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Duh, Web Surfing in Class Hurts Test Scores, Teacher Discovers

by Tim Stevens on March 19, 2009 at 08:30 AM

Web Surfing Found to Hurt Test Scores, Sky to be Generally Blue

Of all the things one can do during class to help improve test scores, surfing the Web certainly isn't one of them. Seems obvious to us, but it took a teacher from the University of Colorado at Boulder to single it out before her group of students wised up. Once they did, their test scores improved.

Diane Sieber, an associate professor, picked out the 17 students in her classes who were using the Web most frequently during her lectures. According to Sieber's calculations, these student surfers performed 11-percent worse than their less Internet-inclined classmates with greater attention spans on tests.

Sieber broke the news to her class, after which students cut back their class-time-surfing and, wouldn't you know it, their scores improved on subsequent tests. Amazing, right? We can hardly believe it ourselves, but if you're sitting in class right now while reading this post, perhaps you should close the lid on that laptop and see what the teacher's talking about. Your GPA will thank you! [From: The Chronicle of Higher Education via AP News / Fox News]

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Tags: class, classroom, education, gpa, internet, kids, school, students, teacher, web

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