Abstract:

In Malaysia, the subscription of mobile phones had surpassed the number of desktop and broadband users with a penetration rate of 119.2 per every 100 people in the year 2012, according to the statistics of Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. Despite the surge in mobile phone ownerships, many universities in Malaysia are yet to use mobile phones as an education tool in the classroom due to the concerns such as class distraction, security, increased cheating possibility and restricted wireless connectivity. Currently, there are limited studies on mobile learning in Malaysian universities. Most of the past studies concentrated solely on SMS usage in exchanging information and it is still unknown whether Malaysian university students are keen and prepared to adopt mobile phones in learning and acquiring new knowledge.

Driven by the widespread mobile phone usage among students and claims from educational experts worldwide that students will become more motivated and interested in acquiring new knowledge when mobile learning are in place, this study is carried out to investigate the attitude and preparedness of Malaysian university students over the use of mobile devices inside the classroom for knowledge acquisition purposes.

The researchers started the research by introducing mobile learning to a randomly selected class of 60 university students, aged between 18-23 years old. The participating students were required to complete exercises and quizzes by using mobile phones in class. Questionnaires were distributed to the participating students immediately after the mobile learning session to gauge the first-hand responses about their attitudes and preparedness towards mobile learning. Structural equation modeling was run to analyze the data as it allows in-depth examination of a simultaneous relationship among endogenous and exogenous variables and presents parsimonious analysis results.

The results of this study showed that the respondents were highly satisfied and welcome the usage of mobile phones for mobile learning in classrooms. Real-time assessments, class inclusion, personalized learning, easy to access content interface, low-cost mobile application and communication and collaboration are key factors affecting Malaysian university students’ attitude and preparedness towards using mobile learning.

This study provides insights to university practitioners to create conducive mobile learning environment in support of current teaching and learning activities. This study also proposes useful recommendations to mobile phone designers and developers to create user-friendly and user-centred mobile applications and tools to facilitate and expedite knowledge acquisitions in Malaysian universities.

This paper presented the findings of a preliminary research which offers and introduces a new perspective on mobile phone usage for mobile learning among Malaysian university students. Actual mobile learning research which involves 500 university students will be conducted in near future.

Keywords:

Mobile learning, class collaboration, mobile content, university.