Unwired: Student Use of Technology in the Ubiquitous Computing World

This study examines how college students use technology in their everyday life on a campus with ubiquitous computing and communication. The primary areas of focus will include how effectively technology is being used in and out of the classroom, how the students use the technology in every facet of their lives, and how dependent these students have become on technology, all taken from the student’s point of view. This study is particularly important because the campus being studied has a universal wireless network connection and a mandatory laptop program in effect for half of the current student body

Interactive lectures: Clickers or personal devices?

Audience response systems (‘clickers’) are frequently used to promote participation in large lecture classes, and evidence suggests that they convey a number of benefits to students, including improved academic performance and student satisfaction. The limitations of these systems (such as limited access and cost) can be overcome using students’ personal electronic devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops together with text message, web- or app-based polling systems. Using questionnaires, we compare student perceptions of clicker and smartphone based polling systems. We find that students prefer interactive lectures generally, but those that used their own device preferred those lectures over lectures using clickers. However, device users were more likely to report using their devices for other purposes (checking email, social media etc.) when they were available to answer polling questions. These students did not feel that this distracted them from the lecture, instead, concerns over the use of smartphones centred around increased battery usage and inclusivity for students without access to suitable technology. Our results suggest that students generally preferred to use their own devices over clickers, and that this may be a sensible way to overcome some of the limitations associated with clickers, although issues surrounding levels of distraction and the implications for retention and recall of information need further investigation

Practical Issues in Mobile Education

Practitioners interested in integrating mobile technology effectively into distance learning programs need to consider both the benefits and limitations of such devices. This paper outlines some major limitations of mobile devices and suggests strategies to mitigate them such as chunking information, using appropriate organizational techniques, reducing the number of required actions, and improving ease of use. Properly planned integration of mobile technology also offers some distinct advantages. Learners can benefit from a dynamic and flexible learning environment with anywhere, anytime access to people and information. Practitioners can use these features to help learners enhance their skills in assessing the relevance and appropriateness of information for use in practical settings

Web content usage behavior: a case study of a university in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study characterizes the behavior of students in one of the Sub-Saharan Africa universities with respect to usage of valuable, but expensive Internet resources in a developing economy. Traffic allocation to web domains was compared with known statistical distributions such as Zipf and Stretched exponential distributions. Observed results show that traffic allocation follows stretched exponential distribution and that students use only small fraction of traffic for actual education activities and the rest of the traffic is associated with video services and social networks. The cumulative results from male and female students’ hostels show gender differences in browsing habits. More importantly, actual usage is at variance with the surveys conducted by OFCOM in UK and those conducted among students at the university, thus showing that usage patterns significantly differ from surveys result and between the users in advanced and developing economies

Laptop Use During Class: A Review Of Canadian Universities

Laptop use in class is a characteristic of universities that is changing rapidly. Although much of the attention and research regarding this issue has focused on the debate of whether to impose mandatory laptop programs, the reality of wireless campuses allows students to use their laptops in class for class related and non-class related activities. Therefore, a new debate has arisen concerning whether students should be allowed to use their laptops in class at all. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of Canadian universities in terms of their conditions, requirements, and policies regarding laptop use in class

Instructional Uses of Instant Messaging (IM) During Classroom Lectures

Can “Information Age” learners effectively multi-task in the classroom? Can synchronous classroom activities be designed around conceptually related tasks, to encourage deeper processing and greater learning of classroom content? This research was undertaken to begin to address these questions. In this study, we explored the use of instructionally-related instant messaging (IM) discussions during undergraduate university lectures. Over the course of three weeks, students practiced with and then employed hand-held computers for brief, synchronous class discussions in response to assigned questions related to the lectures. Students were observed during these sessions, and students and the instructors were interviewed separately afterwards. The contents of students’ discussions indicate that they were capable of engaging in on-task discussions and of expressing opinions and exploring instructionally relevant topics. However, even though students routinely multi-task in classrooms as they attend to lectures, process the contents, and record notes for later study, both students and the instructors expressed some discomfort with discussion occurring synchronously with classroom lectures. In this paper, we describe student discussion behavior, and reflect on possible applications of multiple sequential (rather than simultaneous) tasks during classroom instruction

Examining the Affects of Student Multitasking with Laptops During the Lecture

This paper examines undergraduate student use of laptop computers during a lecture-style class that includes substantial problem-solving activities and graphic-based content. The study includes both a self-reported use component collected from student surveys as well as a monitored use component collected via activity monitoring “spyware” installed on student laptops. We categorize multitasking activities into productive (course-related) versus distractive (non course-related) tasks. Quantifiable measures of software multitasking behavior are introduced to measure the frequency of student multitasking, the duration of student multitasking, and the extent to which students engage in distractive versus productive tasks. We find that students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non course-related software applications open and active about 42% of the time. There is a statistically significant inverse relationship between the ratio of distractive versus productive multitasking behavior during lectures and academic performance. We also observe that students under state the frequency of email and instant messaging (IM) use in the classroom when self-reporting on their laptop usage

Note-Taking Mode and Academic Performance in Two Law School Courses

The use of laptops in law school classrooms has become fairly commonplace, especially in the last decade. Yet, studies in other higher education settings have found an association between note-taking mode and academic performance; specifically, using a laptop to take notes in the classroom is associated with negative academic performance outcomes. This study endeavors to assess the relationship between note-taking mode and academic performance in the law school setting. We compare the academic performance of handwriters to laptop users in two required, doctrinal courses as well as the effect of a randomly assigned treatment, exposing roughly half of the students in our analysis to a memorandum explaining the possible pitfalls of using a laptop to take class notes. We find that handwriting class notes has a strong positive association with academic performance in these two law school courses, supporting findings of the benefits of handwriting class notes in other academic settings

Let’s tweet again? Social networks and literature achievement in high school students

The availability of cheap Wi-Fi internet connections has encouraged schools to adopt Web 2.0 platforms for teaching, with the intention of stimulating students’ academic achievement and participation in school. Moreover, during the recent explosion of the SARS-CoV-2 crisis that forced many countries to close schools (as well as offices and factories), the widespread diffusion of these applications kept school systems going. Despite their widespread use as teaching tools, the effect of adopting Web 2.0 platforms on students’ performance has never been rigorously tested. We fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of using Twitter as a teaching tool on high school students’ literature skills. Based on a large-scale, randomized controlled trial that involved 70 schools and about 1,500 students, we find that using Twitter to teach literature has an overall negative effect on students’ average achievement, reducing standardized test scores by about 25 percent of a standard deviation. The negative effect is stronger on students who usually perform better