3.4 Adoption and Use of Mobile Phones by University Students and Academic Staff 55
3.4.3 Uses of Mobile Phones Among Students and Academic Staff
The question of how a mobile phone is used is mainly determined by the kind of functionality or features it embraces, status of the user, user’s information needs, and more. Mobile phones are becoming more sophisticated each passing day following the release of new models. The feature phone embraces most of the basic functions such as voice calling, SMS text messaging, alarms, games, and others. Smartphones, on the contrary, have computer like capabilities (Hsiao, 2013; Lippincott, 2010), hence able to perform more functions than most feature phones. Besides the functionalities embedded in feature phones, smartphones are also able to do video calling, send and receive e-mails and multi-media messages (MMS), capture still images and videos, use a GPS navigation system, and others (Yu, 2012; Lippincott, 2010).
3.4.3.1 Uses of Mobile Phones Among Students
A critical analysis of the available literature reveals that students use their mobile phones in so many ways. Some of the popular uses are general, educational, and library-related
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activities. A Bradley and Holley (2010) study that reported first-year students’ uses of mobile phones at London Metropolitan University from 2005 to 2009 revealed students’ heavy use of the communicative function of mobile phone (calls and SMS text messaging). The use of the internet search function for research purposes was found to be equally on the increase.
Another study conducted by Song and Lee (2012) of international students enrolled at the College of Business at the University of Illinois indicated that students’ uses of mobile phones fell into five broad categories. These are (1) communication (such as e-mail, video communications, text messaging); (2) social networking (such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs);
(3) information search (such as news, online libraries, databases, current events); (4) entertainment (such as videos, music, games); and (5) other (such as scheduling, shopping, banking). These results signify that the mobile phone was a device that impacted on every segment of the students’ lives. These findings were corroborated in an ECAR (2014) study of undergraduate USA students. This study identified the top five education-related activities the students performed using their mobile phones as communicating with other students about class-related matters outside class sessions; checking grades; looking up information while in class; using the course or learning management system; accessing information about events, student activities, and clubs/organizations; and reading e-texts (Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014). However, the main difference between the two studies is that whilst social networking featured highly in the study conducted among students at the University of Illinois, it did not feature at all in the ECAR (2014) national study of undergraduate students. Since the two studies differed in terms of focus in that the former looked at general uses of smartphones whilst the latter looked at educational uses, the implication could be that social networking tools may not be used much among USA university students for educational purposes. It is also worth noting that much as students were very keen to use mobile phones for educational purposes, their attempts were frustrated by the actions of academic staff who either created very few assignments that incorporated mobile technology or banned the use of mobile phones in class, as they feared that they would distract students from the learning process (Brooks, 2015; Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014; Dahlstrom and Brooks, 2014).
Balakrishnan and Raj (2012) carried out a mixed methods study that used both questionnaires and 24 hour diaries to study, among others, usage patterns of mobile phones among Malaysian University Students. Results of the study indicate that most of the students (97.7%) used their mobile phones 5 to 10 times daily regardless of application (call, internet search, text messaging, and others). The study further shows that students made the majority
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of their calls (96.3%) to close friends and families while the rest were random calls. Most of the calls (54.5%) were made with the aim of making, confirming and cancelling appointments related to studies and social activities, fewer (23.7%) for gossiping, for maintaining social relationships (18.3%) and other activities (3.5%). Likewise, most of the calls (98.8%) were received from close friends and family, and the rest (1.2%) were random calls. Although results of this study acknowledge that students used more than one mobile phone application, most of its findings centre on the call function unlike other studies reviewed earlier that show use of more mobile phone features (Song and Lee, 2012; Bradley and Holley, 2010). Findings of this study resemble previous ones as they highlight the use of the mobile phone to students as that of facilitating educational and social activities. Though the study’s findings are illuminating, the methodological approach is prone to error. The use of a 24 hour diary as a data collection method for phone usage is faulty because measuring students’ uses of mobile phones over such a short period of time may give wrong results. It is possible that some of the students may not feel the need to make calls during that time.
Moreover, some other activities are time-oriented. For instance, students may make more calls to colleagues on class related activities during a week day and not weekends. Social activities may also happen frequently during weekends so students may make more calls related to this activity during that time.
Similar to the study by Bradley and Holley (2010), a study of mobile phone usage among Finish undergraduate students conducted by Haverila (2013) found that the call and SMS functions were the most heavily used applications as they were used on a daily basis. The two studies, however, differed in that while the former indicated that Internet use was on the rise, the latter found it to be moderately used. Other results from the study conducted by Haverila (2013) showed that the calendar accounted for the second heaviest use while music, notes and calculator were moderately used with most of the respondents using them 2-3 times a week.
This study showed gender differences too in terms of mobile phone usage whereby female users were found to be heavier users of the calendar, internet, music and email. Nonetheless, results of the study did not show any differences in terms of usage of the call and SMS function between males and females contrary to previous studies (Henderson et al., 2002;
Jackson et al., 2001) whose findings revealed that females used mobile phones for interpersonal communication (calling and SMS) more than males. Furthermore, the research findings did not find any differences in usage of games between males and females hence
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contradict findings of a study by Reinhard and Dervin (2009 cited by Haverila, 2013, p. 181) who found out males to be heavy users of games than females.
3.4.3.2 Uses of Mobile Phones Among Academic Staff
Karim et al (2010) carried out a survey on mobile phone appropriation of students and staff at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) involving 201 participants. Findings of this study indicated that the main purposes for using the mobile phone were to contact family, for scheduling purposes, for emergency contact or personal safety, to socialise with friends, to discuss with colleagues (job-related matters), for education purposes and for business-related purposes. On the other hand, SMS, alarm clock, voice call, calendar, address book, camera and music were the most common features that were used. Similarly, studies conducted by Haverila (2013) and Bradley and Holley (2010) found SMS to be a heavily used application. However, both studies differ from the present one in that while calls were the other heavily used feature, the present study found that it did not feature among the most used functions. The study by Karim et al (2010) further showed some variations in terms of mobile phone usage between students and academic staff. Besides being overall heavier users of mobile phone features outlined above, students were also found to use mobile phones more for scheduling purposes, for emergency contact, to socialise with friends, and for education purposes than academic staff. Academic staff, conversely, used mobile phones for business- related purposes more than students. The findings of this study partly agree with those obtained in another Malaysian study conducted by Balakrishnan and Raj (2012) who found that most of the students made calls on education-related and social activities. The only difference between the two studies is that while education was the main reason for making calls in the study done by Balakrishnan and Raj (2012), social contact featured highly in this study under review. The study conducted by Karim et al (2010) also found that age and gender had a moderating effect on usage. In this regard, women were found to use SMS, alarm clock, camera, and music more than males. While all the respondents showed a very high use of mobile phones for family contact, those with ages between 25 and 35 (mean 4.80) and those between 35 and 50 (mean 4.67) showed significantly higher usage for family contact than those with age 18-24 (mean 4.51) and those above 50 years (mean 4.38). Since the study found that most of the students fell within the age ranges of 18-24, it can therefore be concluded that academic staff used mobile phones more for family contact than the students.
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Another study conducted by Ruleman (2012) at the University of Central Missouri found that academic staff and students differed sharply in their use of mobile phones. This study revealed that almost half of the students (46%) used their mobile phone to access the Internet on a daily basis and almost a third (30%) spent three hours or more per week online on their mobile phone. Faculty did not use the Internet much but almost one-third (32%) went online on a daily basis and 22% spent three hours or more per week accessing the Internet with their mobile phone. However, only few students (15%) and academic staff (7%) still used their phones even when a laptop was available. Similarly, a study conducted by Karim et al (2010) found that students used mobile phones more than academic staff.
3.5 The Current Status of Providing and Accessing Library and Information Services