Are South Korean College Students Benefitting from Digital Learning?

ABSTRACT

With COVID-19, the advancement of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, laptops, tablets) has brought a welcoming change to education digital learning. This study addresses the relationship between mobile device use and academic performance through three different models by controlling demographic data, technological infrastructure conditions, and daily total multi-tasking time. The first model emphasized the daily total mobile device use time. The second model divided the daily total mobile device use time into academic and non-academic oriented uses. The final model divided the overall mobile device use into seven specific usage types. The study found that an increase in the daily total mobile device use time negatively affected GPA;only non-academic purpose use time had a negative significance toward GPA;none of the seven usage types were significant in predicting GPA. Based on the findings, suggestions on improvements for the future digital learning policy were proposed.