Jeanette Somo & John Trieu

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Electronic Device Impact on University Students in Classrooms

Today, university students are expected to own or have access to electronic devices. Students spend increasingly more time on these devices. We wanted to research the impact of personal electronic devices on student’s engagement in the educational experience while in the physical classroom. Our data did show a correlation between electronic devices and student’s engagement in the educational experience while in class. To find how students use their devices in the classroom and what percentage of time they used the device for activities related to class, we used three methods. We surveyed eighty students, personally interviewed eight students, and conducted two focus groups. We hypothesized students use of personal electronic devices in the physical classroom is positively correlated with engagement when the use is authorized and regulated by the instructor. The data collected from our research does show a positive correlation in some classes with engagement. The strongest positive correlation is in upper division, highly detailed classes. Students used devices for lab work, data and power point slides. We found engagement dropped significantly with lower division classes and repetitive lecture base classes. Students used devices for social media in classes and other unrelated class activities. Future research should include homework time to evaluate the full impact of devices in the educational experience.