The ubiquitous cell phone and laptop have made student chat a common part of live classes, much to the consternation of instructors. Not only does it distract the teacher, but studies prove the common-sense intuition that distractions undermine learning (Blasiman et al., 2018). But a new study by Goodman and Moore (2023) comes to the surprising conclusion that some types of chat during class do not detract from learning and even have positive effects.
