Dr Debbie Bevitt as project lead with Dr Nick Morris from the School of Biomedical Sciences have been awarded a 2014/15 ULTSEC Innovation Fund (£2504) to investigate “Social media – there’s a time and a place”.

There are many examples of positive uses of social media to enhance education, but regular distraction by social media can also have a negative impact on learning.

The aim of our project is to investigate students’ self-awareness of their own social media use and the impact it has on their concentration.  We also aim to identify strategies which help students to self-regulate these distractions and to evaluate the value of self-control apps (e.g. https://selfcontrolapp.com) in this context.  We hope this pilot will form the basis of a more extensive cross-disciplinary study.