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from the was-not-paying-attention-to-begin-with dept.
A small study into electronic device usage during lectures found that there was minimal difference in scores between those who were distracted while listening to the lecture and those who weren't when there was a quiz afterwards.
Results. The sample was comprised of 26 students. Of these, 17 were distracted in some form (either checking email, sending email, checking Facebook, or sending texts). The overall mean score on the test was 9.85 (9.53 for distracted students and 10.44 for non-distracted students). There were no significant differences in test scores between distracted and non-distracted students (p = 0.652). Gender and types of distractions were not significantly associated with test scores (p > 0.05). All students believed that they understood all the important points from the lecture.
Conclusions. Every class member felt that they acquired the important learning points during the lecture. Those who were distracted by electronic devices during the lecture performed similarly to those who were not. However, results should be interpreted with caution as this study was a small quasi-experimental design and further research should examine the influence of different types of distraction on different types of learning.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday September 17 2014, @01:12PM
I agree, this is clearly Bullsh!t.
The average human brain has only so much processing power and I guarantee if you are not focusing on the material at hand, you are not doing your best. I found streaming very helpful in this regard, since the pace of teaching could keep you engaged.
Exams may not be the best educational tool, but they are at least objective data (we can argue the syllabus, but we can't argue that an exam was taken!).
Perhaps a good unit of measure of exam effectiveness would be "educational impedance". The current is the transfer of understanding, the voltage is the "teaching pressure", and the resistance is a term consisting of the students intellectual and the teaching methods...