Smartphones are lowering student's grades on closed-book exams
Rutgers study found relying on the internet for homework is hurting long-
term retention

Date:
August 18, 2020
Source:
Rutgers University
Summary:
The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting
students' long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on
exams, according to a new study.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students'
long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according
to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study.


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The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework
but lower exam scores -- a half to a full letter grade lower on exams
-- were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or
another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.

"When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually
find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment,"
said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers-New Brunswick's School of Arts and Sciences. "However, when students do
that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently,
they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise
into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams."
The research also found that while 14 percent of students scored lower
on exams than homework in 2008, that number jumped to 55 percent in 2017
as the use of smartphones for homework has become more common.

Glass says when students read a homework question, they should think
about it, generate the answer on their own and commit to that answer.

"If the student does this first and then finds the correct answer
online, the student is likely to remember the answer, which will have
a significant long- term effect on subsequent exam performance," said
Glass, whose goal was to determine when a student knows a particular fact, whether they remember it and can generalize it.

The study included 2,433 Rutgers-New Brunswick students in 11 different
lecture courses. Over the 11-year period more than 232 different questions
were created.

Working with co-author and graduate student Mengxue Kang, Glass and
Kang's study is a part of an ongoing project to use technology to monitor academic performance and to assess the effects of new instructional technologies, like smartphones and the Internet, on how students perform
in school.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Rutgers_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Arnold L. Glass, Mengxue Kang. Fewer students are benefiting
from doing
their homework: an eleven-year study. Educational Psychology,
2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2020.1802645 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200818114941.htm

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