Bansal |1 Rajan Bansal Professor Yaying Zhang ENGL 1100_14 27 February 2020 CRITICAL SUMMARY: PERCEIVED ACADEMIC EFFECTS OF INSTANT MESSAGING USE (Reynol Junco & Shelia R. Cotton) In “Perceived academic effects of instant messaging use,” Reynol Junco and Shelia R. Cotton explain the relationship between Instant Messaging (IM) and academic impairment. They emphasize that students perform multitasking while using IM. Subsequently, a survey had been conducted among four academic Institutions for further analysis of the data. Junco and Cotton evaluate the tests through Analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Tukey’s Honestly Significant Distance (HSD) consisting of certain controlled variables. They observe that the majority of the students were not using IM efficiently. Junco and Cotton appear to assume that IM only contributes to adverse effects on academic performance. There is no evidence in this article that reveals the possible positive outcomes of IM in academics. E.g. – increase in grasping power of students, quicker reading ability, fast response to situations. As we know, there is a certain necessity to use IM in the current generation. In this growing digital world, one needs to adapt oneself to technology to match foot Bansal |2 with others. Isolation from IM might not be a desirable method to avoid distractions or improve your grades. According to Mayer and Moreno, there are three sorts of learning processes “essential processing, incidental processing, and representational processing” (qtd. in Junco and Cotton 372). They claim that a person could not attain deeper learning if these processes are overburdened. The authors seem to support their study based on a limited-scale survey. This type of study must be conducted on a broader scale i.e. involving hundreds of universities from different geographical locations yielding in better accuracy of results. Furthermore, Junco and Cotton don’t consider certain factors that could be responsible for the use of IM; such as – peer pressure, easy availability of resources. One might argue over the reliability of the data collected as the data is wholly and faithfully submitted by students with no evidence to it. It is apparent that the students are aware of the harmful effects regarding the use of information and communication technologies; however, it’s important to use IM for coping up with stress. Junco and Cotton conclude by laying down both the positive and negative impacts of the issue. While they do bring some interesting facts about the survey, the writers end up educating the readers about the potential risks of using IM excessively. They clarify that “it’s important for higher education faculty and staff to be aware of how their students are using technology” (377). The authors ascertain that their efforts shall help future research in this particular aspect. Bansal |3 Works Cited Junco, Reynol, and Shelia Cotton, “Perceived Academic Effects of Instant Messaging Use.” Computers and Education, vol. 56, 2011, pp. 370- 378.
