From Smart Phones to Smart Students: Learning versus Distraction with Smartphones in the Classroom
42 Pages Posted: 8 Feb 2022 Last revised: 10 Oct 2023
Date Written: September 12, 2023
Abstract
We collaborate with a vocational school in China to examine the effect of using smartphones in the classroom on the academic performance of students. We randomly allocate students taking lectures in Chinese verbal into four experimental conditions: (i) smartphones banned; (ii) smartphones allowed and used at will by students; (iii) smartphones allowed, used at will by students, and teachers asked students to use the devices to assist instruction; (iv) smartphones banned, and teachers asked students to use a paper-based aid to assist instruction. We measure the performance gain of students by the change in the scores they obtained in identical tests taken at the beginning and the end of the lectures. We find that allowing students to use smartphones during the lecture at will reduced performance gain compared to when smartphones were banned. However, allowing smartphones into the classroom and having teachers ask students to use them to assist instruction increased the performance gain. The performance gain of students using the paper-based aid was similar to that of the students who could not use smartphones. To unravel the underlying mechanisms that drive these effects, we use video feeds collected during our experimental lectures, allowing us to code the time students spent learning and distracted, with and without their smartphone. We show that the increase in performance gain when smartphones are used to assist instruction comes from students spending a larger percentage of the time learning during the lecture using the device and from the fact that the positive marginal effect associated with smartphone learning outweighs the negative marginal effect associated with smartphone distraction. Our findings contribute to the literature on technology-assisted learning and offer practical and policy implications that teachers and schools can follow to cautiously allow smartphones in the classroom to improve student success.
Keywords: smartphone policy, learning, distraction, academic performance, randomized controlled trial
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