Introduction

As many know technology is an essential part of learning today. Teachers use computers, apple products, and many more to help the students learn the material. Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an abrupt shift from in-person learning to strictly online to comply with the COVID-19 guidelines. This has made more students and people, in general, more reliant on technology as a whole. Now anything as simple as going to work is reliant upon technology. This has given me the interest to see how high school students are reacting to this. Whether or not the change will improve their ability to learn or if it is more harmful. Just because the use of technology in the classroom can be more convenient and possibly save time, could there ever be too much technology? This question allowed me to arrive at my official research question, “To What Extent Does Technology Increase Student Learning?” My hypothesis is that there will be a point when there is too much technology where it becomes detrimental to students' learning ability. The ideal place where maximum learning happens is a fairly even combination of technological and physical learning.

Literature Review

The first perspective that I will be analyzing this through is how technology affects students' social skills. According to Suzie Boss, a member of the National Faculty of the Buck Institute for Education, “Social media opens new possibilities for connecting learners and taking education in new directions.” (Boss 2011) She is saying that technology in education is allowing for more students to connect online which is opening a new door in education. This door that Boss is referring to is the door that technology is going to be used inside school classrooms. This is a relatively new concept in that it has been slowly introduced in the last 20 years. This is allowing students to collaborate and interact with other students, online though. Technology can also have lasting effects on students ' interactions “Students may miss the face-to-face interaction with the instructor and among the students.” (Jones 2020). Jones is saying that when doing online school there is no physical interaction between the students and the teacher but it is over a screen. After a while students grow to be bored of being contained in their homes and want to go outside and see their friends and classmates. Lastly, technology affects students’ relationships with others. “When students spend an excessive amount of time interacting with technology instead of peers, they don’t get to practice social skills.” (Linde 2020) Being online deprives the students of actual physical interaction. With the integration of more and more technology in our society, students tend to spend more time interacting with it. When a student spends a lot of time on any form of technology they are not able to correctly develop and use social skills. This causes them to be shy and not good with social interactions or creating meaningful relationships.

Technology also looks at how with varying amounts of technology teachers’ methods of teaching start to adapt. With the technology, students are allowed to learn at their own pace as envisioned by Max Ventilla “Max Ventilla envisioned it as a place where students aided by technology and tech-savvy teachers would learn at their own pace.” (Walters 2018) With students working at their own pace, they could choose when they want to learn so when they do learn it is more productive. This is something that can change the amount of productivity students have because people tend to be more productive with things they enjoy. There can also be effects of teaching on a class, as a whole, or in large groups. With each group varying in size so do the teachers' methods of teaching. “However it is a challenge for the teacher to split his or her time among so many groups, especially when the class is so large.” (Yeo/Hung 2020). In this quote by Yeo and Hung they talk about how it can be difficult to teach with the different groups because it is harder to split their time up. With the many groups and the many kids wanting to learn and the attention of their teacher, it is hard for the teacher to ensure that each student is learning everything.

Another aspect is that there are different kinds of technology. Of all the kinds of technology, the most widely used is the computer. “They combined classroom teaching with online discussion forums, and termed this ‘computer-mediated communication.’ (Hiltz and Twoff 1978). According to this article, one of the main functions of the computer is to allow students to communicate with each other and exchange information. There are also a lot of Apple products used in class. “Apple Inc. in 2007 created ItunesU to become a portal or a site where videos and other digital materials on university teaching could be collected and downloaded free of charge.” (Bates 1985) The new technology allows for students to record lessons so that other students who missed them can listen for free just as Bates says. The last kind of technology that I will be talking about is the use of Youtube in the classroom. Of all the educational videos on Youtube, some of the most widely known videos are from The Khan Academy which is a non-profit educational organization that provides free video tutorials and interactive exercises.“ The Khan Academy started using Youtube in 2006 for recorded voice-over lectures using a digital blackboard for equations and illustrations.” (Bates 1985)

Not all students have access to technology so another perspective is to see how accessible technology is in certain areas. Technology in low-income locations/households will usually get similar amounts of access to education. “Through Title 1 Part A of the No Child Left Behind Act, faith-based organizations are eligible to apply for approval to provide supplemental education and services to low-income students attending chronically underachieving schools.” (Encyclopedia.com 2020). Even with the low-income students not being widely able to access technology they still can get some help from the government. Then there are high-Income students that usually get similar or sometimes more access to technology. “Schools can seldom afford fully immersive virtual reality but they often use programs that at least provide three-dimensional graphics and interactivity.” (Lucent Library of Science and Technology 2020). This article talks about how virtual reality is a very expensive education resource and seldom can afford it and of those that can afford it we can infer that it is most likely from high-income areas.

In conclusion, technology is a very important resource in education that we are very fortunate to have today. Although it can be beneficial, there are also major negative effects that come with too much or improper use of the technology.

Outcome

From my literature review, I was able to understand many things about the use of technology in the classroom. The ideal learning combination is going to be when there are technological and physical aspects combined and that it will for sure not be on one of the polar ends of each. From my literature review, I discovered that some of the teachers preferred online learning because of all the nice resources that it brought them like new modeling tools and the ability to simulate real-life situations. In contrast to this, the students preferred to learn in person rather than online. From my literature review, I can understand that the face-to-face aspect of physical learning is something that helps students learn and retain information. 

From the literature review, I was also able to understand that technology in a classroom brings more than just benefits when it comes to transferring information from the teacher to the student. It allows for students and teachers to communicate easier which lets the students get their questions answered quicker. It also allows for students at any geographical location to be able to log on to class and learn without the hassle of trying to get to school every day. This goes for teachers as well as they only need a stable internet connection to be able to teach a class and earn money.

Gap in Research

For some of the sources that I read I could tell that there was a major gap in what each student's interests were. Each student has different interests which may cause them to respond to the differences in technology. Out of all the sources I looked at I was not able to find anything that incorporated the strengths and interests of each student into their research. This caused me to change my approach to be opinion-based because I wanted to get their opinion of the use of technology in the classroom in general and not just their opinion on a specific class's curriculum. After all, the student’s interest and strengths can change how well they do in that certain class or subject.

Method Section

My method involves creating a survey that I distributed to three different High School classes at varying technology levels (Appendix A). Then I distributed the survey to a high technology class, which is a class that operates solely on technology. Then surveyed a set of regular technology level classes in which they use technology at a normal amount. Lastly, I surveyed a low technology level class because they do not use technology at all. After distributing my survey, I compared the feedback I got from all the surveys and analyzed it, trying to find a correlation between the amount of technology and the performance in class. I chose a survey because I believe that I can mold questions to figure out how technology relates to classroom performance and what aspect of technology it is. It also allowed me to reach out to as many people as possible while still following the COVID-19 guidelines.

The dependent variable in my research is going to be the students' answers to the questions. This is the dependent variable because their answers are dependent on the amount of technology. The independent variable is the amount of technology because it does not change with different outcomes. My method of research is also going to have quantitative and qualitative data in it. The quantitative variable in my method is the students' answers to questions where I asked them to respond on a scale of one to five. The qualitative variable is from the questions asking their specific opinion. The subjects of my study are going to be the students of the varying technology level classes.

Subjects

Finding participants for my research was the most difficult part. For the classes with different technology levels I decided on surveying a Computer Science Principles class, AB Calculus AB and AP Statistics, and then for the low amount of technology Ceramics. In the Computer Science Principles class, the students would log in to class online each day, watch videos explaining the topics of the day, and then they would go to a separate online program and begin coding. This class was completely technology-based which is why I chose it for this technology level. For a medium amount of technology, I chose the set of math classes. These classes still had online aspects to them but they heavily incorporated physical learning in them. The students would learn from the teacher who was presenting on the screen and then they would do practice problems out of a textbook. This final class and the class that used the least amount of technology was the ceramics class. This class was classified as a low amount of technology because there was no technology being used during class. The teacher would walk around with an example of what they would be working on and then the students would spend the period trying to imitate the process onto their own work, completely avoiding any type of technology/online learning. 

Ethics

In order to allow my participants to remain protected, I created a consent form and Institutional Review Board (IRB) application (Appendix B) for them to read and understand. In my consent form, I included the risks, purpose, and a briefing of what the research was on. In my consent form, I also let them know that they could decide to not answer any questions or just entirely not participate if they changed their mind. Then I left my contact information in case they had any questions. To indicate that they were consenting I had a box for students over 18 years of age to mark which meant that they were consenting for themselves to be able to participate and then I had another for students under 18 for their parents to mark on their behalf. After the research was completed, I kept all their information in my survey and did not share it with anyone.

Instrument

The instrument that I am going to use in my procedure is a Google Form survey that if given consent I will give to the students to take. The survey will tell me what the students think the ideal amount of technology for them to learn is and then which amount allows them to do best in school. The survey will ask them to answer questions on a scale of 1-5 and then other questions that would ask their opinion on the topic. All the questions were regarding the amount of technology in the classroom and the teachers’ and students’ opinions of it.

Procedure

The procedure for my research is a survey that I created. I made sure that the questions I asked covered each aspect of my research question. The next step was for me to gather a group of students to agree to participate in my research. This took quite a long time and multiple rounds of sending out emails to be able to get the needed number of participants for my survey. Then I asked the subjects for consent to have them take the survey. By attaching my consent form to the survey I could gain consent from each participant. The survey asked for their consent if they are over eighteen years of age or asked for the consent of their parents if they are under eighteen. The following step is sending out the survey to all of the participants. After the survey is sent I will wait for them to complete it. This represented one round of survey distribution. Since I did not gain the needed amount of participants in the first round I had to expand and resend my survey to the classes asking for more participants. Once the rounds were completed and I had enough responses for my survey I gathered all the information and tried to find a correlation in it that showed how much technology actually affects students' performance in school.

Results

Using a survey during my research allowed me to ask the same questions to three different classes of different technology levels. This allowed me to have a range of responses seeing how the amount of technology helps students learn. This also allowed me to be able to generalize this information across all the high school students in my area. 

The chart shows that the majority of the participants said that it was for them to learn with physical materials like worksheets rather than all online. From the responses to the survey, 52.8% of the participants said that technology plays a huge role in the learning environment. This was then followed up by 38.9% saying that it plays a big role but is not everything. This shows that the amount of technology in the classroom is significant to the learning experience of a student. Their experience may not completely depend on the amount of technology but for most people, it plays a fairly significant role. When asking the respondents if they were having an easy time in their class the students from the high technology class responded with the most consistent amount of threes and fours. Then the in-between class had similar amounts of threes and fours and the ceramics class had practically all fives.

The majority of the students from the completely physical class said that it was easy to learn but as more technology was added into the other classes, the number of fives and fours decreased a lot. This shows that students like to learn with physical materials but they are better at it.

The first graph was asking the students their opinion on how big of a role technology played in their learning experience. This question was given to all the students that were participating. A one on this scale was that it played practically no role and a five on this scale was that it played an extremely important role or that it was the most important aspect. The results that I received showed that 52.8% of the students or 19 students said that technology was the most important aspect of their learning experience. Then following that was a score of four that got 38.9% of the participants. These participants agreed that technology played a crucial role in their education but it was not everything. Then there was 8.3% of the participants that said that it played a semi-important role in their learning. From this, I am able to understand that no matter the class that a student is in the amount of technology they use is very important to their entire learning process. The fact that there were no scores of one or two shows that 100% of the students that I surveyed thought that technology was important in a school setting.

The second graph shows the responses to a question asking “How does increasing the amount of technology change the difficulty of a class?” From this question, I gained a wide variety of responses. In this case, a response of one is that increasing the amount of technology makes it easier, and a five means that it makes it hard. There was a tie between three and four in my responses. They both had a 33.3% response rate. Then there was a 27.8% for a two, saying that increasing the amount of technology would make the class a little easier. Then finally there was a 5.6% rate for one saying that it significantly makes the class easier. The responses in the graph tell me that depending on the class and the curriculum, increasing the amount of technology will affect it in different ways. For the low technology class, the majority of the students responded with ones, twos, and threes because since they do not have any technology in their class already, adding some would allow them to get some of the benefits of the technology without having to deal with the drawbacks. Then for the medium technology level class, they mainly answered with twos, threes, and fours because they already had some technology in the class so when I asked this question it all came down to what each student's preference was. Some students liked a more technology-heavy class whereas others wanted the opposite. Then for the high technology class, they mostly responded saying that adding more technology was just going to make it harder for them to learn because they have already been able to show the benefits of technology but as you add more the benefits begin to turn into disadvantages. Then there will be less and less physical learning which from the previous graphs we can tell the students prefer more.

The third graph shows the students’ responses to being asked what they think would be the best amount of technology used in a classroom. From the graph, we can see that the majority of students said that there was a class that has a fairly even combination of technology and physical learning. Specifically, 58.3% of the students of 21 participants said that they want an even distribution of technology and physical learning. The next number with the largest percentage of students was four where they got 19.4% or 7 students to answer this. These students wanted more of a technology-based classroom setting because they think they learn better from it. Behind that was the 16.7% from the two which shows that there are still some students who prefer more physical learning in the classroom. Then there was a 5.6% saying that they want an all technology-based class. From this, we can understand that there are not a lot of students that prefer to have school either completely technology-based or completely physical. We can conclude that students prefer to learn when there is some sort of combination between physical and online learning.

Analysis

The findings show that the ideal learning process for the majority of high school students in Southern California is through a combination of physical and online learning with more emphasis on physical learning. This means touching and experimenting with topics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many classes have gone online. From this experiment, if most kids prefer learning physically, we can assume that it is harder for them to get good grades in school with this new shift. Implementing more of a physical education during this time is important because adapting to a student's learning style is important for the success of the student. From the survey, we are able to understand that for most students, technology plays a very important role. This is why it is important for us to use it correctly. From the survey, we also know that increasing the amount of technology in the classroom is completely based on the existing amount of technology. We now know that in the ceramics class, increasing the amount of technology will be beneficial because it gives it lots of benefits. For the medium-level technology class increasing the amount of technology also benefits the students and teaches because of the resources it brings. For the high-level technology class, increasing the technology is detrimental to the class because the benefits of technology already exist, and adding more is not beneficial to the students. After concluding my research I am able to determine that my initial hypothesis was correct. The ideal amount of technology used in the classroom was not all technology or completely physical learning but it was somewhere in between as I predicted in the introduction.

From the first class that was using the high level of technology in it, I was able to find out that the majority of the students there believed that it was harder to learn in that class than it was for them to learn in other classes. Lots of students preferred to have some physical aspect to their academics and the fact that this was completely online left a lot of students feeling unmotivated and not being able to retain as much information as they were able to before.

The findings that I got from the second technology physical blended classroom was that this was where the most amount of productivity was. This was not only the preferred way of learning but it was also the most efficient way. This allowed for the teachers to incorporate the beneficial aspects of technology like the modeling and visualization tools without completely stranding the student online. The ability to work physically out of a textbook allowed the student to write down their thought processes which later allowed them to retain that information for a longer period of time.

The findings I got from the fully physical class was that although students tended to learn better in an all physical environment rather than an all online environment, this was not that much more beneficial. Due to not being able to use the positive aspects of the technology, the students were stuck using their imagination to try and answer their questions that they had about their project. While this caused them to learn a lot, it was not as beneficial as it would have been if they were able to incorporate a couple of positive aspects of technology into it.

With these results I was able to take what I learned and since I was able to experiment across multiple schools and school districts that this information can apply to the majority of public schools in the area. The results from the first class can compare to any public school’s computer science class, the second class can compare to any school's standard math or literature class, and the third class can compare to any art class.

Once we eventually return completely to in-person school it is important to design a curriculum that fits the needs and preferences of the students. If they learn better a certain way then I think they should be able to explore and use that way more often. From this, I was able to fill my gap in my research. For the students that I surveyed, I was able to understand that the interests of the students do not affect the way each student responds to different amounts of technology. The most important factors are that the students are from the same school and are part of the same class when surveyed as a whole.

Relate the Findings to Similar Studies

The results from surveying the classes are similar to that of Jason Baker's article “Is There Too Much Technology in the Classroom?” Baker’s lesson on technology in the classroom lists the specific advantages and disadvantages that he sees in the classroom. They take into account the efficiency and ethics of technology in the classroom. This connects to my research topic because they performed the same research that I was planning on doing so I can compare my results with his. This is a foundational text because it lists the original advantages and disadvantages that can be used as a foundation for my research. Baker has a master’s degree in business administration and school psychology and a bachelor’s in psychology. Another study that relates to my findings is in an article by Suzie Boss. Boss talks about where the idea of technology began and who helped start it. Then they list the potential benefits of technology in the classroom if it is used at a reasonable amount. This connects to my research topic by talking about the benefits of technology. This source covers another aspect of my research question by seeing the positive side. This is foundational information because it explains the benefits of technology in the classroom. Another article is from the International Association of Educators and it talks about the opinions of teachers on technology. This source talks about the results of research they performed on what secondary school administrators think of technology being used. This shows specifically what the administrators were using the technology for based on their trust and opinion of it. This source connects to my research topic because it gets teachers' opinions on technology which is going to be a big aspect of my research. They performed research that is very similar to the type of research that I want to perform for my topic and they got results that can be used under research questions. This is an additional source because it talks about someone else's research that can’t change what mine is. 

Limitations

When talking about the limits I think COVID is going to be the biggest one. Not being able to go in person and explain the survey to each kid didn’t allow me to connect and learn about the kids. Another plan that I had was to interview teachers which I couldn’t do because we were not allowed to meet in person when I was deciding this. When surveying the difficulty of each class it is hard to get an accurate result because depending on which class it is, the difficulty may change based on the curriculum and not necessarily the amount of technology. Also, lots of kids don't listen and pay attention so it was hard to gain responses.

Another limitation is that I had a really hard time contacting teachers from other schools to get results. This stopped me from being able to gain more responses which would have allowed me to get a larger sample size.  Some kids are strictly online so they have not been able to experience a classroom in a while so their opinion may be a little biased because of that. Each student learns differently so it may be based on how the student learns and not on the amount of technology the students use in each class. The survey also doesn't account for any personal reasons that are stopping the students from learning as well in school (ex. Learning disabilities, problems at home, etc.)

Future Directions

Taking what I have learned from here and being able to apply it to the next step of helping design a curriculum based on a student's learning abilities is something I want to explore. More specifically, I want to be able to take my survey but design an algorithm that can take the strengths and interests of the participants and create a curriculum that will highlight their strengths and allow them to learn as easily as possible. Since each student learns differently I think this algorithm would be able to help determine what would be ideal for them specifically. Also, I want to test this with people from different geographical regions because I think in places where technology is not as easily accessible there will be different responses than here in the US. Being able to generalize this study not only for high school students but from all age groups I think would improve learning and allow all students to dive deeper into their interests.

Conclusion

My initial research for my literature review allowed me to understand that technology plays a very important role in learning. It can be beneficial but only when used in the correct amounts. Prior to my own research, I studied outside sources and learned the positive and negative effects of technology on learning school curriculum and developing personal skills. Using these resources as a guide for my own research I decided to use a survey as my way of gaining knowledge on the subject. After performing my research I am able to understand that the ideal amount of technology in the classroom happens when there is a fairly even combination of physical learning and online learning. Some of the teachers enjoyed more of the technological aspects because it allowed them to explain some more complicated concepts by using tools such as visualization and modeling. The students preferred to learn in a more physical classroom setting because they are more kinesthetic learners. The students preferred to be able to use their hands and experiment in person with concepts which helps them retain the information better. From this, I can infer that the ideal combination comes when there is an in-person class that allows the students to physically learn but also where the teachers are able to incorporate some of the tools to help explain some of the more complicated subjects.

References

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