- Decrease learning for the user
- Decrease learning for those around the user (the secondhand smoke of learning)
- Decrease learning and attention if the device is not on but within sight
- Result in measurably lower grades for the user
Trombulak also sees phones as a potential teaching moment for students. “They’re struggling with the phone, but they didn’t invent the phone. They didn’t buy the phone,” he said. “If school is a place you’re supposed to learn how to do things, then safe technology use needs to become more part of the curriculum.”
Providing dumb phones could be part of the way forward, Nina Marks admits, but she wonders if funds at already strapped public schools could be put to better use. “If you think of people as addicts, you have to replace that with something else,”
It’s difficult to tell how the new phone policy is affecting academic performance because Buxton uses a narrative evaluation system. But culturally, Beck says, the move has been transformative, often in small but cumulatively meaningful ways.
“People are engaging in the lounges. They are lingering after class to chat,” said Beck, who estimates that he’s now having more conversations than ever at the school. “All these face-to-face interactions, the frequency has gone through the roof.”
...the presence of electronic devices in the classroom is not, in and of itself, the problem. Rather, it's the way we incorporate electronic devices into situations in which we are already inclined to pay attention to too many things. Broadly, we are not wired to multitask well (e.g. Mayer and Moreno, 2003), which is precisely the temptation that many students report experiencing when they are in the classroom....
A growing number of studies have found that off-topic device usage—whether on a phone or on a laptop—impedes academic performance (e.g. Glass and Kang, 2019; Felisoni and Godoi, 2018; Bjornsen and Archer, 2015; Demirbilek and Talan, 2018). Several studies have compared students who texted during a lecture versus those who did not. Those who texted typically took lower quality notes, retained less information, and did worse on tests about the material (e.g. Kuznekoff and Titsworth, 2013, and Rosen et al, 2011; Lee et al, 2017). Students themselves are aware that in-class multitasking does not promote learning; in one survey, 80% of students agreed that multitasking in class decreases their ability to pay attention (Sana et al, 2013)....
In addition, device usage is distracting to neighboring students. In several surveys, students have reported that texting is distracting to nearby students (Tindell and Bohlander, 2011). A study on laptops in a simulated classroom found that students in the vicinity of another student who was multitasking on a laptop during class scored worse on a test than those who were not near multitaskers (Sana et al, 2013). However, a follow-up study found that it matters what one’s neighbors are doing on their computers; a neighbor who engages with off-task content has a more harmful effect on one’s comprehension than if the neighbor is on-task (Hall et al, 2020).
From her 2017 book iGen,
The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.
Many of us react to the buzzes and beeps that come from our phones with the urgency of a parent responding to a baby's cry. We can't help but pick up our phone and look at the latest notification. We know this probably isn't the healthiest nor the sanest response to a vibrating hunk of a metal, so we tell ourselves we should be less distracted. We shouldn't be so gripped by social media or the churn of work email.But Cal Newport, a computer scientist at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, says we're downplaying the problems created by constant interruption."We treat it, I think, in this more general sense of, 'eh, I probably should be less distracted.' But I think it's more urgent than people realize," he says.By letting email and other messages guide our workday, Cal says we're weakening our ability to do the most challenging kinds of work—what he calls "deep work." Deep work requires sustained attention, whether the task is writing marketing copy or solving a tricky engineering problem.
The findings of a recent study on student phone access and the achievement gap by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy for the London School of Economics and Political Science echoed my concerns. “We find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students,” the authors wrote. “Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students … the most, and has no significant impact on high achievers.”… analyses of other academic metrics seem to support limiting students’ smartphone access, too. Researchers at Kent State University, for example, found that among college students, more daily cellphone use (including smartphones) correlated with lower overall GPAs. The research team surveyed more than 500 students, controlling for demographics and high-school GPA, among other factors. If college students are affected by excessive phone use, then surely younger students with too much access to their phones and too little self-control and guidance would be just as affected academically if not more.
The students’ responses to the open-ended questions identified laptop-use by other students as the aspect of the class that was most distracting, followed closely by their own laptop-use.
To better understand the effects of laptop use on learning, Fried used a regression analysis to account for differences in preparation and academic aptitude as measured by high-school class rank and ACT score, respectively. With these controls in place, Fried found a significant, negative relationship between in-class laptop use and course grade. Follow-up correlational analysis also revealed that higher levels of laptop use were associated with lower student-reported levels of attention, lecture clarity, and understanding of the course material.
Exam scores climbed by as much as 6% in schools that imposed strict bans on cell phones, according to a new study that cautions policymakers to keep strict cell phone policies in the classroom.Researchers at the University of Texas and Louisiana State University surveyed cell phone policies across schools in four English cities since 2001, studying how exam scores changed before and after the bans were enacted.“We found the impact of banning phones for these students equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days,” the study’s authors wrote on the academic blog, The Conversation.
“Texting on things that are unrelated to class can hurt student learning,” Kuznekoff found. Overall, the control and class-related-message groups did 70 percent better on the test than did students that could text and tweet about anything. That control and relevant-message groups also scored 50 percent higher on note-taking.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl
Laptops are distracting in class and detrimental to other's learning - they are the secondhand smoke of learning.
We examined the detrimental effects of laptop multitasking on classroom learning. Learners who multitasked during class had reduced comprehension of lecture material. Learners in-view of multitaskers also had reduced comprehension of lecture material. Multitasking or being seated around multitaskers impedes classroom learning.
Turkle's 2011 book, Alone Together. Here is a summary:
Consider Facebook—it’s human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them.In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It’s a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of today’s self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.
In lecture-style classes where computers are not essential to the material, the sustained use of laptops during lecture is potentially so distracting as to hinder a student’s performance and distract their fellow students. Sustained laptop use is not recommended, although some evidence suggests that brief, occasional browsing sessions are not as likely to hamper learning.
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