The Effects of Cyber-Slacking on Students’ Digital and Hardcopy Assignment Scores

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

11-2019

Department

Teaching & Educational Leadership

Abstract

Technology and mobile devices play a significant role in helping students access information in the classroom and online. Most university campuses provide Wi-Fi to all students and equip most classes with laptops or computers (Brown & Petitto, 2003). However, many researchers found that the extensive use of mobile devices distract students during completing learning tasks. Scholars identify this learning distraction as cyberslacking, where the students' attention is diverted away from course-related activities through multitasking, playing games or surfing the internet during learning (Bellur, Nowak, & Hull, 2015; Gerow, Galluch, & Thatcher, 2011; Hatakka, Andersson, & Grönlund, 2013; Taneja, Fiore, & Fischer, 2015). In the present study, the investigators employed a between-subject design to investigate the effect of the use of social media and digital devices on students’ assignment scores. The investigators used a short reading about logical thinking as learning material. The instrumentations consisted of students’ demographics survey asking about students’ gender, age, college and race. The study survey consists of ten questions about students’ using the internet and digital devices during completing the assignment and questions about logical thinking. The investigators employed a convenient sampling to select participants (n = 185), 81 female and 103 Male. One hundred students completed the assignments on hardcopy paper, and 85 students completed the assignment online digitally. The analyses of this study show that students’ learning style and gender were the only variables that positively correlated with students’ assignment scores. Furthermore, students’ learning style, time to finish the assignment and students’ effort to complete the assignment were found to be significant predictors of students’ assignment scores. Finally, there was a significant difference between the two conditions (paper and digital) on time students spent using the phone apps and online help. A possible interpretation of this difference is that when students work on learning activities assigned as hardcopy, students tend to spend less time using social media, online help or phone apps because the learning process does not require the use of such technologies. However, digital assignments allow students to access different technologies and consequently spend more time on social media, online help or phone apps. Regarding the effect of students’ learning style effect is that with the increase use of digital devices in daily activities, students are exposed to more complex learning environments (Bandura, 1977; Vygotskii, 1978). Furthermore, students bring their own individual learning styles and preferences to the learning process (Willingham, Hughes, & Dobolyi, 2015). While there is no “best” learning style, the various styles have different characteristics–non-comparatively superior or inferior. Terrell & Dringus (2000) found that students can succeed in an online learning environment regardless of their learning style. Other researchers question the use of learning styles to predict academic performance (e.g.Van Zwanenberg, Wilkinson, & Anderson, 2000). R

Publication Title

2019 Mid-South Educational Research Association (MSERA) Annual Meeting Proceedings

Publisher

Mid-South Educational Research Association

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