Prioritizing students' mobile centric information access needs: A case of postgraduate students (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
Developing countries and South Africa in specific have shown phenomenal growth in the mobile sector. This has ushered in a new era of challenges and opportunities for alleviating digital poverty through distance education. One of these challenges is that many students are mobile primary and accustomed to incorporating their mobile devices' information capabilities into their daily routines while institutional information access is personal computer based. The rapid pace of mobile technology development may well create a mobile divide where educators, administrators and policy makers do not understand the students' usage of mobile devices in teaching and learning. Therefore they may be reluctant to promote mobile-centric access and this will lead to a disparity between information provision and students' information needs. Distance education is often the only higher education opportunity available to developing communities and these communities are generally more mobile centric than pc-centric. Therefore, there is a need at institutional level to understand the mobile information access needs of mobile primary users and to develop strategies that facilitate mobile cellular technology access to services, content and participation. This study investigates students' needs and expectations regarding mobile cellular technology access to educational services, content and participation mechanisms in an open distance learning (ODL) university. The context of this study is the University of South Africa (Unisa). The contribution of the paper is to identify Open ODL students' needs regarding mobile phone access needs to information. The research design includes capturing the students' mobile information access needs by using an open ended survey.
USE OF MOBILE DEVICES BY STUDENTS TO SUPPORT LEARNING IN UNIVERSITIES: A CASE OF MUNI UNIVERSITY
It's a requirement in admission for every student to come with a mobile device for any programme admitted. The main objective of this study was to establish how the students use mobile devices in lecture rooms /classroom this was achieved by answering the following research questions: which mobile devices are owned by students? what are benefits of using mobile devices by students?and how mobile devices are used for learning?Quantitative design was employed using questionnaires containing a five (5) Likert scale items ranging from strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree-strongly disagree and open-ended items was utilized in this study to obtain quantitative information to answer the research questions: A total population of 331 was considered and sample size of 181 was obtained using Krejcie and Morgan table, stratified sampling was used to collect data from each stratum and data was analyzed using SPSS Version 16. The reliability of the data collected was tested using the Cronbach's reliability test coefficient where the overall value of all the options was on average 0.65 which was beyond recommended 0.6 for an instrument to be declared reliable. The findings showed that, 56.2% (91) respondents use smart phones, 40.7 %(66) use Laptops in class and only 1.2 %(2) use kindle in class room while no student indicated that he/she uses Ipad or PDA in classroom or lecture room. In terms of the benefits of using mobile devices, students the following among the top four (4) benefits; easy to access information, storage of information, mobility of the device and use of social media but cost effective and security of information were ranked last. The findings also showed students use mobile devices to access course materials, doing class work, send and receive e-mails and taking and sharing of notes but virtual classroom, discussion forums and using pre-recorded lecturers with PowerPoint were ranked among the last three (3). This study recommends that Smartphone's and mobile devices should be allowed to use by students, lecturer to start virtual classroom, discussion forums and using pre-recorded lecturers with PowerPoint so that the students can also benefit from these functionalities since they were ranked among the last three(3) services not used.
Educational Usage of Mobile Devices: Differences Between Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students
The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 2017
The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.
International Journal of Research in Engineering & Technology, 2017
It's a requirement in admission for every student to come with a mobile device for any programme admitted. The main objective of this study was to establish how the students use mobile devices in lecture rooms /classroom this was achieved by answering the following research questions: which mobile devices are owned by students? what are benefits of using mobile devices by students?and how mobile devices are used for learning?Quantitative design was employed using questionnaires containing a five (5) Likert scale items ranging from strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree-strongly disagree and open-ended items was utilized in this study to obtain quantitative information to answer the research questions: A total population of 331 was considered and sample size of 181 was obtained using Krejcie and Morgan table, stratified sampling was used to collect data from each stratum and data was analyzed using SPSS Version 16. The reliability of the data collected was tested using the Cronbach's reliability test coefficient where the overall value of all the options was on average 0.65 which was beyond recommended 0.6 for an instrument to be declared reliable. The findings showed that, 56.2% (91) respondents use smart phones, 40.7 %(66) use Laptops in class and only 1.2 %(2) use kindle in class room while no student indicated that he/she uses Ipad or PDA in classroom or lecture room. In terms of the benefits of using mobile devices, students the following among the top four (4) benefits; easy to access information, storage of information, mobility of the device and use of social media but cost effective and security of information were ranked last. The findings also showed students use mobile devices to access course materials, doing class work, send and receive e-mails and taking and sharing of notes but virtual classroom, discussion forums and using pre-recorded lecturers with PowerPoint were ranked among the last three (3). This study recommends that Smartphone's and mobile devices should be allowed to use by students, lecturer to start virtual classroom, discussion forums and using pre-recorded lecturers with PowerPoint so that the students can also benefit from these functionalities since they were ranked among the last three(3) services not used.
Mobile Learning in Higher Education: Mapping Perceptions and Practices of Online Students
ICERI proceedings, 2019
Mobile-learning is still an emergent field of research, especially if we consider the scope of higher education (HE). In fact, few studies have been developed with regard to higher education contexts, namely within Open Universities [1], [2], [3], [4]. Given the importance of studying mobility in real learning contexts, we aim at studying the perceptions that higher education students have about mobile and non-mobile devices and also how they describe their uses and practices in different types of interactions in online courses at a Distance Virtual University. In this context it was intended to know a) what are the students' perceptions about the affordances of various mobile and non-mobile devices, and b) what types of devices do students prefer to use in interactions with teachers, with other students and with contents. The data obtained in this study show that there is some discrepancy between students' perceptions of mobile devices, their educational potential and their actual use. The actual use of mobile devices seems to be much more conservative than we would be led to assume from the discourse of learning everywhere at any time with any device.
Mobile Information Access in Higher Education
2008
Abstract This paper describes the implementation and integration of a m-Learning interface into the existing University-wide e-Learning System. Thereby existing content and information from the e-learning environment is automatically styled and provided in a way, which is accessible for most mobile devices. Incompatible content is filtered out.
Identifying the Collage Student's Perception Level of Mobile Learning
There have been great improvements in mobile technologies recently. In line with these developments, the use of mobile technologies in web based distance learning seems to be increasing day by day making learning possible via mobile devices. Both the continuous and rapid developments in mobile devices and the growing number of people with mobile phones render these technologies fruitful and actively used in many fields, including education worldwide, inclusive of our own country. Mobile learning is regarded as a reliable distant education tool for learners who wish to continue their education from outside the institutions. The study was conducted to measure the reactions of individuals to the developed mobile applications and give insight to them. The aim of this study is to identify undergraduate students' use and attitudes of/towards mobile learning who are studying at Trakya University Kesan Yusuf Capraz School of Applied Disciplines. Observations were made about the use and the importance of mobile learning in our lives. Peer-review under responsibility of of the organizing committee of GLOBE-EDU
Supporting University Learning Through Mobile Technologies: A Global Perspective
The workplace in the modern world continues to demand higher qualifications and refined competencies. In the recent past, workers would respond to such demands through learning by correspondence. When the Internet and e-Learning emerged, it received widespread accolade as a solution to the challenges experienced by distant learners. The technology was also seen as an opportunity for educational institutions to leverage their technological uptake to benefit regular students. However, desktop computers and Internet connectivity, which were the drivers of e-learning technologies, were expensive, bulky and scarce. So when mobile technologies emerged, educationist saw an opportunity for addressing the limitations associated with correspondence, "e" and tethered learning. Mobile devices being cheap, portable and reliable received widespread acceptance and possession. So, educators, hardware designers and program developers started to design hardware and applications that would infuse learning content into the devices. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate the potential of mobile technologies in the education market place, highlighting global initiatives and trends. The paper will also review how universities around the world, Africa and in Kenya have oriented themselves for learning with mobile technologies. The study was a documentary analysis of virtual documents stored electronically for access through the Internet, text books, archival repositories and encyclopedias. The study observed a significant high global mobile ownership and usage rates, but was able to demonstrate that despite its pedagogical advantages, the use of the technology for learning purposes at university level is still at the infantry.
2020
The present research studies the views of students, of the University of Patras, according to the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in the educational process. Answers(of closed and open types questions) of 98 students of various departments of the University of Patras was concentrated and analyzed. The majority of students own smart devices which they use to communicate with each other and to support their studies. The students perceive various obstacles to using mobile devices as well as problems in their use for academic purposes. Suggestions for the use of mobile devices in the educational process are discussed.
Opportunities and Challenges of Mobile Learning That University Students Encounter in the UAE
International research in higher education, 2017
This study presents preliminary results based on a survey administrated to a sample of 400 students enrolled in undergraduate courses offered at a Higher Education Institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The paper examines opportunities and challenges university students face when instructors introduce-structured‖ mobile learning in higher education. In part, this article presents qualitative findings of the larger study involving a subset of the sample, to gain in-depth data. Closed-ended and open-ended questions probed students' experiences and perceptions about the use of mobile devices in academic work. Findings reported in this paper focus on students' perceptions on opportunities and challenges. The analysis revealed that a majority of students used iPads, cell phones, and laptop computers to study anytime and anywhere. Respondents reported that these technological devices enabled students to meet deadlines faster than students without mobile devices. In addition, students indicated that they faced difficulties accessing Internet networks in most places. This phenomenon has afflicted students' productivity and efficiency levels, since most academic work required Web searches and Internet connectivity. Nevertheless, students benefited a great deal in using such mobile technological devices and admitted that the benefits outweighed the challenges they encountered.