Our student findings from our Analysis

General
The majority of our participants were between the ages of 18 and 20, where only a small
fraction were between the ages of 21 and 23, and 24 or older. We interviewed 19 Male
students and 17 Female Students.
We saw 100% of our participants agree with our question on whether students dependent on
the use of technology in their college or social lives. Following up from this question, we saw
that most of our participants thought that students use technology to communicate between
themselves and with their lecturers in college. Just behind this was the use of technology to
help with studying or completing assignments. Only one participant said that they use
technology for storage purposes. We saw more females edge towards the use of social media
and research as a use for technology whereas males tended to sway towards communication
and for studying.
Advances in technology is the biggest reason as to why more people use technology now than
10 years ago. There is also a lot more information available online and that is another reason
why people are using technology more now. More males have seen advances in technology as
the reason for more users whereas our female participants believe it is due to more
information being available.
Most of our participants believe research and study is the main advantage to technology use,
shortly followed by communication (through social with their friends or through Moodle with
their lecturers). How fast technology has gotten is the advantage they believe has the least
effect on their lives.
Most of our participants thought technology is distracting when they are either with friends or
doing college work. They also thought it was very time consuming and unreliable with 13
participants and 12 participants saying it respectively. Six of our students believed cyber
bullying was a disadvantage to the use of technology with five of those six being male.
In terms of how beneficial social media sites are to students (pages and groups), all of our
participants between it to be helpful towards students. 13 of our participants believed it to

beneficial in terms of communicating with fellow classmates, and 11 thought it was useful to
get information about any upcoming exams, or extra notes that people may have missed out
on in class. Only two of our interviewees though social media was useful for planning events
likes class parties or letting their classmates know about events going on in the college.

Social
For this section of questions we wanted to interview students to see how modern technologies
were affecting the social aspect of students lives. While interviewing the students it was clear
to see that there is an impact that technology has on the lives of students today. Our first
question showed this and the results were as expected, out of the 36 students we interviewed
30 said that modern technologies greatly affected their social life, with 3 saying only a small
bit and 1 saying it had no affect and 1 saying it affected their social life in a negative way.
That is an astonishing 83% that said it had a great affect.
We then went on to find out what device it was that had the biggest impact, with 33 out of 36
saying it was the mobile phone which was expected and with 3 saying laptop. 91% felt their
phone had the largest impact.
We also wanted to see the affect it had on student while they were on a night out so we asked
how often they would check there phones and the majority answered more than 3 times
which wasnt to surprising. Only 5 others said less than this, thats only 13% of 36 students
check their phone less than 3 times while on a night out!
The majority of the sample said they would rather meet up although there was a few who said
they would rather have a conversation online saying it was much easier which was surprising.
We then went on to find out whether the students would have spent more time on their
devices than actually having a conversation face to face, the results were unexpected as 9 said
they spend more time online and 11 saying it was even with 16 saying face to face with 12
out of the 16 being male. That means 75% of males would rather have a conversation face to
face compared to only 25% of females.
We then concluded our questions with trying to find out if people felt there social life would
be better with or without technology with the majority saying it improves with it and 6 saying
without (16%) and with 5 participants saying it would in one sense, but wouldnt in another
(14%). To conclude overall we can see from these answers that modern technologies has a
huge effect on the social lives of students with the exception of one or two, with mobile
phones being the main device.

College
We found that when interviewing students about the effects of modern technologies on
college life most sided together on the certain effects it has on them. We found there to be
many positives and negatives regarding modern technologies effects on students college
work.
The following findings had a major positive feedback towards modern technology effects on
students.
In the first statement: The internet is beneficial towards students college work., all thirtysix students answered positively towards this, with sixty-four percent of males and females
answering Strongly Agree and thirty-six answering with Agree. We are glad students were
positive towards this question because there are so many modern uses of the internet towards
college work for example; submitting Module Assignments, Uploading Continuous
Assessment files, Accessing College Webmail, Downloading timetables & Lecturers slides.
In the sixth statement: The benefits of modern technologies are greater than the drawbacks
in relation to students in class settings, 58% answered Agree and 11% answered Strongly
Agree. This left 20% answering neutral and 11% disagreeing. As the education system in
Ireland is becoming more and more tech savvy, with the example of Ipads being introduced
into some secondary schools, we found it refreshing that it is the belief of students that the
benefits of modern technologies outweigh the drawbacks surrounding it.
With all positives must come a negative and it is my opinion that modern technology is
overused by students and can become very addictive also at times. In the second statement:
Students go on their phones a lot during class., the surveyed answers show the downside to
modern technologies, with 94% of students providing the answer Strongly Agree or
Agree.
In the third statement: Students only use computers for college work during lab classes,
there was a negative opinion towards this with 56% of students answering Disagree and
17% of students answering Strongly Disagree. We found that with the internet being just a
click away, it can become very tempting for students to access social media sites when in lab
classes.
In the fourth statement: Students spend more time on their phones in lectures than
doing class work, there was a mixed reaction to this by students in taking the survey.
However, the highest answer was 44% (16/36 people) who agreed with this statement. The
next highest being 31% (11/36 people) who disagreed with the statement, followed by 22%

(8/36 people) who were neutral to the statement.

In the fifth statement: Students concentration is greatly affected by modern
technologies, a total of 86% of people answered either Strongly Agree or Agree.
From reviewing the information received through the survey, I find that students are getting
side tracked by alternative uses to modern technologies during class time too easily and that
there concentration in class is deeply affected. I also found that students feel that modern
technologies are very beneficial and that they feel the positives surrounding them outweigh
the negatives.