The Learner's Appraisal: What Are Students Thinking About When Their Mind Wanders?

Learners will inevitably think about something other than what they are trying to learn. The content of these thoughts has been largely studied in experimental settings, and resulting classifications often group them into task-unrelated thoughts, task-related interference, and external distractions. However, how these classifications pertain to learner’s off-task thoughts in naturalistic settings is still unknown. This study, situated within enabling pathway and undergraduate courses in a single Australian university, thematically analyzed students’ free-text thought reports when catching themselves thinking about something unrelated when watching educational videos. The resulting themes are Course Related, Previous Experiences, Judgements, Adaptation, Reactive Distractions, Embodied Experience, Current Concerns, Social Relationships, Multitasking, and Research Design. These themes were then mapped against the common classification of task-unrelated thoughts, task-related interference, and external distractions, showing that this categorization cannot capture the range of off-task thoughts occurring in a naturalistic setting. We argue that it is not for researchers to decide whether a thought is on- or off-task; our role is to enable learners to make this appraisal for themselves, as whether a learner adapts their learning process following off-task thoughts will depend on how they appraise these thoughts.

Daniel Ebbert, Negin Mirriahi, Alrike Claassen, Natasha Wilson, Srecko Joksimovic, Shane Dawson

08/2026