Digital Uses of Students and College Success

Abstract

While, at an educational level, the supposedly innovative nature of digital tools is the subject of passionate debate among teachers, the question of enhancing learning is raised less frequently. To capture this variable, this research was carried out in the first semester of 2020. The objective was to identify the place that digital technology occupies in the way university students study and to measure the effects of certain uses of digital technology on exam results. The quantitative approach and the field design were applied. Data were collected through a survey conducted among 325 volunteer Peruvian university students enrolled in three teacher training specialties: Social Sciences, Mathematics, and Language and Literature. The analyzes show that students make little use of digital tools to study in-depth and that when they use them, it is for instrumental purposes. Likewise, the statistical models reveal the absence of a significant effect of the student body’s digital activities on the exams’ results.