Smartphones lower exam grades, study finds

A new study has revealed that students who use their smartphones to search the internet when completing homework are more likely to perform poorly in exams.

The Rutgers University–New Brunswick study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that students who received higher homework grades but lower exam scores 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% of students scored lower on exams than homework in 2008, that number jumped to 55% in 2017 as the use of smartphones for homework has become more common.

Glass said that 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.

The study included 2433 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'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.

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