Educational Use of Mobile Phones by Undergraduate Students: An Indian Perspective

As India has the world's second largest mobile phone user base (over 929.37 million users, May 2011) and Wireless communication has emerged as one of the fastest diffusing media on the planet, fuelling an emergent' mobile youth culture', it will be interesting to explore the attitude of undergraduate students towards the use of mobile phones for educational purposes. We all know that mobile phones provide multitude of features and services so much so that mobile phone has become an important part and parcel of everyday modern life. Thus, increased popularity of cell and smart phones in recent years has attracted research attention. The present study seeks to discover whether it is blissful for students regarding their studies and whether there remain significant differences in their attitude towards using mobile phones for educational purpose with respect to gender, medium of education, academic discipline and residence of the undergraduate students particularly focusing on the three main dimensions of usability, barriers and preferability of using mobile phones for educational purpose. The study deals with 100 samples comprising of both males and females from different colleges under University of Calcutta. Data tools included a General Information Schedule and a questionnaire. Significant differences were noted in the attitude of the students with respect to gender, medium of education and residence while with respect to academic discipline the difference in the attitude of undergraduate students was insignificant.