College Students And Cell Phone Use, Beliefs, And Effects On Learning

            In the article, “College Students’ and Cell Phone Use, Beliefs, And Effects On Learning” (2013), Elder argues the concept of how a cell phone can affect a college student, but also show how it may also affect their learning. Elder shows this by conducting an experimental study amongst a variety of college students as well giving questionnaires about their use of cell phones during classes, studying, and driving and their beliefs about how cell phones impact their school work. Elder highlights certain failures in order to show how much the cell phone is a distraction by indicating different quiz scores as well as average study time and lectures during class time. The intended audience for this article would be for students because it shows how phones can affect their education in many ways but is also for teachers because it may give insight on holding the students attention during class so they wouldn’t risk failure.

            I am surely intrigued from this experimental article because, as a student myself, I realize that I to do spend quite the time on my phone during my study sessions as well as class sessions. From a different standpoint, I might add that, phone usage does help maintain the students focus because during regular school and work times we all need breaks. Overall, I do agree that our phones take up a lot of our attention for the most part. Elder conducted a very logical experiment and I hope, if conducted again, the outcome can be more positive.

            Elder’s observational study only targets the negatives of phone usage for college students and does not tell the positive. While reading about the tests she conducted and surveys given, she failed to realize, like I previously stated, how a phone can balance out our social structure amongst class time, study time, and personal time. Elder states, “Using the internet while studying and/or engaging in instant messaging (IM) is similar to use of cell phones in that their use involves communication and often simultaneously dividing working memory resources.” This basically proves that we can still conduct our work and maintain our focus while simultaneously being on our phones. This article would have been more intriguing if Elder included both Pros and Cons on phones so we can see the basic focal points behind how our education is affected.