Abstract:

Globally we observe the rapid increase and spreading of COVID-19. The corona pandemic forced education institutions to transform teaching and learning and find innovative and creative ways to keep learning in disruption. Most of the education institution adopted flexible online learning to deliver learning content, activities and assessments to students. Research shows that most of the students currently entering higher education institutions own their own devices. This implies that some universities have taken advantage of students’ mobile devices and used during teaching, because it allow anytime and anywhere learning. These authors advocated the bring your own device strategy that encouraged flexible learning by providing students with the opportunity to realise the need and the value of their devices in learning process. Currently, Corona virus staggered impacts on global education system, which led to lockdown and stay at home around the world. This led to the South African government and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology to follow the global trend to close all universities and post-school institutions to limit the spread of COVID-19. In fact, the closer of universities and post-school institutions was experiences first in China as the results of the coronavirus pandemic. In this regard, this author stated that China encouraged their professors to use online teaching instead of in-class teaching. This movement was also observed in Africa as the Association of African Universities urged the universities in Africa to urgently employ alternative methods of delivering teaching and learning using technology and other distance learning techniques. Research shows that there is a likelihood for online learning to remain in future.

As much as university lecturers adopted online learning, it is imperative to investigate students’ behavioural intention to access to learning material, access to the Internet and the technology device they use while at home. This is a period of social distancing, which permit the students an opportunity to use their mobile devices and other technologies for learning at home. It is for this reason that this study seek to examine students’ behavioural intent to use mobile device for learning at home in times of COVID-19. It is pointed out that behaviour helps to recognize how peoples’ behaviour can be changed when employing the technological application. In this study, behavioural intention is the measure of the likelihood of a person employing mobile devices [5]. Participants were 373 students consist of 61.1% female and 38.9% male register for Agriculture Mechanisation I and Agriculture Extension I at a study university of technology in South Africa. Their age ranged between 18 and 27 years. Quantitative method was used. Data were collected by means of Technology Acceptance Model instruments. For this paper, the focus was on behavioural intention to use mobile device as the measure relevant to learning at home in times of COVID-19. The results revealed that 72.6% of students intend to carry on utilizing their mobile device to learn even after the termination of lockdown. The results showed that 57.6% of students did not have a desire to use their mobile data to access learning material online during this period. It is recommended that universities in South Africa collaborate with industry for the zero-rating data for the students to be able to access university study material online.

Keywords:

Students, behavioural intention, mobile devices, mobile learning, online learning, COVID-19, coronavirus, lockdown.