Abstract
As India has the world’s second largestmobile phone user base (over 929.37 million users, May 2011) and Wireless communication has emerged as one of the fastest diffusing media on the planet, fuelling an emergent’ mobile youth culture’, it will be interesting to explore the attitude of undergraduate students towards the use of mobile phones for educational purposes. We all know that mobile phones provide multitude of features and services so much so that mobile phone has become an important part and parcel of everyday modern life. Thus, increased popularity of cell and smart phones in recent years has attracted research attention. The present study seeks to discover whether it is blissful for students regarding their studies and whether there remain significant differences in their attitude towards using mobile phones for educational purpose with respect to gender, medium of education, academic discipline and residence of the undergraduate students particularly focusing on the three main dimensions of usability, barriers and preferability of using mobile phones for educational purpose. The study deals with 100 samples comprising of both males and females from different colleges under University of Calcutta. Data tools included a General Information Schedule and a questionnaire. Significant differences were noted in the attitude of the students with respect to gender, medium of education and residence while with respect to academic discipline the difference in the attitude of undergraduate students was insignificant.
Highlights
Mobile phones are arguably another revolutionary invention of our time, besides computer and internet technologies
Research Questions Whether the attitude of undergraduate students towards mobile phone use for educational purposes differs with respect to gender? Whether the attitude of undergraduate students towards mobile phone use for educational purposes differs with respect to educational stream? Whether the attitude of undergraduate students towards mobile phone use for educational purposes differs with respect to medium of education? Whether the attitude of undergraduate students towards mobile phone use for educational purposes differs with respect to habitat of the undergraduate students
The results focused separately on the attitude of undergraduate students towards using mobile phone for educational purpose based on the four variables namely, gender (Table 1), academic discipline (Table 2), medium of education(Table 3) and area of residence(Table
Summary
Mobile phones are arguably another revolutionary invention of our time, besides computer and internet technologies. Ferry (2009) describes that modern mobile phones can be used to help students to access web based contents, remix it, share it, collaborate with others and create media rich deliverable for the classroom teachers as well as global audience.Rather than seeing mobile phones as troublesome devices, educators should seek to exploit the potential of the technologies learners bring with them and find ways to put them into good use for the benefit of learning practice (Sharples, 2003). Many studies (Attewell, 2005; Chen & Kinshuk, 2005; Murat, S et al, 2008) have already proved that mobile technologies have considerable potential to enhance teaching and learning across all education sectors. Their impact on student behaviour, enthusiasm, motivation and progress is well acknowledged (Rau et al 2008), especially in some conventional schools in abroad e.g. U.K. Their impact on student behaviour, enthusiasm, motivation and progress is well acknowledged (Rau et al 2008), especially in some conventional schools in abroad e.g. U.K. (Cook et al 2007)
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