Rumanyika, Joel D.; Mashenene, Robert Galan.
Description:
The use of mobile phones in academic and learning processes has recently proliferated. With mobile phones students may be enabled to share tests or assignments, results, receive live comments from professors and classmates, students can source or create their own contents and send them to peer reviewers for discussion and hence evolve better results. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey at the College of Business Education (CBE) was employed in which a sample of 200 students was selected using proportionate stratified sampling technique and 30 instructors were selected using purposive sampling technique in order to collect quantitative data. Focus group
discussion and observation methods were used to collect qualitative data from students and instructors. Descriptive analysis was employed to analyze quantitative data whereas content analysis was employed to analyze qualitative data. The results indicate that, the majority of students switch on their mobile phones in silent mode with the intention to use them for calling or receiving calls, for texting SMS, for interacting with social media like facebook, twitter, whatsap, youtube and for surfing information while the classroom lectures are in progress. The study recommends that the management and other policy makers should introduce measures such as strict laws and provision of education during orientation week to new students on how to manage their mobile phones during
classroom lectures; an approach that may possibly help in increasing academic performance.