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Journal of Computing in Higher Education

, Volume 28, Issue 1, pp 18–44 | Cite as

Assessing laptop use in higher education: The Laptop Use Scale

  • Robin Kay
  • Sharon Lauricella
Article
First Online:

Abstract

The laptop computer is considered one of the most used and important technological devices in higher education, yet limited systematic research has been conducted to develop a measure of laptop use in college and university. The purpose of the following study was to develop a research-based, theoretically grounded scale to assess student use of laptops inside and outside higher education classrooms. The Laptop Use Scale addressed four key areas: in-class academic use, in-class non-academic use, outside of class academic use, and outside of class non-academic use. Tested on 156 higher education students using laptops computers, the Laptop Use Scale showed acceptable internal reliability and good validity (face, content, construct, and convergent validity). It is argued that this scale can help assess and calibrate pedagogical strategies used to integrate laptops into higher education classrooms. Suggestions for future research on assessing student use of laptops are offered including a focus on multi-tasking behavior.

Keywords

Evaluate Assess Use Scale Higher education University Laptop 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Faculty of EducationUniversity of Ontario Institute of TechnologyOshawaCanada
  2. 2.Faculty of Social Science and HumanitiesUniversity of Ontario Institute of TechnologyOshawaCanada

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