University study: Students with Apple’s iPad perform better than peers

“Students using the Apple’s iPad for their studies have been found to score higher than their paper-based peers and enjoy higher efficiency, according to a new study,” Josh Ong reports for AppleInsider.

“Abilene Christian University has been conducting extensive studies on the effects of mobile devices on student learning for more than three years,” Ong reports. “Prior to the launch of the iPad, the university undertook an initiative to hand out iPhones and iPod touches to incoming freshmen.”

“The university’s iPad-specific research results are ‘uniformly positive,’ as noted by TUAW after a preview of the data. One study found that ‘students who annotated text on their iPads scored 25% higher on questions regarding information transfer than their paper-based peers.'”

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Ong reports, “Researchers who tracked ACU’s first all-digital class noted that the iPad promotes “learning moments” and helps students to be more efficient with their time. Graduate students in an online program responded with a 95 percent satisfaction rate to online iPad-based coursework.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]

17 Comments

  1. “Make the screen 5×8 and you’ll rule the world.”

    – Alan Kay

    (Comment to Steve Jobs on seeing the first iPhone. Of course, since the iPad was actually developed before the iPhone, SJ already had a notion..)

    1. Kay said. “When I saw the iPhone, I figured that they had already done a tablet version, which is easier to make work than the iPhone, so I was partially joking with Steve when I said 5″x8″.

  2. Imuse my iPad, iPhone 4, office Mac mini, and home Mac mini (attached to my 65″ TV) to get through my graduate work. Having all the tools makes learning comfortable and productive. It’s a lot easier to balance work, family and school when one has the ability to study whenever and wherever possible; the Apple product line and underlying operating system connectivity of iOS makes schoolwork less of a burden.

    1. What more resources are you talking of? Everyone has a computer, even poor paper based peers. The Internet is the great equalizer. So the only difference is the iPads. Unless of course you are assuming that rich kids also have scantily clad bodies of the opposite sex parading by with cards.

      1. The iPad does not replace a computer. You can say that it does and make a case for, but it doesn’t happen in practice. Therefore, people with iPads (in addition to their computers, which they own, despite your really wanting to it not to be the case) in university settings probably are better off than people who own some crappy Dell. It’s not a knock on Apple; I just have a bugaboo about unsubstantiated research such as this.

        1. You sir are WRONG.

          For MANY people an iPad is an elegant replacement for the computer.

          There are schools running successful 1 to 1 programs in urban poor communities where the home has no computer. The kids are responding and learning. Research has proven that they get more involved, and learning becomes fun as well as productive. Project based learning is where it’s at. Drill & kill ie: memorize, test, then forget, assembly line learning doesn’t work.

        2. I think it’s the use case that determines whether it replaces it or not.

          Heavy duty spreadsheet or worpprocessing? Maybe not.

          But look at it’s widespread (and eager) adoption in healthcare, retail, academics, business, etc., and it often does.

          Musicians are recording on the road and releasing tracks/albums.

          I see a lot of replacements going on. Not all — but a lot. This trend will only accelerate, too.

  3. Another Study should show that iPad owners perform better than those who bought HP touchpads (at full price), Rim Playbooks (no email) etc.

    people who bought them didn’t have brains to begin with…

  4. Auto-correct doesn’t fix characters between words so well, which irritates me since I’m prone to hitting c, v, b, n, and m when aiming for the spacebar.

    Another observation: on my iPhone it seemed like auto-correct would learn my patterns to override corrections (or apply different ones), but I haven’t sensed that on my iPad. For instance, I don’t type “fir” very often, but I do type “for” a lot.

  5. Also, iPad users are better looking. Socially adept. Has sex more often. Better hygene. Doesn’t live in the basement with mommy. Doesn’t spent 12hrs a day playing PC games. Doesn’t need self gratification because of sexual frustration. Yeah something like that. 😉

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