Attention and Sustained Focus in Higher Education - ON-1219

Project type: Research
Desired discipline(s): Education, Social Sciences & Humanities
Company: The Zerowriter Company Ltd.
Project Length: Flexible
Preferred start date: As soon as possible.
Language requirement: English
Location(s): ON, Canada
No. of positions: 1
Desired education level: CollegeUndergraduate/BachelorMaster'sPhDPostdoctoral fellowRecent graduate
Open to applicants registered at an institution outside of Canada: No

About the company: 

Zerowriter sells distraction-free e-ink writing devices direct-to-consumer. We're looking to build for the education market and deploy devices in classrooms across Canada.

Describe the project.: 

This research project investigates attention spans and sustained focus among college-level students. As academic environments grow increasingly digital, students face mounting challenges in maintaining concentration during lectures, independent study, and assessments. Despite widespread concern about declining attention, there is limited up-to-date, college-specific data on how long students can sustain focus, what disrupts it, and which conditions support deeper concentration.
The project aims to measure attention and focus across a representative sample of college students and to identify the key factors that influence them. These factors may include digital device and social media use, sleep quality, study environment, course format (in-person versus online), workload, and mental wellbeing. By combining self-reported data, behavioral measures, and—where feasible—objective attention tasks, the study seeks to build a clear, evidence-based picture of how college students actually sustain focus in real academic contexts.
The main goal of this project is the generation of knowledge rather than a commercial product. Specifically, it seeks to produce reliable findings that can inform educators, institutions, and students themselves about the realities of attention in higher education. The intended outcomes include a comprehensive research report, actionable recommendations for improving learning environments and study practices, and a dataset that can support further academic inquiry.
Ultimately, the project intends to contribute practical and theoretical understanding to the fields of education, cognitive psychology, and student wellbeing. The insights gained could guide the design and development of products to assist with study.

Required expertise/skills: 

Basic database skills for tracking study, some reporting software, email, word.