Title
Educational usage of mobile devices : differences between postgraduate and undergraduate students
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Publication Date
5-2017
Volume
43
Issue
3
First Page
201
Last Page
208
Publisher
Pergamon Press
Keywords
Mobile learning (m-learning), Mixed method, Comparison, Smartphone, Library and Information Science (LIS), Learning patterns
Abstract
The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.
DOI
10.1016/j.acalib.2017.03.004
Print ISSN
00991333
E-ISSN
18791999
Funding Information
This research is partially funded by the Faculty Research Fund, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong.
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Lau, K. P., Chiu, D. K. W., Ho, K. K. W., Lo, P., & See-To, E. W. K. (2017). Educational usage of mobile devices: Differences between postgraduate and undergraduate students. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(3), 201-208. doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2017.03.004
