Collecting phones during college lessons raises grades, large randomized trial finds

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Your phone vibrates, a notification pops up, or you just take a quick glance at the screen. Even minor interruptions can affect your concentration—not least when you're in class.

Now, a large randomized trial involving more than 16,000 students in India shows that teaching without access to mobile phones can improve students' academic performance. The researchers also found that students who experience phone-free teaching firsthand become more supportive of the restrictions. The research is published in Science.

"There has been extensive debate about mobile phones in the classroom, but the experimental evidence has been limited. Here, for the first time, we can demonstrate on a very large scale that removing phones from the classroom actually makes a difference to learning," says Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen, associate professor at the Department of Economics and SODAS, University of Copenhagen. The trial involved 16,683 students across 10 higher education institutions in the Indian state of Odisha.

The students were randomly divided into groups, with some required to put their phones in a box at the start of each class, while others continued as normal. The researchers monitored the students' grades, attendance and experiences throughout an entire semester. At the same time, surveys and classroom observations were carried out.

The result was clear: Students in the phone-free classes achieved higher grades on average than the control group. The effect corresponds to an improvement of 0.073 standard deviations, which is on a par with many other educational interventions used to enhance learning. The greatest benefit was found among students who had the lowest grades prior to the trial.

For them, the improvement was considerably greater than for high-achieving students. The researchers also observed signs that the gap between students' grades narrowed in the phone-free classes. "One of the most interesting findings is that the effect is greatest among the students who are already performing the worst.