Mobile Devices and Technology in Higher Education

Considerations for Students, Teachers, and Administrators

Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff, Stevie M. Munz, Scott Titsworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000709155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

This book examines key issues at the intersection of education and technology by addressing the question that most educators face—how do we use technology to engage students in the learning process and enhance learning?

Problematizing the view that technology is the default solution to a host of problems facing education, while also recognizing that technology has an important place in a variety of education levels, the book provides readers with clear insights on technology and learning from a variety of perspectives from communication studies, education, and related disciplines.

This volume is an essential read for scholars and teachers working in the area of elementary education. It will also be of interest to academics working in the area of education, postsecondary education, and learning and can be used as an ancillary text in graduate-level seminars.

Part 1

Overview

1 Overview

The Potential of the Modern Classroom

This chapter begins our discussion of the intersection between technology and education, in higher education. We argue that mobile devices and technology certainly can be used as tools to effectively enhance student learning; however, this is often a fairly complex process. In order to understand this process in more depth, we will need to explore the variety of issues that connect technology and learning.

Technology in the classroom is both enabling and constraining. On the one hand, technology can allow instructors to engage students in course content beyond the confines of the traditional classroom or in ways that can enhance learning. This occurs at all levels of education, from kindergarten to doctoral-level coursework. Children can learn their ABCs through interactive applications that provide visual and auditory feedback. Medical students can use virtual reality (VR) headsets, such as the Oculus Rift, to visually explore the body and understand human anatomy in an interactive way. College students can potentially carry around their entire personal textbook library on their iPad and take searchable, electronic notes. In elementary school, students can create HD movies that not only allow them to engage with course content, and demonstrate their understanding of course material, but also help them to develop the experience and skills needed for the twenty-first century. In addition, collaborative capabilities allow students to work in groups to share their understanding and knowledge with others. The list of ways that technology can, and has, fundamentally impacted learning is nearly endless.

Despite the promise of technology as a revolutionary education tool, we would argue that technology only helps to enable learning when it has carefully been considered and integrated into the curriculum in a meaningful way. Often times, instructors or administrators may see the latest app or device and immediately want to use that in the classroom. However, such an approach may not be best for students, particularly if that technology comes across as a gimmick, without actual educational benefit.

This drive to integrate technology into education also has a significant connection to the economy. By 2013, spending on elementary through high school classrooms hardware reached $13 billion worldwide and is expected to increase to nearly $20 billion by 2020 (Nagel, 2014). Other estimates report that international investments toward education technology reached $9.5 billion in 2017 (Shulman, 2018), and still others forecast that the global educational technology market will reach over $40 billion by 2022 (Bhattacharyya, 2019). At the college level, we have seen programs developed to add technology to the college classroom. Ohio State University (OSU) is working with Apple to give new first-year students iPad Pros and accessories (Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard), in addition to apps, to be used in their college-level courses and throughout their time at OSU (Davey, 2017). By 2019, that initiative had adapted to revisions made by Apple and selected a newly released iPad Air as the device they would be distributing to incoming students (Buchholz, 2019). The L.A Unified School District bought tens of thousands of iPads for use in the classroom (Blume, 2015). The school district later abandoned this effort and sought a refund from vendors.

The Problem with Technology and Learning

At the same time though, this multibillion dollar push toward integrating technology into every aspect of the classroom has created important questions and criticisms from a variety of audiences. Instead of technology being a panacea for education and sparking a massive growth in learning, we are finding that the connection is not simple. We run into skill gaps and the assumption that because millennials are “digital natives,” they simply know how to use technology. We also assume that students all have mobile devices that are capable of doing what we need them to do. From our experience, it appears that this relationship between technology and learning is a complex one and certainly not as simple as it may appear. The initial thought that increasing the use of technology in learning will lead to an explosion of growth appears to be too optimistic. Instead, research has found that technology and learning have a complex relationship that needs to be understood in order for true learning to occur. Research, from a variety of disciplines, has examined the relationship between technology and learning, particularly how technology may help to enhance learning outcomes. For example, research has found that 42% of students’ time spent on laptops in class was spent on non-course related activities (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010) and that students tended to underreport the amount of distracting behaviors they engaged in. Two other studies examining mobile devices in the classroom have found that actively texting during a class lecture, about content unrelated to the class content, negatively affected student learning, note-taking, and recall of information (Kuznekoff & Titsworth, 2013). However, if students responded to or created messages that were related to class content, they did not suffer as much of a decrease in student learning as unrelated messages (Kuznekoff, Munz, & Titsworth, 2015). Additional research, discussed in the chapters that follow, will help to explore this complex relationship and shed additional light on how technology affects learning.

Summary

Technology has the ability to both enable and constrain learning. In order to effectively integrate any technology to enhance student learning, we need to understand this enabling and constraining dynamic and make careful decisions regarding how to proceed. That is the goal of this book, to examine this dynamic carefully and from a variety of viewpoints to help enable decision making at a variety of levels and inform this continuing conversation about technology, learning, and what the twenty-first century classroom will develop into. The first few chapters of this book (Part 2) discuss how technology in the classroom may be a challenge or determent to student learning. In particular, Chapter 2 examines how technology may negatively affect student learning. Chapter 3 shifts to a discussion of the term “digital native” and challenges the assumptions we have about college students and their competence with technology. Lastly, Chapter 4 goes in depth on the important issues of digital inequality and digital literacy skills. Next, Part 3 of this book examines technology in the classroom in a variety of different ways. Chapter 5 examines the active classroom and provides detailed examples of how technology can be a powerful educational tool and experience for students. Chapter 6 problematizes the recent shift from traditional paper textbooks to newer e-Book and e-Textbook platforms. Chapter 7 then shifts to various perspectives regarding online learning. Completing this book is Part 4, which focuses exclusively on considerations for a variety of audiences. Chapters 8 through 10 focus on a different target audience within higher education, providing each with considerations as they contemplate technology and education.

References

1. Bhattacharyya, M. (2019, April 2). GOOGL, AAPL, MSFT & AMZN look to keep up with the edtech fad. Retrieved from https://www.nasdaq.com/article/googl-aapl-msft-amp-amzn-look-to-keep-up-with-the-edtech-fad-cm1123412
2. Blume, H. (2015, April 16). L.A. school district demands iPad refund from Apple. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ipad-curriculum-refund-20150415-story.html
3. Buchholz, G. (2019, March 28). iPad Air selected for 2019 distribution. Retrieved from https://digitalflagship.osu.edu/news/2019/03/28/ipad-air-selected-2019-distribution
4. Davey, C. (2017, October 4). Ohio State collaborates with Apple to launch digital learning initiative: Students, faculty, staff and community to gain access to new educational and economic development opportunities. Retrieved from https://news.osu.edu/news/2017/10/04/digital-flagship/
5. Kraushaar, J. M., & Novak, D. C. (2010). Examining the affects of student multitasking with laptops during the lecture. Journal of Information Systems Education, 21, 241–251.
6. Kuznekoff, J. H., Munz, S. M., & Titsworth, B. S. (2015). Mobile phones in the classroom: Examining the effects of texting, Twitter, and message content on student learning. Communication Education, 64, 344–365. doi:10.1080/03634523.2015.1038727
7. Kuznekoff, J. H., & Titsworth, B. S. (2013). The impact of mobile phone usage on student learning. Communication Education, 62, 233–252. doi:10.1080/03634523.2013.767917
8. Nagel, D. (2014, June 11). Spending on instructional tech to reach $19 billion within 5 years. Retrieved from https://thejournal.com/articles/2014/06/11/spending-on-instructional-tech-to-reach-19-billion-within-5-years.aspx
9. Shulman, R. D. (2018, January 26). EdTech investments rise to a historical $9.5 billion: What your startup needs to know. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/robynshulman/2018/01/26/edtech-investments-rise-to-a-historical-9-5-billion-what-your-startup-needs-to-know/#38f62a093a38

Part 2

Challenges to Student Learning

2 Reducing Student Attention, Recall, and Note-taking

Introduction

A wide variety of studies, across multiple disciplines, has examined the intersection of technology in the classroom. One particularly fruitful area of research has been the negative effects of technology on learning. This chapter summarizes several research agendas that have looked at mobile phones and computers in the classroom, particularly the negative influence of these devices on students learning.

In the United States, and indeed in many countries, the rapid development of new technology has greatly influenced our educational institutions and without question, many of these influences have been positive ones. For example, online course registration has replaced the days of waiting in line to physically register for a college class, and access to electronic library resources and scholarly journals provides faculty and students with tremendous access to a wide variety of sources on nearly any subject.

Despite the potential for technology to enhance learning and engage students in course material, a variety of studies across multiple disciplines demonstrate that technology can negatively influence learning. Our own research (Kuznekoff, Munz, & Titsworth, 2015; Kuznekoff & Titsworth, 2013) has examined how mobile phones negatively impact student attention, recall, and note-taking behaviors; however, the potential negative effects of technology in learning go well beyond research in the communication discipline.

Of primary interest to this chapter is examining ways in which technology in higher education may negatively affect student learning. This certainly does not mean that there is no hope for technology, indeed we each use technology in our classes on a fairly regular basis. However, technology cannot and must not be seen as a panacea for education in general, such a point of view is often met with failure. For example, in 2013, the L.A. Unified School District developed an iPad program that saw the purchase of over 40,000 iPads to be used in a curriculum developed by Pearson and an additional 70,000+ iPads to be used for state standardized testing (Blume, 2015). This iPad program, which was estimated to cost $1.3 billion, was plagued with problems stemming from the curriculum/content created for the program or the lack of availability of that content. Ultimately, the school district “reached a tentative $6.4-million settlement over curriculum from education software giant Pearson that the school system said its teachers barely used” (Blume, 2015, ¶. 1). We use this example to point out that even a device like the iPad, designed by Apple and one of the leading devices in the tablet market, by itself cannot sustain educational initiatives. Indeed, it appears that the issue with the L.A. iPad program had more to do with the availability of educational content than the iPads themselves. To truly use technology to help improve learning requires a deep integration of content and pedagogy; however, this may be more of the exception than the rule. We often find that technology is haphazardly introduced in the curriculum or that students are bringing their devices to class and attempting to use them for learning. In this chapter, we explore three ways in which students are using devices in the classroom (mobile phones, notebook computers, and e-books) and discuss how research has examined student learning in these areas.

Initial Research

Our initial work, that lead to examining the effects of mobile devices in class on student learning, started as a discussion in a graduate seminar at Ohio University (OU). That seminar examined instructional communication and we were spending a couple class sessions discussing technology in the classroom. Many of the doctoral students in that class also had assistantships and taught a variety of classes at OU. The class conversation shifted from the readings that day to how, as instructors, we could use technology in the classroom, as well as how our students were using technology. One general theme began to emerge and that was a variety of different instructors, teaching different classes, noted that they were seeing more and more students using their mobile phones in class. The genera...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Part 1 Overview
• Part 2 Challenges to Student Learning
• Part 3 Technology in the Classroom
• Part 4 Technology and Academic Audiences
• Index