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British Educational Research Journal
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Boredom in the lecture theatre: an
investigation into the contributors,
moderators and outcomes of boredom
amongst university students
Sandi Mann
a
& Andrew Robinson
a
a
Department of Psychology , University of Central Lancashire , UK
Published online: 20 Mar 2009.
To cite this article: Sandi Mann & Andrew Robinson (2009) Boredom in the lecture theatre: an
investigation into the contributors, moderators and outcomes of boredom amongst university
students, British Educational Research Journal, 35:2, 243-258, DOI: 10.1080/01411920802042911
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920802042911
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Boredom in the lecture theatre: an
investigation into the contributors,
moderators and outcomes of boredom
amongst university students
Sandi Mann
*
and Andrew Robinson
Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Student boredom within the school system has been widely studied and shown to be linked to
various negative consequences such as diminished academic achievement, school dissatisfaction
and truancy. However, little attention has been given to the issue of boredom within higher
education and the current study aims to redress this balance. Two hundred and eleven university
students completed questionnaires aimed at assessing contributors, moderators and consequences
of their boredom. Results reveal that 59% of students find their lectures boring half the time and
30% find most or all of their lectures to be boring. The consequences of being bored included
students missing future lectures and there was also a significant association between level of
boredom and grade point average. The most important teaching factor contributing to student
boredom is the use of PowerPoint slides, whilst the personality trait Boredom Proneness was the
most important factor moderating the experience of boredom. Implications for future research and
for teaching staff are outlined.
For students, boring connotes something missing in their education, conveys a deep
sense of disappointment, and casts class cutting as a coping mechanism for classes that
fail to engage. (Fallis & Opotow, 2003, p. 108)
Contrary to popular wisdom, boredom is not the result of having nothing to do. It is
very hard to come up with a situation where a persons options are so limited that he
or she literally can do nothing. Rather, boredom stems from a situation where none
of the possible things that a person can realistically do appeal to the person in
question. This renders the person inactive, and generally unhappy. Thus, boredom
is the result of having nothing to do that one likes (as defined by Shuta, 1993) rather
than nothing to do per se.
Boredom, then, is a state of relatively low arousal and dissatisfaction, which is
attributed to an inadequately stimulating situation (Fiske & Maddi, 1961). Lack of
*Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
PR1 2HE, UK. Email: smann@uclan.ac.uk
British Educational Research Journal
Vol. 35, No. 2, April 2009, pp. 243258
ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/09/020243-16
# 2009 British Educational Research Association
DOI: 10.1080/01411920802042911
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external stimulation leads to increased neural arousal in search of varietyfailure to
satisfy this leads to the experience of boredom. OHanlon defined this as a unique
psychophysical state that is somehow produced by prolonged exposure to
monotonous stimulation (1981, p. 54). Boredom is a distinct emotional state
(Fisher, 1993; Farmer & Sundberg, 1986); boredom is an unpleasant, transient
affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and
difficulty concentrating on the current activity [such that] it takes conscious effort
to maintain or return attention to that activity (Fisher, 1993, p. 396).
This suggests that arousal may be affected by the meaning of the situation. If the
stimulus means nothing to the individual or is perceived as less distinct and
monotonous, it gives rise to the state of boredom. A study by Perkins and Hill
(1985) found that individuals who derive little enjoyment from thinking or from
increasing their understanding of events around them were significantly more prone to
experiencing boredom. In addition, Csikszentmihalyi (1975) and Polly et al. (1993)
believe that individuals who are more inclined to generate positive stimulation are less
likely to experience boredom. Work by Fiske and Maddi (1961), Zuckerman (1979)
and Watt and Blanchard (1994) have shown that boredom-prone individuals are
deficient at maintaining this adequate level of stimulation.
This, then, suggests that some people are more prone to boredom than others.
Farmer and Sundberg (1986) developed the Boredom Proneness Scale as a general
assessment tool to measure a persons tendency towards experiencing boredom, and
to discover a psychometrically determined scale of measuring ones proneness to
boredom. They suggested that boredom proneness is a personality trait that can
moderate the experience of boredom and that the boredom-prone person is one who
experiences varying degrees of depression, hopelessness, loneliness, distractibility, is
less motivated and displays little evidence of autonomous orientation.
Boredom amongst students
In education, boredom has been linked with diminished academic achievement
(Fogelman, 1976; Maroldo, 1986) and school dissatisfaction (Gjesne, 1977). For
example, students who rated themselves as often bored had generally lower scores on
academic tests than those who were sometimes bored (Mikulas & Vodanovich, 1993).
Other research has found a negative relationship between boredom susceptibility and
grade point average. Students who rated themselves as often bored had generally lower
scores on academic tests than those who were sometimes bored.
Student boredomhas also been shown to be a contributor to truancy (e.g. Robinson,
1975; Watt &Vodanovich, 1999). For example, boredomis one of the most frequently
identified causes for students leaving school temporarily (e.g. skipping classes, feigning
illness) or permanently (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986; Larson & Richards, 1991).
Students who do not miss classes have been shown to have higher performance scores
(Robinson, 1975; Maroldo, 1986; Farmer & Sundberg, 1986; Mikulas & Vodanovich,
1993; Wallace et al., 2003; Grabe, 2005; Handelsman et al., 2005). As Fallis and
Optotow (2003) point out in their study of high school students, class-cutting is a
slippery slope: once begun, the academic damage is difficult to reverse (p. 104).
244 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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Clearly, the research suggests that boredom amongst (school age) students has
negative consequences, but the question remains as to what factors contribute to
student boredom. It is highly likely that boredom proneness is a major contributor;
indeed, OHanlon (1981) found that students who are highly prone to boredom are
more likely to regard lectures as being more boring than those who display minimal
boredom proneness. But are there any factors intrinsic to the quality or methods of
teaching that are more likely to invoke boredom?
Research by Bartsch and Cobern (2003) found that students grades may be
affected by boredom due to poor or unstimulating teaching methods. Such methods
are thought to include those that minimise student engagement, are less structured,
are less purposeful and involve less active learning. Fallis and Optotow (2003)
comment that for students, boring connotes a one-way, top-down, unengaged
relationship with a teacher (p. 108). Work by Van der Velde et al. (1995) found that
structured and purposeful use of time results in a lack of boredom. Students will be
more likely to find unstimulating, passive learning environments, like copying notes
from overheads and lectures with handouts, more boring than active learning
strategies. Collaborative learning which inevitability takes place within a social
context, for example, laboratory and group work, helps individuals to make progress
through their zone of proximal development by the activities in which they engage
(Vygotsky, 1978), especially for those students who score highly on the boredom
proneness scale. Cognitive Flexibility Theory points out that traditional instructional
design, such as textbooks, lectures, and computer-based drill are inadequate for
implementation with ill structured domains because they depend on organized and
linear techniques. For a learner to fully comprehend the complexity of a new subject it
must be accessible to the learner in a more hands-on nature (Liaw, 2004), for
example through the employment of laboratory work and independent group learning.
One of the main teaching methods currently employed to assist university lecturers is
that of projecting written material directly fromcomputer to screen using, for example,
PowerPoint presentations. Over the past decade or so, this method has been widely
adopted to replace traditional overhead projector transparencies and most universities
and colleges have facilities for utilizing this technology in all teaching rooms. Indeed,
many institutions are strongly encouraging teaching staff to replace transparencies or
other approaches with PowerPoint (e.g. Carlson, 2002). A great deal of research exists
to suggest that students do prefer PowerPoint type presentations (e.g. Cassady, 1998;
Perry & Perry, 1998; Susskind & Gurien, 1999) although evidence that such
approaches actually improve student performance is less apparent; for example, one
study demonstrated a decrease in student performance when the instructor switched
from transparencies to PowerPoint (Bartlett et al., 2000).
Of course, much depends on the complexity of using multimedia presentations;
this can vary from simple text to using animation and sound effects that allow for
greater stimulation. Bartsch and Cobern (2003) reported that if a lecture is
structured well students will learn better and PowerPoint can provide good
structure; the colour, pacing of lecture and use of graphics that PowerPoint provides
may stimulate attention, unlike group discussions. The dual coding theory (Liaw,
Boredom in the lecture theatre 245
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2004) suggests that pictures are easier to remember than words and when
information coding is in both systems, like in PowerPoint, the information is easier
to remember than information coded only in the verbal system. A study by Grabe
(2005) showed that taught lectures with overhead presentation provide the
opportunity to make detailed notes. In addition, students who used notes performed
better in their examinations than non-note users.
However, in order to reduce boredom, students must be engaged in their learning;
as Kanevsky and Keighley point out, learning is the opposite of boredom and
learning is the antidote to boredom (2003, p. 278). In an article published in The
Guardian (2003), mature student Tom Ward complains that whilst the increasing
use of PowerPoint in higher education is meant to enhance student learning, it
frequently has the opposite effect, inducing boredom, frustration and disengage-
ment. The problem he found was that PowerPoint frequently fostered a teaching
environment in which tutors did not connect with their students by making eye
contact or engaging in exchanges. Instead, they just talked to the screen, read out
material on the screen and often presented far too much material because it was so
easy to do so; the presentations became a barrier between the teacher and the
student and resulted in a learning environment that was so routine, so anodyne, so
dull. Ward complains bitterly of the disk dealers whose efforts produce that
dreadful mask of passive boredom on students faces.
Part of the problemwithin higher education may lie within the traditional conception
of the lecture, which implies a didactic transmission of material that students passively
receive. Indeed, the notion of university lecturers actually needing any sort of training
in how to teach is a relatively new one; as an article in the Education supplement of The
Guardian points out, Teaching in a university remains a curious thing. Many people
have remarked on the fact that if you want to teach in a school you need a lengthy and
intensive training, but to teach in a university you need a PhD, some red-hot
recommendations and a handful of decent publications (Wolff, 2006). Whilst most
universities do now provide training for teaching staff and a wider range of teaching
methods (and often use the term classes rather than lectures), teaching staff are still
called lecturers, so the traditional notion of teaching being a formal talk (as defined
in the Chambers Dictionary), is difficult to get away from.
Another issue that may be difficult to get away from is that of students viewing the
teaching they are presented with purely as a means to obtain the information necessary
to pass examinations or coursework. In other words, students themselves may actually
resist attempts at what Ramsden (2003) terms deep learning, i.e. where they approach
their learning with the intention of understanding, in favour of more superficial surface
learning in which there is an absence of the desire to understand. Students may bypass
deep learning, even if this underpins the teaching and learning strategy of their
institution, because university teaching contexts might discourage students from
coming to grips with the fundamentals of their subject and encourage themto use tricks
and stratagems to pass examinations (Ramsden, 1984, p. 145). In other words,
although there may well be stated course objectives and outcomes as part of the
teaching and learning policy, students may want to find short-cuts and rules that will
246 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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simply enable them to pass, without the need to understand more than is necessary.
That is, the surface learners are looking for the facts they think they will be tested on,
not for the meaning of the material. According to Rhem (1995), studies show that
students in Australia adopt more and more surface approaches to learning as they move
fromhigh school to higher education because that is what they perceive as necessary for
success. Ramsdens work suggests that it is not enough to devise appropriate teaching
methods, but that teachers must examine their entire teaching and learning strategy so
as to ensure that students are receptive to the kind of deep learning they are trying to
foster. It may be that students who are more receptive to deep learning will experience
less boredom within classes/lectures than those less receptive.
Consequences of boredom
Work by Sommers and Vodanovich (2000) found that people who suffer low arousal
levels are more inclined to partake in coping strategies to alleviate their boredom.
The employment of coping strategies involves the seeking of varied, novel, complex
and intense experiences or sensation seeking (Greene et al., 2000). Todman (2003)
states that sensation seeking is caused by situation-dependent boredom as the
individual seeks relief from the boring situation. Work by Ferrell (2004) found that
everybody gets bored but different people have different ways of relieving that
boredom depending on their surroundings.
Sensation seeking can result in a relationship between boredom and risky
behaviours. For example, a number of researchers (e.g. Wallace et al., 2003;
Johnston & OMalley, 1986 as cited in Mikulas & Vodanovich, 1993; Watt &
Blanchard, 1994) have reported boredom to be one of the most common causes of
drug use. Greene et al. (2000) found that boredom has been linked with health risk
behaviours such as smoking, drug-taking, alcohol consumption and unsafe sex.
However, not all coping strategies involve risky behaviours. For instance, the
simple act of daydreaming and fantasizing can allow a person to alter the complexity
of a situation and thus cope with the lack of stimulation (Tushup & Zuckerman,
1977; Klinger, 1987). Ward (2003) observed first-hand the coping strategies that
students used to combat boredom:
Some dozed and daydreamed or doodled in time-dishonoured fashion; others took
refuge in their mobile phones sending or reading text messages, or playing games. In the
corner in which I regularly sat, there were competitions of hangman, complete the song
lyric, and quizzes of one sort or another. It was not long before this kind of subversion
became more obvious as students started to skip classes. There were times when
attendance slumped to 50%. Some students even disappeared in the mid-session break,
deciding that it wasnt worth staying and electing to do something else instead.
Current study
The current research into student boredom is lacking in a number of ways. Firstly,
most of it concentrates on boredom in the classroom with school-age children, and
the current study aims to address this imbalance. Boredom at university level could
Boredom in the lecture theatre 247
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have serious consequences for the young adults involved in terms of their academic
success. Because little is known of the experience of lecture-based boredom in higher
education, the aims of the current study are to (1) identify the factors that contribute
towards and moderate the experience of student boredom (such as types of teaching
environment and boredom proneness), and (2) to identify student coping strategies
and consequences of boredom.
Method
The study took a three-stage approach, with the first stage (Phase 1) taking the form
of focus groups in order to help identify items for a broad questionnaire to be used in
Phase 2. The results of Phase 2 were used to produce a more targeted questionnaire
to be used in the main study (Phase 3).
Phase 1
Because little research to date has been carried out into the experience of boredom
within higher education students, it was felt that an initial focus group stage should
be employed in order to more effectively develop a framework for the main study.
Three groups of five students were recruited through opportunity sampling and
asked to take part in a 20-minute discussion at a specified time and location.
Participants in each group knew each other and were from a range of different
disciplines. They were informed that their contributions were voluntary and
anonymous. The aim of the discussions was to identify items for inclusion in
Phase 2; by holding the focus groups, it could be ensured that any items selected
were generated by the target group of participants (i.e. students) rather than simply
generated by the researchers or from previous research (which is scarce and
inconclusive). Two main issues were discussed in the focus groups: coping strategies
during a boring event (what do they do to relieve boredom during a boring lecture)
and behavioural consequences of boredom (what they do after a boring day at
university). The following results were generated.
Question 1: If you find lectures boring, what do you do to relieve the boredom?
Responses mentioned by the participants included: play games on phone, text
people, write shopping list, talk to neighbour, calculate finances, leave mid-session,
stare into space, switch off, doodle, write notes to neighbour, colour in letters on
handout and decide not to attend the next lecture.
Question 2: After a particularly boring day at university, what do you feel the need to do?
Responses mentioned by the participants included: drink alcohol (alone), watch TV/
video/DVD, eat chocolate, play video games, phone friends, go to the library, go
shopping, sleep, go out drinking, review the days lecture material, do some
coursework, smoke.
248 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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Phase 2
All the items generated in Phase 1 were put into a questionnaire that was
distributed to 44 different students (i.e. who had not participated in Phase 1). The
aim of this phase was to identify from the original Phase 1 list those responses that
were most prevalent for the main study. Phase 1 responses that were selected by
less than 20% of the Phase 2 sample were not included in the main study
questionnaire.
Main study
Participants
Two hundred and eleven students (66 male and 145 female) were recruited using
opportunity sampling at a university in the north-west of England. They were
recruited from general areas of the campus such as the Students Union or canteens,
so that no one subject course area would dominate; data on subject studied were not
collected. The students invited to take part were not asked which year of study they
were in and it was assumed that participants across the range of year groups took
part.
Materials
Each participant was given a questionnaire containing: (1) the instructions and
information for the participant about their right to withdraw and their anonymity,
(2) the shortened five-point Likert Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS) (permission to
use granted by the authors) adapted slightly for student use (e.g. any items referring
specifically to work were changed to make them suitable for student life), (3)
questions to assess how much time in lectures the student rates as boring, how much
time they judge to have missed this academic year due to non-attendance, what A
level or equivalent grades the participants obtained in order to gain access to a
university course, and their boring ratings of various teaching methods, (4) questions
gauging the number of boredom coping strategies employed by the students during
the lecture.
Results
1. Experience of boredom
Table 1 shows the responses that students gave to the question how much of your
lecture time do you rate as boring?
2. Factors contributing to student boredom: teaching elements
These items were scored on a 15 Likert scale and the distribution of scores is shown
in Table 2.
Boredom in the lecture theatre 249
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3. Factors contributing to student boredom: boredom proneness
The internal consistency of the BPS in its original truefalse format has been
reported to be .79 (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986) and a KR-20 of .73 was reported by
Ahmed (1990). A testretest correlation of 0.83 was also reported after a 1-week
interval (Farmer & Sundberg, 1996). The coefficient alpha of the revised five-point
version of the BPS used in this study was somewhat lower at .58. The distribution of
the boredom proneness scores is shown in Figure 1.
The boredom proneness scores were divided into three groups, high, medium and
low, according to standard deviation split. The mean score was 44.93 with a
standard deviation (SD) of 11.93. Those participants scoring less than 1 SD below
the mean were classified as low on BPS, those 1 SD above as high. Scores between
32.97 and 56.83 points on the boredom proneness scale was classed as the middle
group.
Table 3 shows the distribution of boredom proneness scores.
Results from a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) show that students who
score highly on the BPS rate more time in lectures as boring (mean53.41,
SD51.13) than participants with low boredom proneness scores (mean52.37,
SD50.81), (F (2, 210)511.795, p5.000).
Table 1. How much of students lecture time they rate as boring
% respondents
None of their lectures 2
Some of their lectures 39
Half of their lectures 29
Most of their lectures 27
All of their lectures 3
Table 2. Mean and standard deviations of boredom ratings of various teaching methods
Teaching method Mean SD
Laboratory work 3.33 3.05
Computer sessions 3.17 2.51
Online lecture notes 3.14 2.14
Copying overheads in lectures 3.13 1.45
PowerPoint without handout 2.98 1.2
Workshops 2.97 2.61
Video presentations 2.74 2.51
Group work outside lectures 2.69 2.25
PowerPoint with handout 2.6 1.35
Seminars 2.57 1.7
Practical sessions 2.41 2.54
Group discussions in lectures 1.94 1.36
Higher scores, i.e. nearer to 55higher boredom ratings.
250 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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A forward stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine which
factor contributed most to the boredom experienced in lectures (Table 5). Factors
entered were the five teaching methods rated the most boring (see Table 2) and
boredom proneness. Before this was performed, a correlation matrix was produced
between these variables to check for multi-collinearity. This is shown in Table 4.
4. Consequences of student boredom
A Pearson correlation shows that the more time in lectures rated as boring, the more
lecture time students claim to have missed that academic year (r50.17, p5.016). A
correlation was found between lecture time already missed and deciding to go to the
next lecture (r5.18, p5.009). The more time is missed due to missing the next
lecture the more grade point average decreases (r520.20, p5.005).
Figure 1. Graph showing distribution of boredom proneness scores
Table 3. Distribution of boredom proneness scores
Number of respondents % respondents
Low boredom proneness
score
35 16.6
Middle boredom prone-
ness score
144 68.2
High boredom proneness
score
32 15.2
Boredom in the lecture theatre 251
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However, boredom proneness had a moderating effect on these findings. When
boredom proneness is partialled out, the correlation between time in lectures rated
as boring and missing lecture time does not reach significance (r50.096, p5.165).
Results from a one-way ANOVA confirm that students who score highly on the BPS
admitted to missing significantly more lecture time (mean51.97, SD50.74) than
students with low boredom proneness scores (mean51.54, SD50.51), (F (2,
210)53.61, p5.029).
The influence of boredom proneness is also confirmed by the positive correlation
between boredom proneness and time missed (r50.18, p5.008) and between
boredom proneness and going to the next lecture (r50.16, p5.017), showing that
participants who score highly on the BPS spend less time in lectures.
Table 6 shows the percentage of students claiming to employ various coping
strategies during a boring lecture. One-way ANOVA results show that students who
score highly on the BPS employed significantly more coping strategies in lecture
time (mean55.97, SD52.27) than students with low boredom proneness scores
(mean53.40, SD52.56), (F (2,210)510.20, p5.000).
One-way ANOVA results show that individuals who are prone to boredom in
lectures tend to play more games on their mobile phone (F (2,210)54.015,
p5.019), send more text messages during lecture time (F (2,210)54.196, p5.016),
make more shopping lists (F (2,210)53.08, p5.048), tend to switch off (F
(2,210)55.62, p5.004), doodle, (F (2,210)54.29, p5.015), write notes to the
person next to them (F (2,210)56.71, p5.001), daydream (F (2,210)54.4,
p5.0.13), and decide not to go to the next lecture (F (2,210)53.1, p5.047) more
Table 4. Correlation matrix of main factors contributing to boredom in lectures
Computer Online notes Copying
overheads
PowerPoint BPS
Lab work R5.43** R5.29** R5.06 R5.08 R5.09
Computer R5.33 ** R5.045 R52.47 R5.03
Online notes R5.02 R5.06 R5.006
Copying over-
heads
R5.32** R5.03
PowerPoint R5.08
**Correlation at the 0.01 level.
Table 5. Stepwise multiple regression of teaching methods and boredom proneness onto time in
lectures rated as boring
Step Variable Beta R
2
R
2
change t Sig. t
1 BPS .414 .172 .172 6.58 ,.0005
2 PowerPoint .164 .198 .027 2.63 ,.0005
Final statistics: R
2
5.164, F (2, 210)525.7, p5,.0005.
252 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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than those students who score low on the BPS. The means and standard deviations
for the low and high boredom prone group for these strategies is shown in Table 7.
Discussion
1. The experience of student boredom
The findings suggest that 59% of students find at least half their lectures boring with
30% (almost a third) claiming to find most or all their lectures boring. This seems an
intolerably high percentage of boring lectures at university level, but these findings
need closer examination before any conclusions can be drawn. One important
limiting factor is that these were general estimates of time in lectures overall that the
students reckoned, when looking back, were recalled to have been boring. Another
limiting factor could be the possibility that the data collected in this study may have
been subjected to social desirability bias in that it may not be part of the student
Table 6. Percentage of students employing various coping strategies during boring lectures.
%
Daydream 75.4
Doodle 66.4
Switch off 61.6
Colour in letters on the handout 59.7
Talk to the person next to them 50.7
Text people on mobile phone 45.5
Write notes to friend 38.0
Leave at break time 27.5
Calculate money situation 23.2
Play games on mobile phone 17.5
Write shopping list 16.6
Table 7. Mean scores and standard deviations for strategies used by low and high boredom prone
students
Strategy High BPS Low BPS
Mean SD Mean
SD
Play games 0.28 0.45 0.029 0.17
Text .059 0.5 0.26 0.44
Shopping lists 0.28 0.46 0.06 0.24
Switch off 0.88 0.34 0.54 0.5
Doodle 0.75 0.44 0.46 0.51
Write notes 0.63 0.49 0.2 0.41
Daydream 0.72 0.46 0.57 0.5
Skip next lecture 0.05 0.21 0 0
Boredom in the lecture theatre 253
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culture to be enthusiastic about lectures or classes. Specific lectures were not rated
and a useful amendment for future studies might be to ask students at the end of
each lecture for their boredom ratings.
That said, the main factors that need to be considered in connection to this
finding are contributing factors to the experience of student boredom. Two groups
of factors were considered in this study; those relating to the quality and intrinsic
properties of the lecture and those relating to the personal qualities of the
individual in terms of their boredom proneness. Each of these will be considered in
turn.
2. Factors contributing to student boredom: qualities of the lecture
A range of different teaching methods was explored in terms of their contributions to
the experience of boredom by students. The highest boredom ratings were achieved
for laboratory work (mean53.33) and computer sessions (mean53.17), which is
surprising given the hands-on nature of these teaching methods; it might be expected
that these methods would be the most engaging, not the least. However, these
findings do concur with the view expressed by the Higher Education Academys UK
Centre for Materials Education, that students often find labs tedious and boring
and do not take them seriously (Baillie & Hazel, 2006). One reason given by Baillie
and Hazel (2006) is that many laboratory classes consist of controlled exercises,
which are simple exercises designed by the teacher with the aim of verifying
something already known. Students, they say, can find these classes dull and
tedious because of the predictability of the results and because they do not promote
Ramsdens (1984) deep learning. More experimental designs are thought to be more
stimulating and more likely to promote deep learning, but these require more in the
way of time and resources.
Computer sessions too have the potential to be stimulating or tedious; the findings
of this study suggest that too many fall into the latter category. This could be due to
the manner in which computer sessions are conducted (e.g. are the computer tasks
relevant and interesting?), the resources available (e.g. is there a computer for each
student?), the availability of support (are there enough teaching staff to help
individual students?), etc. The fact that computers are a doing activity is clearly not
enough to eliminate boredom, and this appears to be what Ramsden (1995, p. 4)
means when he says that doing in itself isnt enough; although he was referring
about doing enough to promote deep learning, there is likely to be enough link
between interest, motivation and deep learning for this comment to apply equally
here.
Online lecture notes (mean53.14) and copying overheads in lectures
(mean53.13) come next in the boredom ratings and this is less of a surprise.
These teaching methods are the least engaging and involve very little learner
engagement as the student simply copies material down. This task can be achieved
with little active processing or learning and thus can be expected to contribute to
student boredom.
254 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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High up on the list of boring teaching methods is use of PowerPoint without a
handout (mean 2.98). Interestingly, providing a handout reduces the mean boredom
rating to 2.6. The use of PowerPoint is discussed at length in the introduction to this
article and the reservations expressed by previous researchers (e.g. Bartlett et al.,
2000 and Ward 2003) in terms of over-reliance on this tool would appear to be
justified. Using PowerPoint presentations without an accompanying handout is
clearly boredom-inducing, possibly because students are forced to copy everything
down; copying notes in this way is only marginally less boring than copying old-
fashioned overheads. The real power of PowerPoint seems to come with combining
it with the handout which, presumably, allows the student to concentrate on the
material rather than on getting it all down on paper.
The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions and
group discussions. All these involve interaction and active learning rather than passive.
3. Factors contributing to student boredom: individual characteristics of the student
The boredom proneness of the students followed a fairly normal distribution (as
shown in Figure 1). The results suggest that an individuals propensity towards the
personality trait of boredom proneness has a large influence on their experience of
boredom. High BP students rated more time in lectures as boring than low BP
students, suggesting that boredom proneness is a significant predictor of experien-
cing boredom in lectures.
A stepwise multiple regression was performed and two factors were shown to be
significant predictors of how much of lecture time students rated as boring. These
factors were boredom proneness (accounting for 17.2% of the variance) and the
teaching method of PowerPoint without handout (accounting for a further 2.6 % of
the variance). This suggests that these were the two main predictors of student
boredom, with boredom proneness being the most significant.
4. Consequences of student boredom
The effects of boredom for students fall into three categories of consequences: (1)
those relating to academic output and (2) those falling within the category of short-
term coping strategies adopted during boring lectures.
Consequences relating to academic output. Correlational statistics suggest that lecture
boredom has serious consequences for academic output, leading to students both
claiming to have missed previous lectures and electing to miss future lectures.
Previous research has shown a link between class attendance and grades achieved
and this appears to be backed up in the current study, which found that the more
time missed, the lower the A level grade points were. However, caution should be
exercised, since these grade points were obtained before commencing university so
could not be a direct consequence of missing boring lectures whilst at university.
However, as there is a relationship between ratings of lecture boredom, missing
classes and previous grades, it could be that the experience of boredom is not
Boredom in the lecture theatre 255
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situational, but more of a longer-term personality trait that makes people more
susceptible to boredom in any situation.
Indeed, the moderating effect of boredom proneness on boredom ratings and
missing lectures would seem to back this notion. It is the students who are more
highly boredom prone who rate more lecture time as boring and who miss more
lectures. This suggests again that the personality trait of boredom proneness has the
biggest influence on the experience of boredom in the lecture theatre.
Coping strategies. Students adopt a variety of adaptive and maladaptive strategies to
cope with boring lectures. The most popular are daydreaming (75% of students
admitted doing this), doodling (66%), chatting to their friends (50%), sending
mobile phone texts (45%) and passing notes to their friends (38%). Over a quarter
of students avoid the boring situation by leaving the lecture at the mid-session break.
Again, boredom proneness seems to have a moderating influence on these coping
strategies, with students high on BPS adopting significantly more of these strategies
than those low on BPS.
Conclusions
This study suggests that boredom in the lecture theatre has a significant presence for
students and has important academic consequences. The most boring teaching
methods were found to be laboratory work, computer sessions and copying lecture
notes whilst the most significant contributor to lecture boredom in terms of teaching
method is the use of PowerPoint (without a handout). The personality trait of
boredom proneness is an important moderator between the experience of boredom
and its consequences.
This study has implications for future research which could be usefully directed
at examining the relationship between student boredom, boredom proneness and
actual grades achieved at university. Consequences of boredom should also be
examined more closely by comparing the degree of coping strategies undertaken
during and after boring and non-boring lectures. It would also be useful to
examine any impact that boredom in the lecture theatre has on drop-out rates of
students who quit their courses. In addition, specific lectures were not rated here
and future studies might ask students at the end of each lecture for their boredom
ratings.
The study also has implications for university lecturers and students themselves.
Lecturers should not assume that interactive teaching methods like lab and
computer classes are automatically more engaging for students; without careful
input of resources and attention, these methods can be even more boring for
students. PowerPoint presentations should be used with caution during lectures
and teaching staff should seek to find ways to engage students as much as possible.
Universities may also wish to consider using the Boredom Proneness Scale as a
developmental or even a screening tool to help identify those students who are
likely to experience the most difficulties in coping with boring situations at
university.
256 S. Mann and A. Robinson
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