How Electronics Affect The College Experience

Group 7: Sadie Sanders, Sue Ann Williamson, Maria Guerrero

Spring 2018, EDT 180A

Professor Gary Lewallen

Arizona State University

27 April 2018
 Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience

This research project was conducted on how electronics affect the overall college

experience for students. We surveyed 89 college students currently enrolled in EDT 180. We

obtained our data by producing an anonymous survey created through google docs form. The

data was collected through sets of survey questions aimed at uncovering the extent to which the

use of electronics has an impact on students and their college life. This topic was chosen to better

understand how the significance of technology and electronics play a role in a college student’s

academic preferences and overall well being. There was a set of 9 questions used to collect the

data for our research project. These questions included: what year in school are you? What is

your gender? In which college are you enrolled? How many hours on an average day do you use

electronics for leisure and entertainment purposes? How many hours on an average day do you

spend working on homework using an electronic device? Do you prefer taking a written exam or

electronic exam? Do you prefer taking handwritten notes or electronic notes? From a scale of 5,

being very important to a scale of 1, being not important, how important are electronics in your

everyday life? From a scale of 1, having no effect to a scale of 5, being severely affected, to what

degree do you believe the use of electronics affects your mental health? We analyzed the results

of this survey by creating spreadsheets and bar graphs to come to an overall understanding and

conclusion to for our research project.

While conducting our research we needed to know the differences in class year to

maintain as accurate data possible A difference in class year could mean different electronic

preferences and effects on mental health due to workload and class difficulty. Out of the 89

students who participated in our survey the majority are currently in their freshman year of

college. Our bar graph indicates that there is a significant difference in class year, 54 freshman,

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21 sophomore, 10 junior, 3 senior, and 1 Post-Bacc. It is important to note that our data will be

primarily influenced by the freshman class answers compared to the other classes.

The next set of data we received was the gender of the participants who are apart of our

study. Our bar graph shows a large difference in the gender of the students who took our survey.

Out of 89 college students who participated in our survey, 73 were female, 15 male, and 1

prefered not to say. It important to note that our data will be primarily influenced the majority of

the responses for our data collected were primarily answered by females.

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The next step in conducting our study was to collect the data pertaining to which college

each individual student is in. This component is important because each college varies in

workload, and the types of material that is taught. The material and workload in each individual

college will vary due to the difference in content, and the resources needed for the work. Certain

colleges will be more technology driven than others, potentially meaning a larger average

spending time using electronics. In the data we collected, our graph shows that the two main

schools who participated in our survey were The Teachers College, and Liberal Arts and

Sciences College. In the data we see that there were 48 students in the Teachers College, 23 in

Liberal Arts and Sciences and 18 others collectively under the remaining colleges.

Another component to our research was the average usage of technology regarding

homework. Technology is a major and essential component in college resources regarding class

lectures and test taking. College courses rely heavily on the use of electronics for homework and

online assignment completion and submission. In this graph our data indicates that the median

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for daily homework usage per hour out of 24 hours is 4 hours. Overall, each of the classes have

an average total spending of more than 5 hours doing homework on technology a day.

The second most common use of electronics by college students is for the purpose of

leisure and social media. This was an important component when conducting our study because

young adults spend a large portion of their online time using social media, text messaging, and

doing research. Our graph and data indicate that the median for daily leisure per hour out of 24

hours is 5 hours. Out of all the classes people spend more than 4 hours spending leisure time on

technology.

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The difference between handwritten notes and electronic notes, or handwritten exams vs.

electronic exams is a topic that can have a large effect on a college student’s experience.

Although not everyone feels this way, data shows students prefer handwritten notes over

electronic notes. At the same time students also say they prefer taking written exams over

electronic exams. This ultimately shows that most students would rather have a pencil in their

hand than do things electronically. Even though this data shows that students prefer handwritten

assignments compared to electronic, it would be interesting to see how important students

believe having handwritten assignments vs. electronic assignments is for their school work on a

scale from 1 to 5. The effects of handwritten vs. electronic assignments on students have caught

many researchers interest over the years so getting the opinion of fellow classmates could be an

interesting new approach.

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To further our study on how students react to electronics, the survey asked students to

rate how important electronics are in their daily life on a scale of one to five. Electronics

definitely are a big part of modern society, but do students really think that electronics are so

important that they cannot live without them? Most students in this survey rated a four out of

five and almost the same amount of students rated a five out of five for daily electronic

importance. This concluded that even though there were a few students who said electronics

were not super important in their daily lives, the vast majority of students cannot get by in daily

life without an electronic device.

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The next step taken to analyze how electronics affect the college experience was to ask

students to rate on a scale of one to five on how much they believe electronics affect their mental

health. Most students who took this survey rated a three out of five on how much they thought

electronics affected their mental health. In second place students rated a four out of five on how

much it affected their mental health. This concludes that the students who took this survey

mostly thought that electronics might affect their mental health but they get by with using

electronics anyways.

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To get a deeper understanding of mental health and the daily importance of technology,

charts were made that shows how students from different grade levels thought technology

affected them. Our charts showed that of the 54 freshman who took the survey, most of them

rated a 3 out of 5 for how much technology affected their mental health. Freshman also tended

to rate a high 4 or 5 out of 5 on how much they believed technology was necessary in their daily

life. All of the seniors rated a 3 or 5 on how much electronics affected their mental health and

rated a 3 or 4 on daily importance of technology. More freshman rated a 5 out of 5 on both of

these questions than any other class. This survey concludes that freshman are most affected by

the use of technology. However, it is important to realize there are more freshman who took this

survey than any other class and that may have skewed the results.

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Next, research was done to analyze which ASU college was most affected by mental

health. When reading these survey results it is important to note that most students who took this

survey were from the teacher’s college or the Liberal Arts and Science College. The data

ultimately concluded that students from the Liberal Arts and Science College were more affected

by technology than any of the other students who took this survey. This survey would look

different if there was an equal number of students from each college who took the survey but this

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chart shows a good estimate of what the students from these two colleges at ASU feel about

electronics.

An interesting survey question analyzed was the amount of hours students spend using

electronics for leisure purposes vs. homework. Students who took this survey had the option to

choose a number of hours between one and twenty- four. Most students said they spent 5 hours a

day on electronics for daily leisure and 5 hours a day using electronics for homework.

According to this particular survey, students spend an average of 10 hours a day using

electronics for daily use.

In conclusion, to answer our original research question of how do electronics affect the

college experience we have come to the consensus that electronics do have an impact on the

college experience. The college experience includes everything from exam taking, note taking,

electronic facetime, whether it be on leisure or homework time, as well as the affect on your

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mental health from electronics. We have collected our data and analyzed it to come to the result

that students would overall rather have paper and pencil exams and note taking over electronic

taking, even though college exams are mostly taken online under the program of LockDown

Browser. Also, overall the amount of time students spend on electronics for homework and

leisure is a total of 10 hours a day out of a 24 hour block. Our data indicates that the average

college student rated electronics as having an effect on their mental health as a 3 on a 1 to 5

scale. College students are averaging a rate for daily importance on electronics as a 4 on a 1-5

scale. Our data shows that college students rely heavily on the use of electronics creating a direct

correlation between electronic use and the effects on their mental health and overall college

experience.

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