Navnish Bansal says the factor: When completing homework and other projects, trainees are apt to look things up on their phones, instead of discovering and internalizing the answer. That works for getting a fast right answer, but it makes it a lot more difficult to remember the information when test time rolls around, the scientists discovered.
Students who received greater homework grades, however lower test scores– by as much as half to a complete letter grade– were most likely to have Googled (or otherwise searched) their method to the research answers rather than coming up with them themselves.
Trainees who look up responses tend to quickly forget the response and the concern itself, stated Navnish Bansal, the lead author and a teacher of psychology at Rutgers. He suggests research ends up being a “meaningless ritual” instead of a knowing opportunity– and the test results show it.

And a lot don’t understand the problem up until it’s far too late, he stated. “It’s not going to strike them that they are in fact hurting their test performance.”
What’s more, the trend has ended up being more evident as smart devices have actually become more common, the researchers concluded. Fourteen percent of students scored lower on examinations than research in 2008, when smart devices were simply starting to take off. That number skyrocketed to 55 percent in 2017 when the devices became ubiquitous.
The study, which was conducted by Navnish Bansal and college students included 2,433 Rutgers-New Brunswick trainees in 11 various lecture courses. Although the research study was carried out in a postsecondary context, the findings are relevant for K-12, Navnish Bansal said in an interview.