and work that never quite gives them a reason to care.

What can we change about the learning environment so attention has somewhere better to go? We pulled ten ideas from our conversations with educators. The full episode of Phones, FOMO, and Focus: 10 Ways to Reclaim Student Attention includes even more approaches to rethinking assessment (Apple | Spotify | YouTube.)

1. Give Wandering Attention a Way Back

Betsy Langness, a psychology department head, starts with an uncomfortable admission, which is that instructors get distracted too.

“Just like the students, I will pick up my phone and look at something. If you don't have those notifications turned off, then you are asking for that distraction.”

In her online courses, she uses short videos, mini readings, and low-stakes activities that give students repeated chances to check whether they are actually following along.

She doesn’t expect attention to stay perfectly intact from beginning to end. A student can zone out, realize it, go back, and reconnect. That is a much more realistic standard than pretending nobody is ever going to look away. A quick question in the middle of a reading or video can be enough to make a student realize they just missed something.

2. Stop Filling Every Minute

A 75-minute class can start to feel like a suitcase. If space exists, surely you’re supposed to fill every inch of it.

Dr. Christin Monroe, an educational researcher, has gotten comfortable resisting that. "I try to stick to about a half hour of lecture, and the rest of the time is working independently, working at their own pace." Some students finish early and leave. Others take the full period. She stopped treating the fastest student as the benchmark for everyone else.

Some students use the full class period while others finish earlier. It may mean accepting that “using the whole hour” is not automatically the same thing as using the hour well. Class time does not need to be packed just because it exists.

3. Change the Container, Not the Content

English professor Jennifer Duncan teaches online, she can’t just rely on eye contact or the energy of a physical room to bring students back.

"I don't have to change what I teach, but I may have to change some of the delivery formats." A 50-minute video becomes five ten-minute ones. A dense reading gets broken up visually, with built-in moments to stop and think.

The destination stays the same. She stopped assuming students would follow one long, unbroken road to get there.

4. Make Participation Count

Math professor Dr. Daniel Look does not want students watching him work through example after example. "Why don't I introduce a concept, show them one, and have them work through a second on their own?" It takes longer. They learn more anyway.

He also gives small amounts of credit for in-class work, even when the standard is simply completion. That alone changes how closely students pay attention to what they're doing. Give students the next problem instead of a front-row seat to yours.

5. Put the Phone to Work

Dr. Erika Martinez, an economics professor, teaches classes of 400. Patrolling phones isn't a real option, so she doesn't try. "They can answer questions on their phone. They can look up stuff on their phone." iClickers, live articles, a quick search mid-lecture, the device gets a job instead of a ban.

Will every student stay on task every second? No. Some students will still minimize a shopping tab when she walks by. She's made peace with that. Her time is better spent teaching than policing.

6. Teach From Everywhere

Dr. Jennifer Ripley Stueckle, a biology professor, doesn't stay planted at the front of the room, and neither do her students.

"When I position myself near them, it allows them to feel like they're more talking to me, rather than reporting to the class… My students are always getting up and moving around, whether it's to record information, talk with somebody else, write ideas on the board.”

A student who'd never raise a hand in front of forty people might answer easily for the professor standing three feet away.

7. Build a Device-Free Island

In Dr. Ed Lee's chemistry lab, devices stay out. Full stop.

“Some students kind of struggle with it, but most actually seem to enjoy the company of their peers, and they actually, I think, enjoy the break, from, you know, the attention-grabbing phone.”

The lab gives students a protected stretch of time to experience what focused work feels like without the constant pull of a device. He describes that kind of environment as a “sandbox” where students can start building those habits for themselves.

8. Teach the Skill Behind the Rule

Economics professor Dr. Ryan Herzog bans laptops, but takes a different approach to phones. “I've just acknowledged, we all have our cell phones. I mean, mine's sitting right here, right?”

Students will carry this exact tension into every meeting and job for the rest of their lives. How can students learn to function when a permanently distracting device will eventually sit beside them in meetings, offices, airports, and the rest of adult life?

For some students, a quick check stays quick. For others, the smartest strategy is putting the phone in the backpack. Self-regulation is not one-size-fits-all. Help students recognize the boundaries they personally need.

9. Lead With the Mystery

Dr. Kevin Revell's son teaches high school history and once told him, bluntly, that classroom management problems are usually a material problem. Revell, a chemistry professor, thinks that's an overstatement. He also hasn't been able to shake it.

"There are mysteries in any subject. There are mysteries, there are controversies, there are things where you have differences of opinion."

Chemistry doesn't hand you many hot-button debates, but it hands you plenty of unresolved, genuinely strange questions Every discipline has something unresolved, surprising, debated, strange, or genuinely difficult to explain. Sometimes students need to know why the thing in front of them is worth wondering about.

10. Make Their Presence Matter

Marissa Dahari comes at attention from a different direction. .She connects attention to active learning, belonging, authentic assessment, and student agency

“You know, if students feel like their opinions, their answers, their presence matters in a classroom space, in an educational space. They're not looking to be distracted, and to zone out, and to not be there.”

Knowledge used to be the currency of education. Now it's attention. Every classroom is competing for it, whether it admits that or not. Students are more likely to give attention when they believe their contribution changes what happens in the room.

What Connects All of This

There is no universal phone policy hiding in the back of the faculty handbook. One instructor puts the phone to work. Another gives it the lab off. One bans laptops. Another turns off her own notifications first.

What they share is a decision to stop treating attention like something students either have or don't, and start treating it like something a classroom can be built to hold.

If you try one thing tomorrow, choose 15 minutes of your class and ask what your students are doing besides listening. If the answer is nothing, give them a question, a decision, a partner, a problem, or a pause. Attention sometimes just needs something to do.

Listen to Phones, FOMO, and Focus: 10 Ways to Reclaim Student Attention on The What & Who of EDU for all ten educator perspectives.