In-class laptop use and its effects on student learning
Section snippets
Participants
One hundred thirty-seven students, from two sections of General Psychology taught by the same instructor, participated in the research. All students who completed the course (i.e., took all the exams) were included as participants. There were 83 freshmen, 41 sophomores, 9 juniors, and 4 seniors. All participants signed consent forms, and the instructor assured them that all data would be confidential and that the survey responses would not influence course grades.
Course structure and assessment
The research was limited to a
Response rate
Only those students who answered at least 7 of the 10 weekly surveys were included in the analysis. Nine students out of the original 137 failed to complete the requisite seven surveys, leaving an overall response rate of 93.4%. Sixty-five students completed all 10 surveys, 38 students completed 9 surveys, 15 students completed 8 surveys, and 8 students completed 7 surveys. For each subject, his or her responses for each item were averaged across all the surveys completed.
Level of laptop use
Of the total
Discussion
This research raises serious concerns about the use of laptops in the classroom. Students admit to spending considerable time during lectures using their laptops for things other than taking notes. More importantly, the use of laptops was negatively related to several measures of learning. The pattern of the correlations suggests that laptop use interfered with students’ abilities to pay attention to and understand the lecture material, which in turn resulted in lower test scores. The results
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by a summer research grant from Winona State University. I thank Kathryn Jargo for all her assistant in data coding and data entry and John Johanson and Peter Miene for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
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