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Cyberloafing in academia: a sequential exploration into students’ perceptions

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Abstract

This study intended to explore students’ perceptions of cyberloafing and how they experience it in and out of class in a higher education institution and evaluate the prevalence of these behaviours among them. It is an area overlooked in a country that has extensively invested in information and communication technologies in its universities in recent years. We adopted a sequential mixed-method approach by performing four focus group interviews with bachelor, master, and doctoral students. To broaden our understanding of the interview responses on a larger scale, we extended the study by a survey that emerged from the qualitative findings. The qualitative component resulted in four primary areas: activities, tools, reasons, and outcomes of cyberloafing, with nine main themes supported by the theory of interpersonal behaviour. Findings revealed that students cyberloafed for various reasons, of which the lack of participation in learning activities was crucial. The sequential survey confirmed the qualitative findings showing the prevalence of cyberloafing behaviours. The study opens a window into cyberloafing where building trust between students and instructors to talk about it is rarely established. Such trust-building in a context where power differentials exist could be even more challenging when the vulnerable side (students) challenges the instructor who is in a power position.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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  1. Faculty of Education and Psychology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

    Elham Heidari & Ghasem Salimi

  2. Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada

    Alireza Moghaddam

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  1. Elham Heidari
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Correspondence to Alireza Moghaddam.

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Heidari, E., Moghaddam, A. & Salimi, G. Cyberloafing in academia: a sequential exploration into students’ perceptions. Educ Inf Technol 28, 8113–8133 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11524-4

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