Checking your social media or emails during class is a distraction and can even ’cause bright students to fail,’ claims study
Michigan State University study found that going online during lectures prevents students from achieving higher marks
SURFING the internet in class leads to lower marks even among the brightest students, a study claims.
Checking social media, emails and other online activities prove too much of a distraction to learning.
Web browsing by university students on laptops was monitored during 15 lectures. They spent an average of 37 minutes of each 1 hr 50 min class on the net for “non- academic reasons”.
The students took a test at the start of their introductory psychology course which enabled researchers to assess their intelligence.
The results of this, and time spent on the web, were later compared with the students’ course grades.
The US study by Michigan State University concluded academic performance suffered due to net surfing.
Study leader Susan Ravizza, an associate professor of psychology, said: “There were no internet-based assignments in this course, which means most of the ‘academic use’ was downloading lecture slides in order to follow along or take notes.
“Once students crack their laptop open, it is probably tempting to do other sorts of internet-based tasks that are not class-relevant.”
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The researchers now discourage students from using laptops and tablets in lectures to prevent them wasting time online.
Previous studies have shown that taking notes on a laptop is not as beneficial for learning as writing them by hand.