Literature Review

Literature Review

Today, almost every higher education student has a mobile computer that they can bring to class (Smith, Salaway, & Caruso, 2009). With the influx of these devices, there are three ways faculty can handle the use of this technology in the classroom; they can ban the devices, they can ignore devices, or they can integrate devices (Kay & Lauricella, 2011). Most research today focuses on how to successfully integrate these mobile computers in the classroom to improve the students' engagement in the class and to ultimately improve students' grades.

This study looks at whether mobile devices should be banned in lecture-style classes where integrating these technologies may not be practical or appropriate. There are two key reasons for mobile devices hindering learning in the classroom. First, many students who use laptops in the classroom multitask by using their devices for non-class related work such as email and instant messaging (Junco & Cotton, 2010; Kay & Lauricella, 2011; Kraushaar & Novak, 2010). Research conducted by Foerde, Knowlton, and Poldrack (2006) showed that a student's performance can be negatively affected by multitasking. Second, studies have found laptops to be distracting to students who do not use laptops (Fried, 2008; Kay & Lauricella, 2011).

Research conducted by Kay and Lauricella (2011) found that by integrating laptops in courses that traditionally use technology such as business, saw a reduction in students' use of their laptops for non-class related work and an increase in academic grades. For social science courses such as psychology and communications, integrating mobile devices in the classroom showed little success or negative results. Still, even with successful integration of laptops in the classes, the study found that a quarter of the students still spent over 50% of class time multitasking by communicating with friends on their mobile devices.

Kay and Lauricella's survey of students also found that 43% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they would do better in their class if they did not have the distraction of the internet. This result coincides with other reports (Bugeja 2007; Foster, 2008) where students stated a preference to laptop-free classrooms. A majority of the students in Foster's report found the banning of laptops created a better atmosphere for learning and roughly 75% of the students said they favored a no-laptop policy. This contradicts some reports (Fang 2009; Mangan 2001) who suggest there could be a backlash from students if mobile devices were banned in the classroom.

One weakness in Kay and Lauricella's research was the instrument used in collecting the data. A subject-completed survey was given to students on-line after the completion of the course. This could lead students to underrate their off-task behaviors on their laptop during class. Another weakness of the survey is that it only defined four specific off-task behaviors - email, instant messaging, games, and movies. The survey could have offered more off-task behaviors or used an open-ended question to identify other behaviors.

Kraushaar and Novak (2010) examined the effects of students multitasking during class using laptops. Their research found an inverse relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Students who had a high frequency of multitasking durations during lectures exhibited lower academic performance than students with a low frequency of multitasking regardless if the software the student was using was class related or not. Students multitasking with a higher ratio of non-class related software also exhibited a lower academic performance. Similar findings were found in other reports (Junco &Cotton 2010; Willingham 2010) that showed an inverse relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Willingham (2010) suggests that students should be discouraged from multitasking during any important task.

The research Kraushaar and Novak (2010) performed on multitasking in the classroom used a pair of instruments to collect data from the students. A subject-completed survey was given to students after class as well as "spyware" installed on the students' laptops to record their multitasking behavior. They found that students underreported their use of email by 7% and underreported their use of instant messaging software by 40% when comparing the results of the "spyware". During the lecture, Kraushaar and Novak (2010) found that 94% of the students were emailing during class and 61% were using instant messaging software.

Although Kraushaar and Novak's study did find a correlation between multitasking and academic performance, it did not address if academic performance would improve if laptops were banned from the classroom. This study was also conducted in courses that had a laptop requirement so the effects on students with laptops could not be compared with students who did not use laptops.

A study conducted by Fried (2008) studied the effects of laptop use in a lecture-style classroom were laptops were not a requirement. In her study, 64.3% of the students reported using laptops in class during at least one class period.