The presence of student-owned information and communicationtechnologies (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.) in today'scollege classroom creates learning problems when students distractthemselves during lectures by texting and using social media.Research on multitasking presents clear evidence that humaninformation processing is insufficient for attending to multiplestimuli and for performing simultaneous tasks.

To collect data on how multitasking with these technologiesinterferes with the learning process, a carefully-designed studywas conducted at a mostly residential large public university inthe Northeast United States. Junco, R. In-class multitasking andacademic performance. Computers in Human Behavior (2012)

At the beginning of a semester a group of students who were USresidents admitted through the regular admissions process and whowere taking the same courses were selected based on their high useof social media and the similarities of their college GPA's. Theselected students were randomly assigned to one of 2 groups:

group 1 students were told to text and use Facebook duringclasses in their usual high-frequency manner;

group 2 students were told to refrain from any use of textingand Facebook during classes.

At the conclusion of the semester the semester GPA's of thestudents were collected. The results are shown in the tablebelow.

IN-CLASS MUTLITASKING STUDY

Frequent Facebook Use and Texting  

x₁ = 2.87

s₁ = 0.67

n₁ = 65

No Facebook Use or Texting

x₂ = 3.16

s₂ = 0.53

n₂ = 65

Do texting and Facebook use during class have a negative affecton GPA? To answer this question perform a hypothesis testwith
H₀: μ₁−μ₂ = 0
where μ₁ is the mean semester GPA of all students whotext and use Facebook frequently during class and μ₂ isthe mean semester GPA of all students who do not text or useFacebook during class.

Question 1. What is the value of the teststatistic for this hypothesis test?

Question 2. What is the P-value for thishypothesis test?