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Contact UsCTLD Book Club Recap
Can technology support our fragile memories and allow us to do more than we could otherwise? Or do such tools and AI erode our thinking abilities? And what about the distractions they pose?
These were just some of the questions underlying the Spring 2026 CTLD Book Discussion on Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World, by Michelle D. Miller.
Miller’s book does not provide simple answers but does offer a fascinating lens from which to think about the role of memorization in college courses. Miller is a professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University who brings both a memory researcher’s and a classroom instructor’s perspective. She was also one of the keynote speakers at the 2026 , hosted by the CTLD at °®ŇşAƬ.
How Memory Works
One of Miller’s central points is that our memories are not recordings that we access and replay, even though most people assume that’s how it works. Rather, memories are continually reconstructed, which makes them powerful but also error prone.
What determines whether something sticks? One line in particular from the book captures much of the reserarch, “We remember things we understand, that relate to ourselves, and that we care about” (p. 55). Personal relevance, emotional connection, and prior knowledge all help us remember something better. We can see many teaching implications from this understanding of memory.
A few ideas our group found especially useful include:
- Memory should be viewed (by both students and faculty) as an active process that requires work.
- Retrieval practice, such as low-stakes quizzing, helps students more than re-reading or re-watching.
- “Grapples” (open-ended prompts students can just barely handle) tap curiosity and prior knowledge before new material is introduced.
- Personal connections make content more memorable than facts presented in isolation.
- Memorization still has a place in higher education. Every field has some “back of the hand” knowledge that students need to access fluently, rather than be able to look up.
Attention in a Wired World
Many of our discussions centered on the distractions that phones and laptops cause. Miller argues that we have long been using cognitive offloading in helpful and productive ways. Making lists, looking up information, or relying on our friends or family to help reconstruct memories free up our minds to focus on other tasks. We’ve become reliant, but more productive, as a result.
Yet attention is a complex process. Miller’s analogy of attention as a “bouncer” struck a chord. We can’t pay attention to everything, so attention processes help us prioritize what is important while also blocking the things we find not relevant. “We take in what we notice, what we think we will need, what we care about, and what we understand” (p. 127).
Technology and a Few Myths
The book also tackles some popular claims about technology and the brain. For example, attention spans aren’t measurably shrinking, students don’t automatically max out at ten minutes of instruction, and the brain can multitask under some conditions (not when it involves similar cognitive functions or requires decision-making or executive function).
However, it is well-supported that notifications disrupt attention, and just having a phone in view can be distracting, even when it’s not being used. (when just knowing we can look something up reduces our motivation to remember) resonated strongly in our discussions. Nearly everyone had a story about having to look up GPS directions we used to be able to figure out ourselves, or constantly looking up information we otherwise would have remembered. Clearly technology has a powerful ability to distract us and change what we think we need to learn.
Our group didn’t land on a single answer about phone or laptop policies in our courses. Most of us were looking for ways to remove distractions while also allowing necessary use. Miller’s advice is to be less alarmist and more intentional, to think about what you actually want students doing in class and let that guide your policy. We shared examples of talking with students about the realities of distractions, showing them studies, and letting them co-create the class guidelines.
Takeaways
Our group’s discussions echoed Miller’s own conclusion to approach students’ distraction and forgetting with empathy rather than judgment. We all experience the same pull from our devices. And with the advent of AI, we are figuring this out as we go.
Our main takeaways were that students will better retain material that they understand and care about, that they need to actively process information (memories are remade rather than replayed), and that making personal connections to material is powerful. Miller urges us to not be afraid to ask students to commit things to memory.
“Productive struggle” refers to the kind of difficulty that helps rather than hinders learning such as grappling with a problem, or trying to recall something before it’s given to you. That is the kind of effort that makes memories stick. Given the immediate access to technology and information, sharing the idea of “productive struggle” with students may be more important than ever.
Miller, M. D. (2022). Remembering and forgetting in the age of technology: Teaching, learning, and the science of memory in a wired world. West Virginia University Press.
AI Disclosure: After writing an initial draft, AI was used to clean up language and note gaps in logic and flow.
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Do you want to discuss teaching-related books with your colleagues? Find out about future book discussions or suggest a book to discuss on our website.
*The Fall 2026 CTLD book club is at capacity, but feel free to vote for or suggest a future book for discussion!