Social Media Websites are Likely to Negatively Impact College Students Grades

Social Computing: y2lizblog

Social media websites have become more popular and are being used more frequently as they allow individuals to communicate with each other.  As good as it sounds, social media websites has been a major cause in distracting college students.  For example, 1.23 billion people have a Facebook account.  One demographic that can be found on social media websites are college students.  Even though there are many benefits for college students to use social media websites, there are also many drawbacks.  For example, college students can be distracted from their studies. Students can be tempted to sign in to their social media while in class, especially with the accessibility provided by their phone or tablet.  Students try to multitask and do homework while visiting their social media profiles; their academic success is at risk.

Social Media has a Negative Effect on College Students Creating Students to be Off-Task

In many lecture halls, college students can seem disengaged with the professor because they are focused on the social media websites on their phone, laptop, tablet, and other personal devices.  In an interview with Senior Lecturer and Technology Integration Specialist Helen Cohen, at the University of Maryland, College Park, she explains four negative concepts that students often face on social media.

• Multitasking 
• Plagiarism
• Distraction
• Peer Pressure

Social Media Websites Impact Students Grades Negatively

Professor Cohen states that students grades should be impacted on "what they learn and can do".  She also explains the negative impacts of how social media websites can impact college students grades.

College students who use popular social media websites often have lower grades than students who don't use popular social media websites.  Johnson & Wales University did a study stating "college students who use the 500 million member social network have significantly lower grade-point averages (GPAs) than students who do not".The study also showed that students who used social media sites while doing their homework found it affected their ability to complete the task.  The collected data suggested that "eighty percent of the sample admitted that they posted or responded while completing homework and has definitely affected their efficiency and their grades."

In a survey conducted on 35 University of Maryland Students, 60% of students agreed that social social media sites had a negative impact on academics performances.  

According to a study done by Ohio State University, "college students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have a lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for social networking websites".  A study done by the university resulted that Facebook users had a GPA between "3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had a GPA between 3.5 and 4.0". Faculty members at Ohio State universities who allow students to use their laptop in lecture halls stated that they "often see students on Facebook during class".

College Students Who are Distracted by Multitasking While Doing Homework are Pressured Into Plagiarizing to Make up for Procrastination

According to a study done at Nazarbayev University, students often engage in multitasking on social media websites while doing their work.  Students who engage in multitasking on social media websites while doing homework are seeing a decrease in their academic performance at colleges and universities.  A study states that the time required for social networking site users to complete test were longer". Students often find it difficult to perform tasks while social networking websites ares open, which draws away "maximum attention to any details in their assignments". Furthermore, the act of multitasking can lead to procrastination from less effort put in academics and eventually the peer pressure of plagiarism.  

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Lekic Receives Pakard Fellowship to Contribute his Research on How the Earth Moves

(1) In recognition of his efforts to integrate computer science and geological studies, Lekic joined the ranks of 17 other early career U.S. scientists and engineers who were awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering last week. (18) As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkley, Lekic formulated higher-resolution images of the Earth’s mantle structure, stemming from his creation of a global seismic velocity model. Not only is the model able to give geologists a better understanding of plate tectonics, but it also helps explain the movement of continental plates and their evolution, Lekic said. (5) From this data, Lekic is creating a map that will not only cover all 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Puerto Rico, but also dive deep into the Earth’s crust and core. (4) Lekic is now one of five alumni faculty members who have received the award while at this university, and he will be given access to unrestricted funds of $875,000 over a five-year period to support his extensive research on Earth’s inner structure.(17) Lekic and McDonough are attempting to harness that energy to create another way to build a model of the Earth.  (16) “We are both interested in the energy that moves the tectonic plates and creates the magnetic shield around the planet,” geology professor William McDonough said.

The Packard Fellowship Allows the Opportunity for Researchers Lekic and McDonough to Explore how the Earth Moves
(9) “The great thing about this fellowship is its flexibility to go chase a really good idea to wherever it leads,” said Orr, a Stanford University professor. “It is an incredibly valuable fund and gives the researchers an opportunity to take off with a good idea instead of waiting a year or more for federal money. (8) If you look at the field of those who get it and try to figure out from their research summaries and letters which are the strongest candidate, it’s a difficult task,” said Franklin Orr, chairman of the Packard Fellowship panel. “We always run out of fellowships before we run out of wonderful people to give them too.” 

Lekic Explains Earths Movement by Using Seismic Information
 (2) Lekic has already used the seismic information to investigate why and how the crust moves over the Earth’s mantle. As of now, the deepest any machine has been able to dig was about 12 kilometers into the Earth’s crust, a minuscle fracture of the roughly 6,730 kilometers it takes to get to the Earth’s core. Using the seismic information helps geologists see the shapes and sizes of the Earth’s layers. (7) Nearly 2 million data lines fill the screen of Vedran Lekic’s computer every day, each representing seismic waves that are detected from of the more than 1,700 seismic stations around the U.S.  (6) Neutrinos are a type of electrically neutral subatomic particle that are created during radioactive decay or some kinds of nuclear reactions. The particle, which was only discovered geologically in 2005 and physically detected for the first time last year, moves through every kind of object, McDonough said.

After Receiving Several Awards Lekic Hopes to Have a Better Understanding of the Earth
(14) Lekic has received several other early career awards besides the Packard Fellowship. (3) Other than his seismology research contributions, Lekic is also a forerunner in the new geological field of neutrino geoscience. (15) Now that a large fund has been granted to his work, he hopes to spend more time plotting the seismic information in graphs and models so that he may better understand the Earth, Lekic said. (10) Lekic’s research is based on ground vibration recordings, which he and his students use to detect the scattering of seismic waves across the North American tectonic plate. In conjunction with the National Science Foundation’s EarthScope Facility network, the data is collected from the 49 states and Puerto Rico and makes up about 3.8 million square miles, Lekic said. (13) “What we do is comparable to how an ultrasound let’s us see through our bodies,” Lekic said. “But this lets us see through the Earth.”


We positioned the picture given in between the second and third paragraph because, in the second paragraph we have mentioned his maps and graphs and in the third we continued to discuss his research.


P-I-C-K:We got rid of the kickouts to focus the attention along the main points of the article.  We included the picture in between paragraphs 2 and 3 for contiguity.   

For Interactivity we embedded the link of the article in the text "Pakard Fellowship for Science and Engineering 

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listen to ‘test’ on audioBoom

Analysis Of Interactive Content Tweeted by: Julia 51

In today's society, interactivity with technology is creating a faster, and more personalized way to be used.  Google Maps is an excellent example of interactivity though technology.

 In the Google Map Tour video, Google Maps uses the Redundancy Principle to explain the new features that were added.  It uses a multimedia presentation with narrations and animations and goes through the process and examples of using Google Maps. The video explains how personalization can be used by being logged into your Google account.  Users can "search, star places, and publish reviews" and will get more recommendations to places Google Maps thinks would interest them.
 Another principle that Google Maps uses is the Personalization Effect.  The narration that is recorded for the audience to hear is a step by step conversational style tutorial.  Google Map users can use  different features such as "street view", or "photo view" to zoom in see the street or pictures of the location that has been submitted to Google.  Another feature that has been added is "earth view." This allows users to "bring the 3D experience from Google Earth to Google Maps."  With a video tutorial, the narrator explains how to use the new features and views that have been installed into Google Maps. 

Along with Google Maps, there are apps that use interactivity.  The Android app Skyvi uses  voice activation to help find nearby places of interest for the mobile user.  App users can give a voice command into their android phone asking where find a certain place of interest and Skyvi will give a "voice guided, turn-by-turn directions from Google Maps.  Skyvi users can also update their social networking statuses by using the voice activation.