Use of mobile devices by students to support learning in universities: a case of Muni university

Abstract

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.