Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.5, No.1 Publication Date: Jan. 25, 2018 DoI:10.14738/assrj.51.4069. Ubah, J. N. (2018). Predictors of boredom at lectures: Medical Students’ experience. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 5(1) 91-95. Copyright © Society for Science and Education, United Kingdom 91 Predictors of boredom at lectures: Medical Students’ experience Josephine Nonye Ubah College of Health Sciences, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria ABSTRACT Boredom is a negative experience common among students. Their attention need to be captivated for a reasonable length of time during lectures to grasp information being transmitted. Causes of boredom are many. Many ideas and activities have been suggested to cope with it. These include among others; reduction in the number of power point slides, introducing funny and interesting activities or sections and interacting with students one on one. The aim of this study was to identify the causes of boredom during lectures in a group of students in a medical school. There were 54 students consisting of 22 females and 32 males, with mean age of 27.39 (SD 2.978) years. The strongest predictors of boredom were prolonged lectures, organising lectures towards the end of the day, series of lectures without break and unconducive class rooms. Short span of attention and consuming large meals before lectures were not considered significant causes. The responses were similar in both sexes. Different causes of boredom have been identified. Lecturers should be conversant with these causes and introduce means to eliminate or reduce them to the barest minimum. Keywords: Boredom, causes, lectures, medical students INRODUCTION Boredom is a negative emotional experience common among students [Mann 2009 & Wiggins 2013]. It has been defined in Wikipedia [2017] as, “an emotional or psychological state experienced when an individual is left in his or her surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious”. Boredom leads to affectation of the cognitive ability of students. Students attention need to be captivated in the class for a reasonable length of time to grasp the information being passed across. Boredom could be caused by reduced attention span which is the amount of concentrated time one can spend on a task without becoming distracted. Boredom and attention span could affect one other. While boredom can reduce attention span, short attention span can cause boredom. Attention span could be as short as 8 seconds although it has been found that most teenagers and adults have span of about 20 minutes. However, in practice most lectures last for more than 20 minutes [Comish & Dukette 2009]. Mann [2009] established that almost 60% of the students they studied found at least half their lectures boring, and 30% claiming to be bored by all the lectures. Lecture unfortunately is still the most common method of teaching because many students are reached at a time. Causes of boredom Causes of boredom could be classified under student, lecturer, institutional or subject related factors. Student related causes could be short span of attention, distractions from home, ill health and tiredness.