Rapid technology advancements have resulted in the wide use of computers in various tasks including learning. The use of laptops is very valuable but the internet is a distracting part. The internet acts a distraction to students during learning. For this reason, this study is an assessment of the relationship between class performance and use of the internet for both academic and non-academic reasons.
Hypotheses
The authors hypothesized that students will use the internet mainly for nonacademic reasons. The authors also hypothesized that distractions by the internet during learning led to poor class performance. It was also an assumption that poorly performing students will report more laptop use compared to well-performing students (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2017) .
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Procedure
The study population was 507 students who were signed up to an introductory psychology class in 2014. However, only 127 students consented to the experiment but the final sample was 84 respondents. The 84 accessed a proxy server during the 15 sessions of the experiment and logged in an average of 12.7 times. The participants included 56.5% freshmen, 33.9% sophomore, 5.7% junior, and 4% senior students. The proxy server was meant to monitor the browsing history of the students during the sessions (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2017) .
For the purpose of recording the students’ browsing activity, students had to use the campus internet using the proxy server and log in their laptops during class. Data on internet use was recorded using the server over the 15 lecture sessions of one hour and 50 minutes with a 10-min break. Browsing activity during the break was not included in the analysis. Every participating student gained credits for participating depending on the lectures they used the server. Access to the server was based on a unique username and password that helped in individual data gathering (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2017) .
At the end of the experiment, students were required to provide individual reports on internet use based on their accounts. They also had to rate their class performance motivation, class interest, and other study variables like intelligence (ACT score) and final exam score. The measures of the experiment were internet use based on the time online and a number of HTTP requests during class.
Results
The median for time spent on the internet for nonacademic reasons during class was 37 minutes per lecture. The most time was spent on social media, then on emails, shopping, watching, chatting, reading news, playing games, respectively. This supports the first study hypothesis. The most HTTP requests were on social media sites. Only 4 minutes were spent on academic websites and about five requests per session. According to the study, time spent and a number of requests combined have a strong positive correlation to total internet use during class. There is no significant relationship between internet use for academic reasons and class performance. The same applies to the relationship between ACT scores and motivation with internet use in class. However, high interest in class significantly leads to lower internet use for non-academic reasons (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2017) .
Discussion
Non-academic internet use is frequent in class and is inversely related to class performance based on final exam score. This is true regardless of the student’s interest in the class , motivation to perform well, and their intelligence levels. The study raises the need to determine whether laptop use should be allowed in class. The study shows a small relationship between internet use and performance. Motivation to perform and an interest in class have no significant relationship to the internet . Students will actually use the internet for non-academic reasons even when they are motivated and have interest. There is no detachment of students’ beliefs and the relationship between internet use and class performance. Students with the belief that using the internet during class has no effect reported no effect in class performance. It is important for universities to determine the use of laptops in class especially since there is no linked benefit of academic use of the internet and no disadvantage of using it for non-academic purposes (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2017) .
Personal Response
This is an eye-opening study for both students and the management of learning institutions. We always find laptops to be very useful during class time but this study brings out a perspective that is very important. It is likely that students will mostly keep up with non-academic issues when they have access to the internet. This makes it necessary for lecturers and the university administration to determine if there is any necessity in bringing a laptop to class.
Reference
Ravizza, S., Uitvlugt, M., & Fenn, K. (2017). Logged In and Zoned Out: How Laptop Internet Use Relates to Classroom Learning. Psychological Science, 28 (2), 171-180.
