A Research Paper on Digital Learning and its

Effects

Submitted to:
Prof. Mizan Rahman
MKT 547E
School of Business
Independent University Bangladesh

Submitted by:
Anika Tasnim
ID:1822315
Farhana Sharmin
ID:1822318
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

Digital Learning and its Effects

Introduction:
Now a days most of the students are enjoying all the facilities including text books, materials
from internet sources, YouTube videos etc. However, the final output from the students is not
encouraging. Most of the cases it is observed that quite a good number of students are not able to
analyze, summarize and drawing conclusions in the right direction. One of the reason could be
the students are not at all interested in reading textbooks. A good number of students lack
devotion to studies. This paper shows how digital learning hinders the qualitative growth of
students.

Literature Review:
Internet is the new guru of technology and with its wide spread range in every aspect of human
life. With internet there is no boundary in terms of time, space and location. As a result we notice
a free flow of information all around the world. It is mentioned in the article named “The Impact
of Internet Uses on Students” by R H Puspita* that there is an increase in the internet
dependency in the mass. Though internet can simplify a lot of the task by both providing
multiple information sources as well as by increasing the efficiency of a task. Similarly, we
notice internet influencing the learning system globally.

However, besides having usefulness there have been a remarkable amount of negative effects of
digital learning. As previously discussed, we notice a significant lose in the depth of
understanding and reciprocating in the ability of modern day students. Naomi Baron the author
of the article “Do Students Lose Depth in Digital Learning” beautifully described the entire
situation in her work. Her work leads to an understanding where we consider two major aspects
of learning process 1. How well the digital content has been understood by the students ? ( depth
of understanding ) 2. Does the student’s critical thinking ability enriches by reading digital
content? ( in contrast to printed text).

Research Hypothesis:
The main objective of this paper is to measure to what extant digital learning and computer
system is improving or compromising learning experience for students. The significance of this
study is that that it will help building awareness for both students and academicians in terms of
assisting students to gather in depth knowledge. In this study, I have examined the below
hypothesis to determine what further measures should be taken to address the problem discussed.

H : Students lose depth in digital learning

Research Method and Procedure:

 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

A qualitative primary research has been conducted among university students to investigate the
hypothesis. I have used survey technic to collect data from University students from Dhaka,
Australia, US and Germany . Of the 100 students participated in the study, 60 questionnaire were
completed correctly and were used in this study. Students who have participated in this study
were faculties of Business, EEE, CSE, Economics, Bio Technology, Arts and Law. 56.7%
students were in their graduate level of studies and 21.7 % were in the post-graduation and the
remaining were in their under graduation. Among these participants 36 were female and 24 were
male. However, students irrespective of their location participated in a web based questionnaire.
The structured questionnaire had two segments, the first part containing general personal
information like Age, Sex and level of education and the later segment had questions to
determine the underlying reasons for the problem. In the questionnaire dichotomous / ordinal
scales have been used for most of the questions along with two compulsory brief explanations
and the final set of question have been prepared with likert type scale. Google form has been
used a tool of collecting data online and summarizing them .

The Questionnaire Used in the Study

Personal Information
Q:1 What is your age?
Q:2 What is your gender?
Q:3 What is your level of education?
In Depth Queries
Q:1 Which medium is better in order to focus in the content for academic purpose ?
Q:2 Which medium causes frequent distraction?
Q:3 In case if you don’t understand something in which medium do you go and reread?
Q:4 Which medium is easier for you to understand the content? Explain briefly why?
Q:5 Which medium is more time consuming to read? Explain briefly why?
Q:6 Which medium is very convenient for you monetarily?
Q:7 Do you think digital learning makes the learning superficial?
Q:8 Do you think text books/ printed material adds value in terms of gaining depth of the
topic read compared to the digital content?

Results :
The results are following the ten in depth research questions.

Question title: which medium is better in order to focus in the content for academic
purpose?. Number of responses: 60 responses.

In the response of the first research question, we notice that a majority of 43 students prefers
printed text which accumulates a 71.7% of the sample population. However, some 24 students
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

still prefers digital text retaining 40% of the sample population. The results are demonstrated
below in a graph in figure 1.

Figure -1

Question title: Which medium causes frequent distraction ?. Number of responses: 60

responses.

To the second response we notice the students unanimously agreeing against digital content.
Among 60 students 52 thinks that digital content causes more frequents distraction compared to
printed content. One of them mentioned that printed text is “Much easier to focus and
understand without the distraction of the internet”. On the contrary, some 8 students reported the
opposite. The results are shown below in Figure 2.

Figure - 2

Question title: In case if you don't understand something in which medium do you go and
reread?. Number of responses: 60 responses.
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

To answer the third question surprisingly we notice 65% of the sample population claims to go
and reread on digital media than printed text. However, 21 students comprising 35% of the
sample population mentioned to reread printed text in case they don’t understand anything. We
can see the results in Figure 3 below.

Figure - 3

Question title: Which medium is easier for you to understand the content and why?.
Number of responses: 60 responses.

To the next question we notice that a 60% of the sample population considers digital text to be
easier to understand the content . In addition to this the respondents mentioned “In digital content
specially in pdf format I can copy edit text, Highlight text, go to desired content part easily .”
One of them also mentioned “Keywords help to find out details about a particular topic that we
are interested in, so its much easier to search for material online for it.” One of the student also
said “Because digital content have videos,audios,pictures which makes it easier to apprehend the
particular topic more and also it can catch our attention easily unlike printed content”. However,
the remaining 35% of the sample population believes that, printed text are easier to understand
the content. The respondents also mentioned that “It is easier to go through printed text, highlight
important passages, and then combine those into your existing notes.” One of them also said
“Because I like to read printed ones as light of digital medium disturbs me.” One of them also
mentioned “There is less distractions while reading a printed content. Whereas, one might multi-
task while reading a digital content which may lower the attention span.”
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

Figure - 4

Question title: Which medium is more time consuming to read?. Number of responses: 60
responses.

Among the respondents we notice that to answer the fifth research question almost 58% of the
sample population claimed that printed content are time consuming compared to digital content.
Some of them even mentioned that “If I don’t understand the content, I quickly search it on
online journals. It takes around 2-3 minutes where as it will take 10-15 minutes to find the
content in printed media.” One of them also mentioned “In e content we can easily get synopsis
of the whole topic or we can just use key words to find our desired portion to read.” One of them
also mentioned “On computers a simple CNTRL F does wonders.” However, a 41.7% of the
student population still claims the digital content to be more time consuming. In their response
they mentioned that “Usually push notifications and etc distraction divers me from my
objective”. One of them added that “You get pop ups that distract you, and also the temptation to
search for something doesn’t help”. Another student said “ I always found, E contents contains
with unnecessary junk, where printed contents are to the point.” The proportionate answer is
shown below in Figure 5.

Figure-5

Question title: Which medium is more convenient for you monetarily ?. Number of
responses: 60 responses.

To answer this question we notice that students agreed almost homogeneously that digital
content is more convenient monetarily for them as 46 students comprising 76.7% of the students
reported the same. However, 23.3% of the sample population exclaimed printed material to be
monetarily convenient for them. We can see the figures mentioned in the below .
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

Figure-

Question title: Do you think digital learning makes the learning experience superficial ?.
Number of responses: 60 responses.

Surprisingly in this question we notice that majority of the students are not sure if digital learning
makes the learning experience superficial for them or not. More interestingly we notice that the
rest of the student population is equally divided into four groups, having the same number of
students strongly agreeing as well as agreeing to the claim and simultaneously strongly
disagreeing as well as disagreeing to the claim. The results are shown below in Figure 7.

Figure - 7

Question title: Do you think text books/ printed material adds value in terms of gaining
depth of the topic read compared to digital content?. Number of responses: 60 responses.

The final question of the survey unfolds the cardinal truth of the study where we notice that
31.7% of the sample population which is at least 19 students strongly agreed as well as 36.7%
which is another 22 students agreed that text books adds value in terms of gaining depth . In
contrast to this only 13.3% have disagreed to the claim comprising some 8 student’s response.
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

However, 16.7 % of the sample population is still not sure if printed text adds value to gain depth
of the content. The data are shown below inn figure 8.

Figure – 8

Discussion and Conclusion :

The effects of digital learning is better understood when we look at the results of the research
more closely. We have noticed that the sample population prefers digital content mainly because
it is mobile and relatively cheaper. However, we noticed that majority of them prefers to use text
book or printed content for academic purposes. Similarly, we have noticed that the sample
population primarily claimed digital content to be easier to understand and that they often go and
reread digital content if they don’t understand anything. In contrast to these we notice that the
sample population claims the printed text to be time consuming for them to study and thus they
prefer digital content over it. However, the vast majority still believes that digital content creates
frequent distractions leading to a disrupt to their attention span. As a result, we notice that the
students get access to information via internet without properly and thoroughly understanding
them. Whereas, an in depth learning can be obtained by meticulous reading of printed text
without any virtual disruption as well as the thorough understanding of the content without just
skipping to any online gist, summary or key point. The sample population has summarized this
idea by the final answer of the research where majority of the students homogeneously agreed to
the fact that printed text as well as text book adds value to the depth of the studies. As a result we
can come to a conclusion that students these days lose depth in digital learning. With this we can
say that our research hypothesis has been proved.

Limitations and Further Works:

 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

The major limitation of the research has been the limited sample size compared to the vastness of
the topic. Apart of gathering the perception in depth, this research has only focused on a first
person perspective. However, we believe that this research has opened a gate of numerous gates
of possibility to improve the overall learning experience of students in future. As mentioned
earlier, one of the major objectives of this paper was to determine to what extant digital learning
is helping students versus compromising their learning ability. Since, we are certain that the
existing practices of using digital content hinders the students ability to learn in depth so further
studies should be done on how to use digital tools or content properly as well as efficiently.
Another future studies can be done from the existing data of the male female ratio and level of
studies from the current research by using SPSS tools to determine the correlations and the
factors influencing the hypothesis if there is any.
 A Research paper on Digital Learning and its Effects

Reference
Baron, Naomi. “Do Students Lose Depth in Digital Reading?” The Conversation, 5 Sept. 2018,
theconversation.com/do-students-lose-depth-in-digital-reading-61897.

Hill JR, Hannafin MJ. Teaching and learning in digital environments: The resurgence of
Resource-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Development. 2001; 49(3):37–
52.

“Impact of E-Learning on Education.” Essays Writers,

essayswriters.com/essays/Research/impact-of-e-learning-on-education.html.

Rajaee Harandi, Safiyeh. (2015). Effects of e-learning on Students’ Motivation. Procedia - Social
and Behavioral Sciences. 181. 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.905.