Smartphone Use among Undergraduate STEM Students during COVID-19: An Opportunity for Higher Education?

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students worldwide have continued their education remotely. One of the challenges of this modality is that students need access to devices such as laptops and smartphones. Among these options, smartphones are the most accessible because of their lower price. This study analyzes the usage patterns of smartphone users of undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional descriptive study included 365 students: 162 (44.4%) women and 203 (55.6%) men from a Chilean university. The results revealed that students often accessed the learning management system (LMS) with their computers rather than with their smartphones. Students were connected to the LMS for more hours on their computers than on their smartphones. However, they spent more hours simultaneously connected on their computers and smartphones than just on their computers. During the day, students accessed the LMS mainly from 13:00 to 1:00. The number of connections decreased from 1:00 to 8:00 and increased from 8:00 to 13:00. The LMS resource that students accessed the most using smartphones was discussion forums, while the one they accessed the least was wiki pages. We expect these results to motivate faculties to schedule their activities during the hours students tend to be online and promote discussion forums.