[glun]

> dull and rambling voice mail message

This is in no way a realistic study. A dull and rambling voice speaking about some random thing not related to you or your work will make people disengage. Doodling presumably keeps people from totally spacing out.

[westurner]

Many lectures and meetings may be experienced as similarly dross and irrelevant and a waste of time (though you can't expect people to just read the necessary information ahead of time, as flipped classrooms expect of committed learners).

What would be a better experimental design for measuring effect on memory retention of passively-absorbed lectures?