Arnold Glass, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, has written an op-ed article in which he laments the use of cell phones by students for homework assignments. He believes that retention of material for exam preparation is of utmost importance and that we should discourage students from relying on this "pocket encyclopedia" for homework help. Read the short op-ed article article. The link follows:
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/10/hey-kids-dont-use-your-smartphone-to-do-your-homework-opinion.html
Do you agree or disagree with the professor? Why?
After reading Arnold Glass' article, I agreed with his position of how homework is negatively impacted by technology. Students now more than ever spend a majority of their time using technology and more students are getting smartphones at younger ages. This definitely has an impact on homework correctness because students do know they can find the answer in .2 seconds. A line that stood out to me was, "Even guessing an answer to a homework question initiates long-term retention and ultimately improves exam performance, especially if it is eventually followed by feedback containing the correct answer"(Glass). I can see this perspective and that homework's purpose is to correct the skill if it is wrong. Teachers need to collect based on the responses from homework. They cannot do this if students are skewing the scores and the information is never actually learned. This connects to the philosophies we have been talking about in class that deviate from asking students just to memorize information. Overall, a great article!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Glass and is opinion on the use of cell phones and homework. Using a cell phone to find or even help you understand what the question is asking is completely defeating the purpose of homework! Homework is meant to be a self assessment / help the teacher understand what the student retained and can complete on their own. Homework helps to structure lessons in days to come after seeing weather or not the students understood what was given. If a student relies on their cell phone for homework, they will run into a huge problem when it comes time for a test or something that actually gets graded! They also would be less likely to ask for help. I also thought it was interesting when he mentioned, "it makes it easy to divide attention between the homework assignment and other tasks, such as talking with a friend, playing a game, watching a video or shopping." Something like this can lead to having too many "tabs" open in their head and not being able to focus!
ReplyDeleteCori Lardieri
Once reading the article I found that I agreed with the stance Glass took on how homework and tests can be negatively impacted by technology (especially smartphones). Nowadays students are so much more likely to immediately look up the answers to questions they don't understand rather than trying to guess what the answer is (because they know that Google will have the answer for them). While it is okay for students to confirm their answers by looking them up after they have already answered the questions, they should not look to the internet all of the time. What students don't realize is that the homework and tests they complete are used by the teacher in order to assess what the students actually know and have retained from lessons. If students are constantly looking up answers and aren't being genuine with their responses, then the purpose of the homework assignments and assessments become void. Students should not solely rely on technology any time they do not understand something on an assignment. It will only cause more problems down the road when they are forced to actually be able to know information from memory.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Glass and his perspective on the use of cellphones as they relate to homework. First, there isn't much difference between a cellphone and a laptop or chromebook these days. I've seen students on laptops receive notifications of texts and updates that would normally appear on their phones. If a student is distracted by apps or notifications on phone, I don't know that it is the phone that is the issue. It seems that the student needs to limit distractions while doing their work, whether the work is being done on a phone or laptop. Additionally, during this pandemic, cellphones are proving to be the only way some students are able to access their education. To suggest not using cellphone would certainly compromise equity of access to school. Secondly, in regards to his concerns about retention of material, I would suggest that any questions that a student can find the answer to by "googling it" probably are not going to generate the educational experience and promote long term retention of information than questions and activities that offer a student to synthesize and analyze information. - Kathleen
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