Deborah Tindell And Bohlander: Article Analysis

In “The Use and Abuse of Cell Phones and Text Messaging in the Classroom: A Survey of College Students,” written by Deborah Tindell and Robert Bohlander, the authors suggest that student cell phone usage is a widespread issue in the college classroom. They support this argument by citing the results of other researchers, as well as including the findings of their own survey. They do this in order to better understand how cell phone use is being abused in classrooms, and to gain information for changing classroom policies on this matter. The writing was most likely intended for an audience concerned with the amount of cell phone usage in educational institutions. This essay was irksome to read. The authors present the information to imply that many, if not all college students a) own a cell phone, and b) refuse to

Tindell and Bohlander mainly employ statistical evidence to support their argument that cell phone use in the college classroom cannot be ignored, and they demand action from faculty members to ensure a continually effective learning environment. However, their data may be slightly incomplete because it was collected at “a small private university in northeastern Pennsylvania” (3). Their results indicating that 99% of students owned a cell phone (3) may have come from the fact that they surveyed a private university, and a small one at that. This school most likely has a student body coming from higher-income families, so, naturally, every student will own a cell phone. The authors recognize this fact with the sentence, “In order to more adequately represent all college populations, follow-up studies should survey students from other types of institutions, such as community college or large university settings” (5). A second part of the argument examines specific changes to current cell phone policies to be made, many of which