​THE IMPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN STUDENT LEARNING​ 1

The Implications of Technology in Student Learning

Kyle Krestan

Arizona State University

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to outline specific research findings in order to support the

idea that technology in the classroom has a positive effect on student learning. This was shown

through multiple research reports, the first of which indicated the effect that technology had in

increasing student attentiveness and absorption of instructions for a group project by displaying

the difference in questions each clas had along with taking the initiative to follow rules. The

second supported the statement because it provided statements from multiple higher education

professors as to the effect they saw when implementing different technologies in different ways.

The final research showed that a massive amount of teachers saw improvements in student

activity, creativity, and involvement in class activities. Overall, each report strengthens the claim

that technology has an even greater possibility to improve student learning in the future.
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Introduction

The first of the three research papers that are going to be elaborated in this paper is the

one titled ​The Evolving Classroom.​ The method of this article was to take six classrooms of

equally varied student numbers and present a certain problem with a video or through verbal

instructions by the teacher (Devlin, Feldhaus, & Bentrem, 2013). This was a vital portion of the

case study because it allowed for a single variable to be tested, the full implication vs little to no

implication of technology in a lesson. In addition to the actual case study, multiple surveys were

given to the students to allow them to assess their own abilities. In these student reflections,

86.58% stated they could follow the instructions, whereas 85.07% indicated they could for the

in-person instruction (Devlin et al., 2013). This data does not seem to indicate that the

implementation of technology will have any effect on student learning, except for the fact that

the observers noticed that many students would look around the classroom and copy whomever

they thought was doing the correct thing. Since this seemed to skew data, the researchers looked

at the overall questions students had immediately following the instructions. This data was that

the average amount of questions for the in-person group was 16, while the video only had 10

(Devlin et al., 2013). This indicates that when students are not allowed to “cheat” off of other

groups they were less confused about the task when it was delivered through a more technology

forward manner. Continuing, students with video instructions were more likely to correct other

students to create groups of 2 or 3, while the verbal group formed groups anyway (Devlin et al.,

2013).

The next case study is a collection of teacher’s statements regarding what they evaluated

when technology started taking hold in the early 2000s. Professor Margaret Smithey taught at
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Peabody and indicated that when she was able to incorporate CDs into her curriculum students

were able to come to class with knowledge of the subject. She stated that it eliminated about

20-30 minutes of class time devoted to learning the subject rather than applying (Granberg,

2000). This is one of the earlier incorporations of a flipped classroom and shows that even in

college the use of technology only became more critical in the student’s ability to learn. A

professor at Owen School’s Strategy indicated that through the use of technology in the

classroom, he was able to become more of the facilitator of the classroom rather than the

dictator. He did indicate that most students utilized their technology for taking notes or pulling

up lecture slides in order to make the lesson more accessible (Granberg, 2000). This is a clear

positive use of technology in the enhancement of student learning in a higher education

environment where teachers cannot always give accommodations to students not classified with

a disability. Specifically, for this example students being able to access lecture notes closer to

them may allow them to better follow the teacher’s logic or create high-quality notes to study

from.

The final research is from the ​International Journal of Research in Education and

Science ​title “Teaching and Learning with Technology: Effectiveness of ICT Integration in

Schools”. This study was all collected from teachers of varying gener, ethnicities, locations, and

teaching experience in order to mitigate that as a variable in the experiment. According to

surveys conducted, 77.3% of the teachers believed that the integration of technology did not

negatively affect the students’ attention to lessons (Ghavifekr and Wan Rosdy, 2015). Also,

92.1% believe it allowed students to express more creativity, while 90.1% also indicated that it

increased student activity in lessons (Ghavifekr and Wan Rosdy, 2015). This kind of increase in
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a classroom is extremely valuable to the learning of the students because it increases their

opportunity to store information in their long term memory. This is because the students will

have an increased ability to relate information to subjects involving themselves, says 95.1% of

the teachers (Ghavifekr and Wan Rosdy, 2015).

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Works Cited

Delvin, T. J., Feldhaus, C. R., & Bentrem, K. M. (2013). The Evolving Classroom: A Study of

Traditional and Technology-Based Instruction in a STEM Classroom. ​JTE v25n1​, ​25​(1).

doi: 10.21061

Ghavifekr, S., & Wan Rosdy, W. A. (2015). International Journal of Research in Education and

Science. ​Teaching and Learning with Technology: Effectiveness of ICT Integration in

Schools​, ​1​(2). doi: 2148-9955

Granberg, E. M. (2000). How Technology Enhances Teaching and Learning. Retrieved October

26, 2019, from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/articles-and-essays/the-teaching-forum/

how-technology-enhances-teaching-and-learning/.