{"id":164,"date":"2017-10-24T14:36:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T19:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/?p=164"},"modified":"2017-10-24T14:36:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T19:36:20","slug":"studying-put-away-the-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/2017\/10\/24\/studying-put-away-the-smartphone\/","title":{"rendered":"Studying? Put away the smartphone!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the invitation of Dr. Jay Weitzen, I addressed students in our Electrical and Computer Engineering section of <em><strong>\u201cIntroduction to Engineering\u201d<\/strong> <\/em>this past week.\u00a0 I truly enjoy speaking with our students, especially those new to UMass Lowell \u2013 my goal always being to reiterate the countless opportunities available to students on campus \u2013 from finding that ideal career path (NOTE: Career Fair, tomorrow 4:00 &#8211; 7:00 PM) to tutoring resources and even catching a great show \u2013 while emphasizing the need for students to attend to their studies.\u00a0 I recounted tips for success that I have summarized in previous blogs, including ensuring that enough time is allocated to classwork and studying.<\/p>\n<p>As we are in the heart of midterms with midterm grades due soon, I thought it appropriate to take a closer look at studying. I was drawn to a recently published study from the University of Texas at Austin in which the researchers examined the impact of smartphones on cognitive ability. The study, published this year in the <em>Journal of the Association for Consumer Research<\/em> (Volume 2, Number 2, 2017), asked roughly 800 participants to complete an exam, that required concentration, while stowing their smartphones during the test according to one of three situations: (1) phones at desks, but turned upside down; (2) phones in nearby handbags or pockets; or (3) phones in another room.\u00a0 The researchers found that the participants with phones kept in another room <em>significantly<\/em> outperformed those defined by (1) and slightly outperformed those in (2).\u00a0 The conclusion was that the mere presence of the phone diminished cognitive activity. (A nice summary of the study can be found in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2017\/06\/170623133039.htm\"><em><u>ScienceDaily<\/u><\/em><\/a>.) Interestingly, the researchers found that it did not matter if the smartphone was on or off, face-down or not.\u00a0 The mere presence was sufficient for distraction.<\/p>\n<p>Dean Jim Canning of our Honors College routinely holds study sessions in the library on Saturdays \u2013 with no cell phones, smart or not, allowed.\u00a0 With midterm exams in full-swing, this sounds like sage studying advice for all of our students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the invitation of Dr. Jay Weitzen, I addressed students in our Electrical and Computer Engineering section of \u201cIntroduction to Engineering\u201d this past week.\u00a0 I truly enjoy speaking with our students, especially those new to UMass Lowell \u2013 my goal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/2017\/10\/24\/studying-put-away-the-smartphone\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}