Cheese

Laptops Study
  1. Why did they do this study?
Based on the introduction, laptops can serve as important learning tools but may also hinder students’ learning abilities due to distractions and temptations by students to browse miscellaneous sites that do not pertain to the particular course. In the study, students completed weekly surveys of attendance laptop use, and aspects of the classroom environment. Students who did these studies spent a considerable amount of time attempting to multitask with social media sites while trying to fully engage in the class lecture. Also, multitasking is consistently sought in daily lives. People seek pleasure in completing multiple tasks simultaneously to increase efficiency. However, seeking to increase efficiency becomes useless when each act’s performance is degraded because not all the focus is on one individual act such as paying full attention in lecture. The issue has become a growing concern in as decades have passed. This current study investigated the effect of laptop multitasking on both users and nearby peers in a classroom setting. Another reason this study was conducted was to prove that limits to resources, that are required for simultaneous tasks, mean the quality and efficiency at which multiple tasks are processed will be compromised.
  2. What did they do?
In one experiment, it was investigated whether multitasking on a laptop would hinder learning as measured by performance on a comprehension test. One student would have to take the comprehension test while using the laptop to complete a secondary task such as using an alternative web browser, as students would normally do during lecture. Another student would take the comprehension test without using the laptop to multitask. Of course, it was hypothesized that the student without the multitasking would perform better. Also, another experiment was conducted so that one student had to be looking at another student with a laptop while taking the test and...