![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore some of the challenges associated with mobile phones in college classrooms. A sample of faculty and students was surveyed to assess the extent to which the technology is considered a serious source of distraction in the classroom, concerns about use of the technology for cheating, and attitudes about policies restricting it from ringing and being used during class. Collectively, participants reported strong perceptions of ringing as a problem and support for formal policies restricting mobile phones in college classrooms. Faculty/student status was not related to any of the attitude measures, but age consistently was—younger participants reported more tolerant attitudes. The discussion offers interpretation of the findings and avenues for future research.
Notes
1. Even though faculty/student status was not a significant predictor of attitudes in the regression tests, the author was concerned it might confound the significant findings for age. Ideally, the effects of faculty/student status would have been controlled for during the MANOVA procedure on age groups by treating it as a covariate; however, this would have violated the assumption that a covariate consists of interval-level data. In order to address the concern of confounding effects, the author performed a separate MANCOVA with faculty/student status as the independent variable while controlling for age as an interval-level covariate. Results showed that faculty/student status did not account for a significant amount of variance in the attitude measures, Wilks’ Λ=.98, F(4, 163) = 1.00, p=.41, but that age did, Wilks’ Λ=.92, F(4, 163) = 3.76, p<.01, multivariate partial η 2=.09.