THESIS OF BACHELOR OF EDUCATION (1.

5 year)

EFFECTS OF MOBILE PHONE ON STUDENT’S

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY

SCHOOL LEVEL IN TEHSIL ADENZAI DSITT: DIR

(LOWER) KPK, PAKISTAN

Submitted By: Mr. SAJJAD ALI

ROLL No. BK635579

REG NO: 10NDL01509

SupervisedBy: Mr. Maslih Uddin

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD

i
 SESSION (2017-2018) (1.5 YEAR)

APPROVAL FORM

The research project attached hereto, titled “Effects of mobile phone on student’s
Academic performance of Secondary School level in Tehsil Adenzai Dsitt: Dir
(Lower) KPK, Pakistan” Proposed and submitted by SAJJAD ALI Roll No:BK635579
Registration No. 10NLD01509 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of B.Ed.
(1.5 year) is hereby accepted.

Supervisor: ________________________(Signature)

Evaluator: ________________________(Signature)

Dated: _________________

ii
 DECLARATION

I Sajjad Ali, Roll No. BK635579 Registration No. 10NLD01509 a student of B.Ed.

(1.5) at Allama Iqbal Open University do hereby solemnly declare that the research

project entitled “Effects of mobile phone on student’s Academic performance of

Secondary School level in Tehsil Adenzai Dsitt: Dir (Lower) KPK, Pakistan”

submitted by me in partial fulfillment of B.Ed. (1.5 year) programme, is my original

work, and has not been submitted or published earlier. I also solemnly declare that it

shall not, in future, be submitted by me for obtaining any other degree from this or

any other university or institution. I also understand that if evidence of plagiarism is

found in my thesis/dissertation at any stage, even after the award of a degree, the

work may be cancelled and the degree revoked.

Date: ______________ ______________________

(Day-Month-Year) Signature of Candidate

Name of Candidate _________________

RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMISSION APPROVAL FORM

iii
 (SUPERVISOR)
Research Project entitled “Effects of mobile phone on student’s Academic
performance of Secondary School level in Tehsil Adenzai Dsitt: Dir (Lower)
KPK, Pakistan” Submitted by Sajjad Ali, Roll No. BK635579 Registration No.
10NLD01509 Programme: B. ED (1.5 Years) has been read by me and has been found
to be satisfactory regarding its quality, content, language, format, citations,
bibliographic style, and consistency, and thus fulfils the qualitative requirements of
this study. It is ready for submission to Allama Iqbal Open University for evaluation.

____________________________Name of Supervisor
_____________________________Date
____________________________ Signature of Supervisor

Abstract
Mobile phones have become the most popular way to communicate with other
individuals. While cell phones have become less of a status symbol and more of a
fashion statement, they have created an unspoken social dependency. The School

iv
going and teenagers are more likely to engage in SMS messaging, making phone
calls, accessing the internet from their phone or playing a mobile driven game.
Sensation seeking behavior has also linked to the students especially at secondary
level with age 14 to 18 to have the desire to take risks with relationships, rules and
roles. Yet in Pakistan and especially in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, mobile phones are
strictly prohibited in schools. It has been demonstrated that individuals with low self –
esteem use cell phones to form and maintain social relationships. They form an
attachment with cell phone which molded their mind that they cannot function
without their cell phone on a day-to-day basis. In this context, the study attempts to
examine the extent of use of mobile phone and its influence on the academic
performance of the students of secondary level in Tehsil Adenzai of Distt: Dir (lower)
kpk Pakistan. This study examined parents’, teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the
effects of students’ access to mobile phones on students learning performance. A face
to face survey using structured questionnaire was the method used to elicit the
opinions of students between the age group of 14-18 years in 10 High and Higher
Secondary Schools covering all the Schools in Tehsil Adenzai Distt: Dir (Lower). The
survey was administered among 200 students, parents and teachers through two stage
random sampling to select the High and Higher Secondary Schools and respondents
from these Schools, with 20 students, parents and teachers from each School. The
participants are School going at high and higher secondary level and were mobile
phone users. Each of the survey responses was entered. The collected data had been
used to work out the distribution of samples in terms of percentages for each specified
parameter.
Keywords: Mobile Phones, School Going Students, Academic Performance, Learning
Skills.

Table of Contents
CHAPTER 01........................................................................................................1

v
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................1

1.1 BACKGROUND.............................................................................................1
CHAPTER 02........................................................................................................4

LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................4

2.1 MOBILE PHONE AND ITS EMERGENCE IN PAKISTAN........................6

2.2 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE...................................................................7
CHAPTER 03........................................................................................................8

METHODOLOGY................................................................................................8

CHAPTER 04......................................................................................................10

RESULT AND DISCUSSION..............................................................................10

4.1 DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION.............................................10

4.2 OPINION TO HAVE RULES FOR MOBILE PHONE USE IN SCHOOLS..
.......................................................................................................................10
CHAPTER 05......................................................................................................21

CONCLUSION....................................................................................................21

References............................................................................................................22

vi
 CHAPTER 01

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Mobile phones have become an almost essential part of daily life since their rapid
growth in popularity in the late 1990s. A nationwide survey conducted in 2017 shows
that mobile phones are the most necessary medium of communication for adolescents.
The growth rate of smart phone usage in Pakistan is continuously increasing day by
day. Most probably at the end of 2017, Pakistan will have 160 million smart phone
users. Moreover, the continuous growth is expected to touch 8 percent mark in
coming years. The main reason of this growth is the launch
of 3G and 4G technologies in Pakistan. Mobile phone users reach 140.5 million in
Pakistan. It has virtually affected the society’s accessibility, security, safety and
coordination of business and social activities and has hence become a part of culture
of the whole world. The traditional agents of socialisation are families and schools.
With the expansion of educational system as a result of the need for highly skilled
workers lead to the school system taking increasing larger responsibilities in
socialisation. Surprisingly, research on the influence of mobile phone on our school
today has not been given much attention.
There is the conflicting priority of young people, parents and teachers in relation to
the mobile phone device, with teachers more concerned about issues such as
discipline in the classroom and parents worried about means of contacting their
children at every point in time. In the literature, there is overwhelming evidence of the
negative impact of social media (Paul et al., 2012)[1], especially Facebook (Junco,
2012; Meier et al., 2016) [2,3], and smartphone usage on academic performance
(Lepp et al., 2015; Samaha & Hawi, 2016)[4,5]. These technologies combined lead to
a series of behaviors that cause students to dedicate more time to them than actually

1
studying. Usually, surveys are used to identify correlations between students behavior
and their academic performances, coupled with scales that understand different
metrics of students behaviour.
However, using surveys often fails to fully capture these behaviors. In fact, (Lee et al.,
2017)[6] finds that users underestimate their usage time by 40% than reported, while
(Boase & Ling, 2013)[7], although focusing only on SMS and calls, notes that self-
reports suffer from low criterion validity and lead especially to over reporting usage,
in contrast with (Lee et al., 2017)[5]. Furthermore, (Andrews et al., 2015)[8] notes
that users show great lack of awareness of the frequency with which they check their
phone. On the other hand, works studying smart phone usage and social media tend to
focus on addictedness (Lee et al., 2017)[5]. These studies investigate students since it
is a sample of population very susceptible to smart phone penetration, but they do not
attempt to correlate smart phone usage patterns to academic life. Thus there is a gap
between this work on addictedness and sociological surveys on academic
performance, since the former could be exploited to effectively corroborate the latter
with usage logs. We propose to bridge this gap via a systematic approach consisting
in defining new metrics for representing social media usage and using smart phones to
both track app usage and administer time diaries (Sorokin & Berger, 1939)[10], a well
known sociological tool for understanding people's time use. This innovative coupling
allows us to isolate the time of specific activities related to academic performance and
provide new insights on behavioral correlations. We apply this approach on a subset
of data about social media apps from the Smart Unit project (Giunchiglia et al.,
2017b)[11], which aims at correlating the time management of students and their
academic performances, this also covers how they manage their time when interacting
with social media. We extract social media usage from students' smart phones during
specific activities related to School life, i.e., studying and attending classes, and
compare it with respect to their grades and credits obtained. Results show that there is
a negative correlation between the use of social media and academic performance,
with different patterns depending on the activity.

2
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a review of
the literature and the main issues with respect to sociological surveys and studies on
addictedness. Section 3 describes our proposed solution, while Section 4 explains the
data set it is based on, i.e., Smart Unit. Section 5 shows our results and provides their
discussion. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper, and illustrates implications and
limitations of our work.

3
 CHAPTER 02

LITERATURE REVIEW

Studies using smart phones on students to understand the link between addictedness
and usage usually divide them in two groups (potential addicts and non addicts) based
the Smart phone Addiction Scale (Kwon et al., 2013), which consists of ten items in a
six-point Likert-type scale (1 = \I absolutely disagree", 6 = \I absolutely agree"). (Lee
et al., 2014) used it on 95 students and then had them install the Smart Logger
software to record specific events related to users' interactions with their phones, e.g.,
touch, text input and active/ inactive events. The extracted patterns indicate that addict
risk groups tended to spend more time on their apps, focusing on those that gave them
instant gratifications, e.g., entertainment. Similarly, (Lee et al., 2017) had 35 students
download an application that monitored their smart phone usage for 6 weeks. Results
show that while messenger apps were the most used applications for both groups,
addicts strongly preferred social media applications.
Students are also the main sample investigated in reality mining (Eagle & Pentland,
2006)[12]. In terms of social media, the Copenhagen Networks Study (Stopczynski et
al., 2014)[13] is currently collecting data on 1,000 students by coupling smartphone
data with face-to-face interactions and Facebook usage; however, they do not consider
these data in relation to students' academic performance. In terms of academic
performance, the SmartGPA study (Wang et al., 2015)[14] used data from the Student
Life study (Wang et al., 2014)[15], which analyzed the impact of workload on several
mental and physical aspects of students' life, e.g. mood and sociability, of a class of
48 students across a 10 week term, to show that there is evidence of a link between
the students' grades and their behaviour. However, (Wang et al., 2015) did not
consider social media usage to analyze their impact on students' career, although this
type of information was collected.
In the sociological community, studies show that there is a negative relation between

4
social media usage and academic performance. For instance, (Rosen et al., 2013)[16
investigated the behavior and settings of study for 263 students of different levels of
education, i.e., middle school, high school, and university. Observers controlled
students for 15 min and recorded their on-task and off-task behavior every minute. On
average, students became distracted in less than 6 minutes before switching to
technological distractions such as social media and texting. (Junco, 2012)[17] focused
on how Facebook use is related to academic performance, by surveying 1839 college
students on their use of Facebook and then comparing it to their grades. The results
indicate that a negative correlation exists between time spent on Facebook and grades.
Overall, it appears that social media provide students with immediate pleasure in
comparison to other activities such as studying or attending lessons (Jacobsen &
Forste, 2011)[18].
Much like social media, using smart phones also negatively affects academic
performance (Al-Barashdi et al., 2015)[19]; indeed, social media are becoming more
and more synonymous with usage with smart phones. In fact, (Jeong et al., 2016)
[20]notices that social networks can be used to predict smart phone addiction in users
due to their pervasiveness and connectivity. These features of smart phones lead to
multitasking (Lepp et al., 2015), i.e., the use of social media while doing something
else, which is detrimental to the time dedicated to academic activities. (Lepp et al.,
2015) conducted a survey on US college students, analyzing their notions of self
efficacy and self-regulation, i.e., how well they believe that they can attain their goals
and how they can regulate and control themselves when using smar tphones. Those
students with low self-regulation turned out to be the one whose usage of smart
phones affects their academic performance the most. In terms of demographics, (Al-
Barashdi et al., 2015) suggests that gender and field of study may act as addiction
predictors. From their review of the literature, it appears that males and humanities
students tend to be more susceptible to smart phone addiction.
However, some research highlights how surveys used to establish these correlations
may be unreliable, leading to an approximation of actual usage (Lee et al., 2017;

5
Boase & Ling, 2013; Andrews et al., 2015)[21,22]. One reason is that surveys are
based on aggregate data from `stylized" questions (Juster & Stafford, 1985)[23], e.g., \
How many times a day on average do you check your smart phone?" (Gok cearslan et
al., 2016)[24], which force users to recall activities and finding an appropriate form of
averaging (Kan & Pudney, 2008)[25]. On the other hand, works relying on smart
phone data for analyzing usage tend to focus on addictedness on its own (Lee et al.,
2017, 2014) or do not correlate usage patterns to academic performance (Wang et al.,
2015).

2.1 Mobile Phone and its Emergence in Pakistan

People in developing nations, including Pakistan, are quickly catching up on their

adoption of technology, especially mobile and social media use. Recent research
shows that emerging countries are adopting mobile phones at a very fast pace. 82 per
cent of the adult population of Kenya now owns a mobile phone, while 63% in
Mexico have adopted the use of cellphones in their daily lives. Over the past decade,
mobile phone ownership grew at an astoundingly fast rate in Pakistan, with 53% of
the adult population now owning a cellphone, up from just 5pc in 2002.
Ownership of smart phones, however, was less common in countries other than the
US, where more than half the adult population owns a smart phone. In Pakistan, only
3% of the population owns a smart phone, while the remaining 50% still use feature
phones. In Lebanon, a remarkable 45% of people have now switched to using smart
phones. The Pew Research Center says age plays a major factor in smart phone
adoption as people under 30 across the world are more likely to own smart devices.
Texting and taking pictures is the most common activity among cell phone users. A
median of 54% of mobile phone users worldwide say they take pictures and video
regularly. In Pakistan, 19% of mobile phone users say they take pictures or videos.
29% say they get health information using their phones, while 38% use them for text

messaging. Ironically, a very small percentage of people in Pakistan even have access
to landlines. According to a Pew report, only 4% of people surveyed said they had a

6
working landline telephone in their house (DAWN.COM update April 10, 2015
11:07AM) [26].

2.2 Theoretical Perspective

Erikson (1968) [27], in his psychosocial theory, describes post adolescence as a

period of searching for identity. Young adults struggle with identifying who they are,
to what group they belong and who they want to be. Elkind (1967) [28], in his theory
on adolescent egocentrism, pointed out heightened self-consciousness during
adolescence. Young adults also become extremely self-conscious and pay significant
attention to what peers think of them. Both Erikson and Elkind highlighted increased
peer influence on youth. An empirical study also confirmed that youth are particularly
susceptible to trends, fashions and styles, which make them more willing to adopt
new technological devices and certain behavioral characteristics (Ling, 2001) [29].
Both theoretical perspectives and previous empirical studies suggest that the recent
rapid increase in cell phones has influenced multiple aspects of our daily lives,
particularly those of young adults. The aim of the current study, therefore, is to
examine how important it is for School students to use and their usage pattern of cell
phone in class rooms, the impact of mobile phone on learning and the effects of
mobile phone on the academic skills acquired age wise and education wise, income
wise and by living status. Gender differences were also examined to provide
additional evidence that clarifies current controversial findings.

7
 CHAPTER 03

METHODOLOGY

The study subjects are students from the High and Higher Secondary Schools in
Tehsil Adenzai Distt: Dir (lower) KPK Pakistan. Quantitative research method was
used to properly analyze and give a clear picture of the study. The population for the
study comprised 40% students of the institution during the 2018 academic session.
This was used as sample for the study. The data obtained for the survey was collected
between February and March 2018. It was collected by issuing out questionnaire to
the respondents. A questions were adopted which provided answers that are easy for
interpretation and tabulation. A total of 65 copies of questionnaire were distributed to
students of these Schools including some Primary schools and a total of 60 were
returned giving a response rate of 88.9%. The returned copies of questionnaire were
analyzed using percentage and frequency count. The study adopted the survey
research design. We considered this method appropriate as it is useful for the study of
non-observable events such as opinions, attitudes preferences or dispositions.
Specifically, the study was a correlation, non-contrived and cross-sectional survey
having individuals (students of Tehsil Adenzai Distt: Dir (lower) KPK Pakistan) as
unit of analysis. The design was such as to discover vital predictive relationship and
degrees of association among variables. In order to analyze the information collected,
the sampling method of research design was adopted. In this work, the simple random
sampling method is adopted. Simple Random Sampling (SRS) is a simple random
sample of a given size; all such subsets of the frame are given an equal probability.
Furthermore, any given pair of elements has the same chance of selection as any other
such pair. This minimizes bias and simplifies analysis of results. In particular, the
variance between individual results within the sample is a good indicator of variance
in the overall population, which makes it relatively easy to estimate the accuracy of
results. The study population consisted of all students of the Tehsil Adenzai Distt: Dir

8
(lower) KPK Pakistan. Thus students were randomly selected in Schools to administer
the questionnaire. It is expected therefore that the findings of the study will have
equal applicability to other students in the schools. The survey questionnaire was
accordingly, administered physically and taken back immediately and some after few
days.
This is dependent on the choice of the individual making up the sample size. A self-
administered process whereby the respondent himself reads the questions and records
answer without the assistance of an interviewer. The questionnaire was designed to
collect relevant information the questions were numbered for easy references and
arranged so that the respondents can understand easily the reason and important
attached each question. The form of questionnaire used provided on easy quick way
of collecting objective information from primary sources without necessary allowing
the respondents to strain his or her brain for answers. This paper made use of the
content validity to determine the validity of the work. Also we made use of test-retest
method, in order to test for reliability, out of forty questionnaire returned, 15
questions were marked for test-retest.

9
 CHAPTER 04

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Data Analysis and Interpretation

In response to the question asking the purpose for using cell phone in class room, the
respondents revealed that they send SMS in classrooms in the top order of priority and
read SMS received (table 01). They tend to also answer voice calls and make voice
calls as well from the class room. Majority (42.1%) of respondents told that they
should not use mobile phones on School. 30.7% of respondents said that they should
not use mobiles in class rooms. But 23.9% of respondents said that there are no rules
in their Schools.
Table 01: Mobile phones in class rooms
No. Not taking Sending Reading Answering a Making a Weighted
to School SMS in class SMS in voice call in voice call sum
class class in class
1 70 140 140 100 80 510

4.2 Opinion to have rules for mobile phone use in Schools

A clear majority (57.6%) of respondents opined that they should have rules for mobile
phone usage in School and 22.4% negated the opinion. The impact of mobile phone
on student learning is examined in a 5 point Likert scale. Majority (82.1%) of
respondents revealed that the frequent use of mobile phone sometimes interferes their
learning whereas 76.4% are of the agreement that it also assists them in learning
sometimes. 31.6% of the respondents are of the opinion that the calls/messages
10
received just before class impact on their ability to concentrate sometimes and 51.2%
said it happens to them always. 33.9% said that the use of mobile during their study
time distract them sometimes and 47.4% said it also assists them in learning. The
results give a balanced opinion for or against the use of mobile phone on learning and
their study and indicates that in the current era the use of mobile phone in School and
in classes has significant negative impact on student learning see table 02.
Table 02: Impact of mobile phone use on learning
Variable Never Seldom sometimes Often Always Total
How does Mobile 20 15 15 82 100 232
Phone in class
interfere your
learning?
How does the use of 10 20 10 123 100 263
Mobile Phone in class
assist your learning?
How the 15 10 10 110 120 265
calls/messages
received just before
class impact on your
ability to concentrate?
How the uses of 20 30 10 120 150 330
Mobile Phone during
your study time
distract you?
How the uses of 10 10 20 95 120 255
Mobile Phone during
your study time assist
you in learning?

Mobile phone is also helpful for the students for exchanging of useful information
with their classmates about their studies. Students use this fascinating magic device
also in a very better way. Some of the studies proved that this technology has
increased the academic performance. In this context the study tried to find out the
positive effects on learning achievements of youth. A very few students of (16.7%)
agreed that they can easily contact the teachers for study purposes. Actually this is not
the case in western countries where students and teacher remain in contact frequently

11
through different sources, but here in third world countries like Pakistan and the
specially in the country side of District Dir it is very rare that the student will contact
teacher through mobile or any other social media network. 19.6% strongly agreed that
they contact the teachers for this purpose. 17.3% of respondents agreed that they can
easily contact their classmates for help in studies. 19.3% agreed that their academic
performance has been increased due to mobile technology whereas 61.1% disagreed.
18.2% agreed that mobile phone has helped to increase the level of quality of
education whereas 63.1% disagreed. 41.6% agreed that teachers use mobiles in class
rooms. Majority (46.2%) use it as dictionary/thesaurus/calculator in class rooms and
20.4% strongly agreed see table 03.
Table 03: Positive Effects of mobile phone on learning achievements
Variable Strongly Disagree Agree Strongly Total
disagree agree
I can easily contact the teachers 60 150 05 06 171
for study purposes
I can easily contact classmates 16 10 80 81 187
to get help in studies
My academic performance has 50 120 10 11 191
been increased due to mobile
technology
The teacher uses mobile phone 12 10 80 70 172
in the class room
Students use 90 95 12 42 208
dictionary/thesaurus/calculator
of mobile phone inclasses

A majority (85.9%) is of the agreement that they keep their mobile phones on and the
ring tone disturbs the class and 84.7% are also of strong agreement. 10.00% disagreed
to the statement that they purchased their mobile phone without the permission of
their parents, but 0.00 % agreed and 0.9% strongly agreed. 12.7% disagreed that they
send missed calls to class fellows to disturb classes, but 19% agreed. 19% disagreed
that they waste their time sending/writing SMS during class work, but 80.3% agreed.
19% disagreed that mobile phone has put negative impact on students’ moral values,
but 89.2% agreed. 13.1% disagreed that mobile phone is a waste of time for students,

12
but considerably 81.4% agreed. 10% disagreed to use mobile phone in examination
hall as a source of unfair means, 87.6% agreed, 88.4% strongly agreed. 15% disagreed
to the statement that students tease fellow mates by sending missed calls through
unknown members, but 80.2% agreed as mentioned in table 04. Given the
pervasiveness of cell phones and the acceptability of their use almost anywhere these
days, it’s difficult to imagine successfully enforcing almost any policy in the
classroom and still having time left to teach.
Table 04: Negative Effects of mobile phone on learning achievements
Variable Strongly Disagree Agree Strongly Total
disagree agree
I keep my mobile phone on and 01 10 113 120 244
the ring tone disturbs the class
I purchased the mobile phone 00 12 100 110 222
without the permission of the
parents
I send missed calls to class 10 09 100 120 239
fellows to disturb the classes
I waste my time sending/writing 02 12 101 108 223
SMS during class work
The Mobile Phone has put 13 10 109 110 241
negative impact on students
moral values
The mobile phone is a waste of 11 05 100 115 231
time for students
The students use mobile phone 43 60 32 50 185
in examination hall as a source
of unfair means
Students tease the fellow mates 12 10 86 70 178
by sending missed calls through
unknown members
Mobile phone is responsible for 00 01 111 120 232
my low academic performance

Many research studies all over the world reported that rampant use of mobile phones,
social networking, texting and chatting on mobile phones result in lower grades and
poor academic performance of students. In this context, the study focused on finding

13
the influence of mobile phone use on learning skills acquired by students. There is a
significant relationship between age gape and the learning skills acquired by using
mobile phone. This tendency is highly (31.3%) and highly observable (49.3%) among
respondents of 12-16 years of age group and is low among those of 21-25 years
(32.5%). There is a significant relationship between education and learning skills of
respondents through mobile use. It is highly observable among those who have
professional (40.9%) and low among those who have High School/Higher Secondary
level. There is a significant influence of family size on the learning skills of
respondents. It is high (33.6%) among those who belong to families of 4 to 8
members and less among those (27.4%) who belong to families below 4 members.
There is a significant relationship between monthly income and the learning skills by
the use of mobile phone. Mobile is of more help for learning process to those
respondents (35.2%) who have monthly income between Rs.10000-30000. There is a
significant association between living status of respondents and the learning skills
acquired by the use of mobile phone (monthly income data and family size data are
excluded from this project). It is high among those respondents (85.3%) who live in
hostels and with friends (74.8%) than those who stay alone (80.4%). In response to
the question asking the purpose for using cell phone in class room, the respondents
revealed that they send SMS in classrooms in the top order of priority and read SMS
received. They tend to also answer a voice call and make a voice call as well from the
class room. Majority (42.1%) of respondents told that they should not use mobile
phones on School premises. 30.7% of respondents said that they should not use
mobiles in class rooms. But 23.9% of respondents said that there are no rules in their
colleges. A clear majority (57.6%) of respondents opined that they should have rules
for mobile phone usage in colleges and 22.4% negated the opinion. Majority (82.1%)
of respondents revealed that the frequent use of mobile phone sometimes interferes
their ~ 905 ~ International Journal of Applied Research learning whereas 76.4% are
of the agreement that it also assists them in learning sometimes. The results give a
balanced opinion for or against the use of mobile phone on learning and their study.

14
Mobile phone is also helpful for the students for exchanging of useful information
with their classmates about their studies. Students use this fascinating magic device
also in a very better way. A majority (19.7%) agreed that they can easily contact the
teachers for study purposes. 17.3% of respondents agreed that they can easily contact
their classmates for help in studies. 19.3% agreed that their academic performance has
been increased due to mobile technology. 18.2% agreed that mobile phone has helped
to increase the level of quality of education. A majority (85.9%) is of the agreement
that they keep their mobile phones on and the ring tone disturbs the class and 84.7%
are also of strong agreement. 10.00 % disagreed to the statement that they purchased
their mobile phone without the permission of their parents, but 0.00 % agreed and
0.9% strongly agreed. 13.1% disagreed that mobile phone is a waste of time for
students, but considerably 81.4% agreed. 10% disagreed to use mobile phone in
examination hall as a source of unfair means, 87.6% agreed, 88.4% strongly agreed.
15% disagreed to the statement that students tease fellow mates by sending missed
calls through unknown members, but 80.2% agreed.
The simple measure of informing pupils of the legal consequences of, for instance, the
exchange of adult content can help to make young people more careful when it comes
to inappropriate material. Nonetheless, teachers must report any suspicion of
punishable behaviour to school directors. This includes illegal content on mobile
phones. The school directors will then decide whether notification is required. Police
officers specialising in prevention can often be of assistance in making a decision. If
the school has a good relationship with the responsible police officer, it is a good idea
to contact him or her with regard to the exact procedure. In practice, the decision on
whether to report the contravention is often made jointly. A duty to report is not
involved if the disclosure would endanger the relationship of trust between pupil and
teacher and would hinder educational work or the upbringing of the young person.
Where such issues are involved, the school must nonetheless take active measures to
protect other pupils. Measures can include the confiscation of mobile phones.
Many schools forbid mobiles because of the disturbance they cause. Yet mobiles are

15
important to the everyday lives of children and young people (see Chapter 1.2 Why
mobiles are so important to children and young people). One approach is to
incorporate mobiles constructively into the class and to see them as an opportunity.
For example, in Austria the teaching of media skills is prescribed for all school types
as part of the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture’s ‘Basic Ordinance on
media teaching’ (2001)17 . This means that every teacher should welcome a natural,
yet discriminating use of media in the teaching of their subject and actively promote
audio-visual media as a means of imparting knowledge. Taking into consideration the
‘habitus’ of children and young people has long been a requirement for the educator. It
is clear that schools today cannot expect all parents to ensure that children are
equipped with a suitable mobile for use in the class. It is also clear that mobiles
cannot replace current classroom tools like computers. Nor is it the aim for mobiles to
replace current classroom tools like computers. Yet in increasing situations where all
pupils do have a mobile, many being smartphones with multiple functions, it is worth
thinking about the positive potential of this technology. Consider using ‘mobile
learning’ in your classes! Below you will find many ideas and suggestions for actively
and creatively using the mobile in class. The suggestions cover various subjects and
areas of application, ranging from photo stories through SMS poetry to treasure hunts.
Richtel (2012) reported that teachers believe that constant use of digital technology
hampered their student‟s attention spans and ability to succeed in class. On the first
day of each semester, many instructors inform students that cell phones and tablets
must be turned off when class begins and should remain so until the end of class. The
negative consequences for students are that they will lose points towards their final
grade. The words “final grade” tends to get their attention and this policy often
receives its fair share of criticism from both students and other colleagues. It appears
that more and more students seem helpless to be detached from their mobile devices.
Atchley and Warden (2012) applied the standard definitions of addictions to cell
phone use. Their definitions included: tolerance (decreased value that then requires
more use to get the same effect), withdrawal (if you do not have access to your

16
addition), increased use, inability to cut back on use, reducing competing behaviors,
and continuing the behavior despite risks and consequences. One hundred college
students were asked to imagine receiving a message that read, “text me when you
can.” Participants then evaluated options to text back immediately (with a small
monetary reward) or wait to text later (with a bigger monetary reward). Texting
immediately was far more important than extra money. Participants were willing to
wait to respond but they were not willing to wait that long. High profile gun violence
at U.S. colleges (i.e., Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech) brought support
for the use of mobile devices to provide emergency communication directly to
students and informing them about the emergency and how to respond. While this use
of technology by students has been hailed as improving school safety (Obringer &
Coffey, 2007), research has also indicated that cell phones can increase confusion in
emergency situations and prevent a consistent message (National School Safety and
Security Services, 2010). A survey of school-based police officers indicated that the
use of cell phones by students decreases safety during a crisis (National Association
of School Resource Officers, 2002). One concern involves the distraction caused by
the use of cell phones during class. Campbell (2006) found that students and faculty
view the ringing of cell phones in class to be a serious problem. The detrimental effect
of ringing cell phones on learning was experimentally tested by End, Worthman,
Mathews, and Wetterau (2010); who found that the ringing of a cell phone during a
video presentation diminished learning of the interrupted information. Beyond the
issue of the distraction caused by ringing cell phones, it is clear that if students are
spending time texting or updating social media sites, they are not paying attention to
the class lecture. Rosen, Lim, Carrier, and Cheever (2011) found that student memory
for a 30-minute videotaped lecture was impaired for a high text message group that
sent or received an average of 19 texts during the lecture compared with a low text
message group, who received less than two, on average. In addition to the student
doing the texting, it is also possible that other students, or the instructor, can be
distracted by a student's texting. This behavior then causes problems for classroom

17
management in general. Another, perhaps even greater, concern relates to academic
dishonesty. The media have reported a number of cases of students using cell phones
to cheat. For example, 12 students at the University of Maryland were caught cheating
during an accounting exam (Anonymous, 2003). These students were apparently sent
the answers to the multiple-choice exam by students outside the test who were able to
access the answer key that was posted online once the test began. At Prairie View
A&M University, 11 nursing students admitted to cheating on a comprehensive exam
by texting students who had already completed the test (Tolson, 2008). The mobile
technologies available allows an individual to send answers to multiple-choice
questions to other test takers or send pictures of test questions to friends (outside the
test), who send back the response. With web-browsing phones, it is even possible to
look up answers to questions directly, using sites such as Wikipedia or ChaCha.com
(Moran, 2008). Wei, Wang, and Klausner (2012) studied whether texting during class
impacts students‟ cognitive learning. Results indicated that college students from a
small Northeast university (97 women, 93 men, age range: 18-49 years) showed that
the participants‟ self-regulation was negatively related to their text messaging during
class. This indicated that students with a high level of self-regulation are less apt to
text during class and more likely to keep their attention on classroom learning.
Sustained attention was found to mediate the effects of students‟ texting, indicating
that frequent texting during class reflects students‟ low self-control in classroom
learning that could significantly influence cognitive learning.
Clayson and Haley (2013) studied the dilemma of classroom multitasking and texting
in two different college marketing education classes. The 300 participants surveyed,
indicated that they received an average of 37 texts per day and initiated about 16.
More than 90% of the respondents admitted to receiving texts while in class, and 86%
reported texting someone from class. Interestingly, 47% of the students believed they
could follow a lecture and text at the same time however respondents who did text
within marketing classes received lower grades than their non-texting class peers.
Generally texting frequency was generally unrelated to GPA. Results indicated that

18
61% felt that they should not text during class but 56% of the respondents had a class
that banned texting, and 49% reported that they continued to text anyway. The results
were consistent at the two universities. The study outcomes indicate flaws in the
notion that students can successfully multitask. This study indicated that handling
cognitive interactions may be decreased when multitasking (i.e., with mobile devices).
Clayson and Hayley (2013) observed that many of the students in their study appeared
to compulsively text as if it was an addiction. Jackson (2013) surveyed 102
undergraduate students (aged 17-22) about technology use, websites surfed during
class, perceptions about using mobile devices, awareness of cheating, and
effective/ineffective class policies. Participants‟ self-report results indicated that
57.8% used their mobile phones in both academic and personal spaces, 50% used
their Ipad or tablet, and 61.5% used their laptops. The top academic websites visited
in class included the institution‟s learning management system, Google, and email;
nonacademic websites included Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter. While 25% of
participants regarded cell phones as a helpful learning tool, 76% found their use
distracting. Laptop use in class was seen as a distraction by 8% of participants, while
90% regarded them as a helpful learning tool. The participants outlined their negative
perceptions about mobile technology in the classroom: 70% found it distracting to
themselves, 31% found it distracting to others, and only 6% found it disrespectful to
the instructor. The participants described the types of cheating they were aware of
using mobile technology devices in test situations: 25% for looking up answers on a
phone in class or in the bathroom, 14% texting for answers within the class, 8%
texting for answers outside the class, and 0.09% taking a picture of the exam for other
students.
Tindell and Bohlander (2012) suggested the importance of explicit class policies to
address the use of student mobile devices. They suggest that a policy be clearly
articulated in the course syllabus. ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge
www.ripknet.org 4 Their colleagues‟ policies included: confiscating the device until
the end of class, having the professor answer a cell phone call, giving a student an

19
“absence from class” if the student chooses to text during class. Tindell and Bohlander
(2012) also outline more extreme policies of zero tolerance of mobile devices during
exams. Students are instructed before the exam to turn off their devices and put them
away (where they cannot be viewed); if a mobile device is heard or seen during the
exam, the offending student is given an automatic zero on the exam. The authors also
warn that having a written mobile device policy is not enough. Instructors must also
enforce the policy to be effective. Instructors should monitor the use of mobile
devices, pointing out that use will not be tolerated. The use of mobile technologies in
the college classroom is an issue that academic colleges, departments, and institutions
cannot longer ignore. Jackson (2013) recommended discussing early in the semester
about the distraction that misuse of mobile technologies have on learning and student
satisfaction, explaining the instructor‟s rationale for banning the devices in terms of
the learning environment, reinforcing communication etiquette in class, and telling
students in advance that there will be a short after the lecture to use their devices for
personal reasons. Parkes and Harris (2002) noted that the class syllabus is also an
object of learning for students, including the policies and rationales aimed at
minimizing distractions. Student participants were asked for suggestions about
classroom policies for mobile technology devices in the classroom (Jackson, 2013).
Effective instructor policies included: a students own choice about whether to use the
technology academically, restricting use during exams, clear policies about what
mobile devices allowed, having students put away devices during certain parts of the
class, and banning all cell phones. Bloom (2007) created a community-building
system of rewards for the rest of the class. The student texting or surfing on the web
must bring in snacks for the rest of the class on the following class day. His
observation was that if students could afford a cell-phone package, they could provide
treats for about 30 classmates. The community-building process develops in earnest
when a cell phone actually rings in class, celebration and cheering from other students
ensues (over the prospect of an upcoming snack next class).

20
 CHAPTER 05

CONCLUSION

I still struggle with how to incorporate and harness mobile technology devices in the
classroom. I was educated via the transmission model that assumes that learning is
mainly dependent on the teacher communicating to the multiple receiver students. I
am striving to get better at the constructivist model of teaching and learning that
motivates students to be active agents of their own learning. Perhaps these mobile
technologies are the communication channels I could use to facilitate a more dynamic
interaction for my students. I have found that students have invested time and money
into learning how to navigate their devices, that I now consider modern digital
„technologies of the self‟ (Foucault, 1988). Mobile technology devices have replaced
the personal computer as a learning and communication channel for students. The
Web is now older than many of the students in classes (Jackson, 2013). Students are
attached to their devices and they “have never known a world without technologies,
often take them for granted, and integrate them in their daily lives” (Caruso &
Salaway, 2007, p. 1). These devices are now powerful, simpler to use, accessible, less
expensive, and are currently impacting the traditional classroom. If managed and
utilized wisely by instructors, they have the opportunity to create a more student-
centric environment to foster students‟ curiosity for research, real time updates, and

21
even discipline specific smart phone apps. As a discipline, Communication Studies
could provide leadership on teaching students how to integrate mobile technologies in
the classroom in civil, ethical, and conscious ways for in class-specific purposes.
Students need to be involved in the conversation about appropriate technology use
and what to do if the rules are broken. This could help to alleviate the unpleasant
instructor-student battle of habitual, automatic, and disruptive student mobile device
use in the classroom to facilitate more active, mindful learning environments.

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