Abstract
<p>The unprecedented expansion of wireless technologies and the global pandemic of 2020-2021, which forced many educational establishments out of traditional face-to-face and into online instructional environments, have created an urgency for achieving a better understanding of the various education-related uses of mobile phones, and students’ attitudes toward them, worldwide. We conducted a questionnaire-based study to explore college undergraduate students’ perceptions and uses of mobile phones, with a focus on instructor-student communication and classroom use, across three diverse cultural contexts: Ukraine, Oman, and the United States. Based on our findings, we suggest that conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools and situating their use within cultural discourses illuminates how – and explains why – mobile phones are not “the same” tools for all students. The findings offer insights into students’ (developing) perspectives on uses of mobile phones, and provide grounds from which to formulate productive, and culturally appropriate, means of using them for educational purposes.</p><p> </p>
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic, in forcing educational institutions worldwide to switch to online modes of instruction, has brought into sharp relief differences between face-to-face and online teaching and learning, and has renewed the importance of a nuanced, context-specific understanding of students’ uses and perceptions of new communication technology, notably their seemingly omnipresent mobile phones
This finding might have resulted from a lack of romantic involvement among first-year-students; for example, one female Ukrainian student wrote on her questionnaire: “У мене немає хлопця!!/I do not have a boyfriend!!” While most American and Ukrainian students viewed their mobile phones as a resource for connecting with a romantic partner, the situation is different in Oman because private interactions between members of the opposite sex outside family are culturally discouraged, even prohibited
Our study provides a glimpse into students’ perceptions of mobile phones in Ukraine, Oman, and the United States and indicates that students’ beliefs about and uses of mobile phones are shaped by cultural discourses, or understandings of personhood, relationships, and communication
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic, in forcing educational institutions worldwide to switch to online modes of instruction, has brought into sharp relief differences between face-to-face and online teaching and learning, and has renewed the importance of a nuanced, context-specific understanding of students’ uses and perceptions of new communication technology, notably their seemingly omnipresent mobile phones. Analyzing survey data we collected in 2012-2014, we advance the idea that mobile phones are productively conceptualized, by both instructors and researchers, as “cultural tools” [1] that only make sense in the context of specific “cultural discourses” [2] This understanding provides the groundwork for the development of culturally appropriate practices regarding uses of phones for teaching and learning. Conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools, and situating their use within cultural discourses, enhances our ability to understand how people of various cultural backgrounds orient to and use them, and in turn shape them, illuminating the roles mobile phones play for different students in different cultural and educational contexts and at different moments in time. We emphasize implications of our study, identify limitations, and offer concluding remarks in which we summarize our findings and suggest directions for future research
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