Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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 wellbeing. 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
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 freshmen,
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
21 sophomores, 10 juniors, 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 males, and 1
preferred not to say. It important to note that our data will be primarily influenced most of the
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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
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.
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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.
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.
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College 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
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
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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 number 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
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
were not super important in their daily lives, the vast majority of students cannot get by in daily
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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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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
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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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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
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 number of hours students spend using
electronics for leisure purposes vs. homework. Students who took this survey had the option to
choose many 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 survey, students spend an average of 10 hours a day using electronics for daily use.
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Group 7 How Electronics Affect The College Experience
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 effect on your
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 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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