SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @06:24AM
The lack of generalizability comes from the sampling bias (one class of similar students), not from the size of the study group: that is the case of the low power of the experiment (meaning it would take a strong effect to disprove the null hypothesis). Really, 9 not distracted people? My servery for my English class had more data that that!
Regardless there is a conclusion worth nothing here: there isn't an ever present very strong effect massively harming test scores from these distractions. Sure they couldn't show that it doesn't happen, but they can show that the effect is not always large.
Oh wait, it was an observational study not an experiment? Never mind my points then, totally useless. This simply tells you you shouldn't auto fail distracted people: it provides no info for students on if they should allow themselves to be distracted due to selection bias (needs random assignment). I was very heavily distracted in classes where I knew the material well, and payed careful attention when I struggled for example: these confounding factors matter!