Everyone is familiar with the practice of having students turn off and put away their smartphones during lectures, yet almost everyone can name a time when they’ve “just had to check” during class.

Smartphones are not efficient as learning devices.

Smartphones are one of the most remarkable advancements of the last five years, but are they having a detrimental effect on instructional time other than a disruption?

There is no possible way to monitor so many students to ensure that, not only everyone is on task, but also that everyone understands and is following instructions correctly.

If EC chooses to embrace smartphones and web-enabled devices for instruction, they would then be obliged to provide equal access to the web for all students. This is an additional expense and security issue that the college has limited resources to support.

Any available resources are better spent elsewhere. Additionally, the college would have to provide more bandwidth to support those online devices.

Recently, colleges have struggled with students using the features on their smartphones to cheat or subvert the instructional process; this includes taking pictures of answer keys and study sheets for tests and passing answers to fellow students.

The University of Maryland, for example, caught 12 students in a trap designed to catch those who used their smartphones for pulling answers from the class website during an exam, according to USA Today.

That students could cheat in this way points out larger security and monitoring issues associated with classroom phone use.

In the end, if EC were to integrate smartphones into classes, after all of the added costs, what would be the return on that investment?

Are we so sure that students would learn more efficiently?

There’s not enough evidence to support the change.

It’s clear that colleges aren’t quite ready to assume the burdens that come with allowing smartphones to be used in classrooms.