Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
This study is far differing from the study conducted by The findings from case study show that, the access and use
Thornton and Houser [5] who found that all students (100% of mobile phone in education has increased dramatically
of the respondents) have mobile phone and about 99% of over the past decade in developing nations [16]. Case of
students reported were using mobile phone for sending Nigeria, Ghana and Cote D’lvoire found that mobile
email on their mobile phone, with only 1% sending email penetration has been growing at a phenomenal pace over
from PCs. In their study also found about 80% of students the past five years. The mobile subscriptions for these three
reported were using PDA which is highly differing from countries exceed 130 million. The report also revealed that
HLS whereby the only 9% of the respondents were using in West Africa, mobile internet use has grown significantly
PDA. This shows that welfare of the developed country in recent years to reach penetration levels almost equal to
students are very difference to the developing countries. In fixed line use for the first time [17].
addition, the Japanese survey found that about 61% of the There is also rapid penetration of use mobile phone in
respondents were using their mobile phone for web South Africa. The research commissioned by infoDev, a
function such as browsing and searching educational global partnership program within the World Bank group
materials, although large number (85%) were using for found half of the 50 million people in South Africa live
charting with friends and family. This show that the below poverty line, more than 75 percentage among those
Japanese students were more successful benefited with in low income groups who are above 15 years own mobile
mobile technology compared to the majority of developing phone and more than 98.5 percentage of the country’s
countries’ students. It help them in their studies compared population has access to telephone due to the widespread
to the HLS in the developing nations who are not use use of cellular telephones [18]
mobile phone for learning instead they use for messaging,
dialling and other entertainment activities. However, this Therefore, based on the research findings conducted in the
could be highly contributed by the level of technology and HLS, majority of the students are interested in adaption of
mobile phone accessed by these two populations. mobile learning in their studies. Hence, it is also found that
the use of mobile phones as a learning tool is more flexible
C. Use of Mobile Phone in Learning compared to desktop computer. However, there are some
The results of survey obtained on the use of mobile phones confronts towards the establishment of mobile learning in
in the HLS found that, the majority of respondents 87% such that Zanzibar as we illustrated in below subsections.
were positively agreed that the use of mobile phone may V. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
assists in their studies as shown in Table 3, while 13% of
the respondents were not sure on that service and no one For the HLS to benefit more from their mobile phones, it’s
disagreed with that question. On the second side, the important to gain massive opportunity of this technology
researchers wanted to know how often the students use their and overcome challenges associated with the mobile
mobile phone in the learning activities. The results reveals learning environment. This paper presents realistic reasons
that only 9% of respondents were mostly use their phones for embedding mobile learning to engage developing
in learning activities, whereby the majority of respondents countries’ students in collaborative, communicative,
(61%) never use their mobile phones in learning purposes, creative and easy accessible learning environment as well
and 30% of them were rare use their phones in learning as the challenges and how to overcome those challenges.
purposes. In addition, 78% of respondents agreed to the A. Opportunities of mobile learning
idea of establishment of mobile learning in the high level
institutions which will help students to facilitate their Encouraging Student – Centred learning: Students can
learning, 7% of them did not agree with that idea and 15% access resources according to their needs rather than their
were not sure about mobile learning system. teachers or other people’s involvement. It focuses on
student’s interests, learning styles, motivations and abilities.
Students also acquire effective learning skills that will be
valuable throughout their lives, whereby they will more mobile phone devices. Thus users will fill more
active and feel ownership of the learning process. comfortable to use the website without scrolling around the
screen.
Mobility: The ability to link to the activities in the outside
world also provides students with the capability to ‘escape’ Poor physical infrastructure and band width which leads to
the classroom and engage in activities that do not slow connectivity: Bandwidth is very important aspect to
correspond with either the teacher’s agenda or the the university. The university depends more on internet not
curriculum. only for the students to read and learning with their laptop
and handheld devices but also for their internal and external
Affordance of the device: Mobile phones are much
communications. Poor physical infrastructure contained to
affordable than desktop and laptop computers. It shows that
be challenges to majority of developing countries. HLS are
HLS were not able to purchase expensive mobile phone
facing with law internet bandwidth and connectivity.
devices which have enough capability to support mobile
Currently, SUZA is connected with 2mbps, and ZU is
learning. This study found that more than 91% of the
connected with 3mbps both from Zantel internet service
respondents have their own cell phones of different types
provider. UCEZ is connected with 2mbps from Zanlink
and models. About 11% of the respondents have a smart
internet service provider. The internet services are not
phone and very little amount (only 9%) that have a PDA.
stable and make difficult for students to be connected to the
Increase engagement and motivation of learning internet. Moreover, the Universities are not dedicating
behaviour: Mobile phone is a small device which is very certain amount of bandwidth to be used for students; as a
dedicated in such way that the user can play around in result the internet service becomes unreliable and
his/her hands easily. In this study, most of the students unavailable in the most of the time. Due to increasing of
agreed the initiative of mobile learning system will computing and mobile technology with the increasing
facilitate their studies. This shows that although students number of student’s enrolment in each year, the universities
were not lodged in the use of mobile phones in their should have enough bandwidth for both students and staff
learning, they still agreed to the fact that mobile learning members.
will have large contribution in their studies. Thus
For the experience with other country like Kenya who also
appropriate measures need to be taken for the government
suffering with poor physical infrastructure. Kenya has
and other stake holders to assist our students to have
developed lively and energetic mobile phone networks.
modern mobile learning tools such as smart phone, PDA
Whereby in-service teacher training were using mobile phone
and other tools to support their studies.
for sending bulk SMS massage to each other. This system
B. Challenges of mobile learning also can be used in peer-to-peer, in local decentralized groups
and is socially inclusive [16].
Students and parents cannot afford to buy PDAs and Smart
phones: The effective use of mobile learning can only be Mobile Device Variation: Technological developments
achieved with the use of handheld devices such as smart have brought about different features of mobile phones
phones, PDAs, and others equivalent phones. East Africa such as different screen sizes and keypads as identified by
countries, including Zanzibar is among Sub-Sahara Nielsen [20]. This variation is one among challenges that
countries whereas the citizens are living with less than one are observed in our findings facing the initiative of mobile
US dollar a day as pointed out by Aker and Mbiti [12]. learning in HLS.
Thus parents do not have enough money to buy expensive
VI. RECOMMENDATIONS
handheld devices for their children, so the government and
other support partners should help the students to afford Due to the fact that, students and parents cannot afford to
such kind of phones. For instance, the initiative shown by buy PDAs and Smart phones and others equivalent devices,
MOleNET in UK should be taken to the East Africa and/or the government should have a long term strategy to
developing countries government and other development improve life standard of their people to make them able to
(support) partners to support mobile learning. The buy that hand handled devices which enable students in
MoLeNET project invested over £12 million for purchasing their studies. On the other hand, internal and external
mobile devices of students, involving approximately 20,000 stakeholders need to be convinced to help developing
learners and 4000 staff in 115 colleges and 29 schools [19]. world’s students to their study.
A huge range of mobile phone devices are facing support The universities should put more emphasis on the mobile
difficult: According to Samuels [6] it was difficult to resize web applications so that their web based system should
the image to fit the small screen space of the mobile support mobile learning. For the particular universities such
devices. This is caused by the technology which is required as SUZA and ZU who are teaching courses like computing,
to make the image to be auto fit to handheld device. In fact, mobile technology and mobile web application
this is a big challenge for the developing countries like development should be given top priority in their curricula.
Zanzibar, whereby the universities don’t have mobile web Whereas it will enable students to develop mobile web
applications in place. Nevertheless, their existing web based applications in order to support other learning institutions
applications was not designed to be compatibility with hand within counties.
handle devices. Students with their mobile phones need to
Since the bandwidth demands for the university always is
scroll around into small screen. For a large company like
increasing due to the growth of the universities in terms of
Google, their website is flexible enough to auto-fit the
enrolment of the student and technology adoption, the
universities bandwidth should be further improved. Each [9] Pachler, N, Bachmair, B, & Cook, J. (2010) Mobile Learning:
university should have at least 20gbps with dedicated 10 Structures, Agency, Practices, New York: Springer.
mbps for students. This will facilitates students learning and [10] Elias, T. (2011) ‘Universal Instructional Design Principles for
their performance to be further improved. We recommend Mobile Learning’, International Review of Research in Open and
that the government and other stakeholders to support the Distance Learning, Vol.12, February, pp. 2- 4.
availability of mobile devices to students helping them in
[11] Kothari, C. (2004) Research Methodology: Methods and
their studies. Techniques, 2nd edition, New Delhi: New Age International (P)
VII. CONCLUSION Ltd, Publisher.
Currently, mobile learning system has not been established [12] Alreck, P. L. & Settle, R. B. (2003) The Survey Research
Handbook, 3rd edition, USA: McGraw Hill.
in any HLI in Zanzibar. The findings of this paper show
that, there are many opportunities and demands for the use [13]. Dawson, C. (2007) A Practical Guide to: Research Methods,
of this technology among HLS in the developing countries United Kingdom: Spring Hill House.
such as Zanzibar. [14] Bryman, A. & Cramer, D. (1999) Quantitative Data Analysis:
On the other hand, the paper also outlines a number of With SPSS for Windows. Routledge: USA
challenges pertaining to the establishment and usage of [15] McGivern, Y. (2003) The Practice of Market and Social
mobile phones in learning. Finally, the paper addressed the Research: An Introduction, Great Britannia: Prentice Hall.
recommendations to overcome the challenges of adopting [16] Aker , J and Mbiti, T. 2010. Mobile Phones and Economic
mobile learning to HLS. Development in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives.
It is clear that rapid changes of technology may overcome Volume 24, No. 3, pp 207-232.
the addressed challenges in this paper. Therefore, in the [17] Athina 2013. How Mobile Phone Penetration in Driving
future research can be conducted to recognize new Internet Usage in Africa. Available: www.imentors.eu/news-
challenges at that time whist for example the deployment of events/entry/how-mobile-phone-penetration-is-driving-usage-in-
fiber optic may solve the existing bandwidth problem. africa.html (Accessed June 8, 2013)