ABSTRACT
This study investigated the effect of using mobile phone short message service (SMS) on note taking and comprehension of materials presented through an audio system. The theoretical basis for this study was Operant conditioning that discourages passivity and encourages active or activity based learning, constancy or practice and the use of reinforcement to improve the learning behaviours of learners. The study also examined the effect of gender on achievement in note taking and comprehension of materials in the note. Four research questions and six hypotheses guided the study. The study employed a quasi-experimental non-equivalent pretest, posttest control group design. A sample of 400 subjects was drawn through stratified random sampling procedure. Two instruments-Audio Taped Lecture (ATL) and Test for assessing comprehension (TAC) were designed and used to collect the data for the study. These two instruments were face validated by three research experts in Science Education and Educational Psychology of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability index for ATL was obtained as 0.88 while 0. 81 was obtained for TAC. The four research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the six hypotheses were tested using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study included that, training in the use of mobile phone’ SMS writing style had significant positive effects on students’ note taking, and comprehension of the material in the notes. A test of significance showed that gender was not a significant differing factor in note taking and comprehension of the notes. Similarly, a non-significant interaction effect of training and gender on students’ mean scores in note taking as well as comprehension was also found. The educational implications of these findings were also discussed and various recommendations such as the teaching and learning of strategic note taking using SMS style of writing, making deliberate and conscious efforts to encourage note taking among students by their teachers among others were suggested. Limitations of this work were highlighted while areas for further research were suggested.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Background to the Study
The discoveries and utilisation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) gadgets such as radio, television, Internet, communication satellites and telephones have tremendously revolutionised human societies and behaviours globally. In fact, the much talked about globalisation is because of the availability of and prompt accessibility to information. One of these gadgets, the telephone, enables a private two-way simultaneous exchange of information between the caller and the receiver. It plays a very significant role in the transformation of the behaviours of users as well as the global economy. This gadget however, was a commodity whose usage was available to the privileged few until 1988, that a group of government owned public telephone bodies within the European Community announced the digital Global System for Mobile Communications (The World Book Dictionary, 1997).
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) in Nigeria began its commercial operation in August 2001. And until then, most Nigerians living in different locations found it relatively difficult to communicate with distant relatives and friends. This explains the euphoria that followed the commencement of services by Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN), Nigeria. Its operation brought relief, freedom and empowerment to millions of Nigerians. Acknowledging this, the Corporate Communications Team of MTN Nigeria (2005) said, “MTN has demystified the myth that only the rich could own telephones by quickly connecting both rural and urban dwellers”. Similarly, Awe (2005), noted that GSM operation in Nigeria has narrowed the divide between urban and rural areas, while to Balogun (2005), the introduction of GSM in Nigeria had changed lives positively such that both the elite and the common man have found this tool indispensable.
The Global System for Mobile Communication and in particular, the Nigeria Telecommunications market, is noticeably one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Nigeria accounts for 14 percent of Africa’s total users (Nigeria to top Africa’s mobile market, 2004). Statistics had it that over 13 million Nigerians had direct access to telephone services (Balogun, 2005), as against 400,000 telephone lines available to a population of over 100 million people in 2001 (Corporate Communication Team of MTN Nigeria; 2005). From 2001 to 2007, ownership of mobile phone by Nigerians had tremendously increased from the said 13 million to 53 million (Iboma, 2008). In fact, in Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are said to be the fastest growing mobile markets (African mobile phone statistics, 2008).In the whole of the world, statistics showed that Africa is the fastest growing market in terms of mobile penetration with 280.7 million mobile phone subscribers by the end of 2007 (African mobile phone statistics, 2008).
A large percentage of these phones as noted by Prensky (2005) are in the hands of students. Having a similar view, Buckingham (2005), said that mobile phone had become a ubiquitous, unavoidable part of daily life, with an estimated three out of every five children under 15 owning one.
In fact, no segment of the human population, according to Wagner (2005) was immune from this phenomenon of mobile revolution. To Wagner, from toddlers to seniors, people are increasingly and are digitally communicating with each other in ways that would have been impossible to imagine only a few years back.
In most parts of Nigeria, mobile phone is no longer new or strange. They are seen as essentials rather than luxuries because of their contributions to business, transportation, information dissemination, social relationship, security and provision of employment to thousands of Nigerians. This is in addition to the fact that no health risk has been found yet to be associated with the use of mobile phone (Adair, 1994; Independent Expert Group on mobile phone, 2000 and National Radiological Protection Board, 2004, 2005.
The use of mobile phone in Nigeria and even the world over permeates every sector of the economy including the educational sector. In the educational sector, mobile phone are owned and used by school administrators, teachers and students.
The use of mobile phone by students is however, restricted. For instance, Prensky (2005) observed that phones are barred in most classrooms because they interrupt lessons and can enable cheating. Expressing a similar view, Green (2005) lamented the blunt approach of schools in banning the use of mobile phone in the classroom. In Nigeria, the situation is not different. Students are kept away from using their phones in the classrooms. These inhibitions not withstanding, some students still use their phones in the class while lessons are on to secretly send, receive and read text messages to and from friends, some times, friends who are with them in the same classroom just for fun and most times when they are bored with the lectures.
Prensky (2005) encouraged educators to reconsider their view of mobile technology and imagine a pedagogy that embraces its potential. In the same way, Green (2005) said that once a purpose is established mobile phone like every other tool of learning would have a role to play in learning. It is the absence of this that Heppell (2003) lamented when according to him mobile phone that had been a mass consumer item since 1990 had not had any substantial research to see how they might be useful in education. Yerushalmy and Ben-Zaken (2004) were of the same view when they said that the education community had proved slow to explore the new reality that this device introduces. According to them, while there is still a lot to learn about uses of cellular phones for purposes other than phone calls, it becomes obvious that treating them only as a distraction to school and to proper education is the wrong way to go just as computers were treated in schools a generation ago.
Mobile phone is obviously known not only to be in the hands of many school children but to be useful companions to them. This, according to Yerushalmy and Ben-Zaken (2004), was due to its importance to their (youths) identity and friendship. Therefore, rather than discouraging their classroom usage, efforts at exploring their potentials through research for the facilitation of school learning should be encouraged. For instance, Mobile phone could develop research and information getting skills of users. The consciousness of brevity in communication for fear of losing much money could possibly be of educational advantage even though it is principally for economic reason.
Mobile phone makes use of several components or facilities that could encourage or aid school learning. For instance, the Short Message Service (SMS) facility is being used more frequently by a growing number of mobile phone users – especially the youths instead of speaking into the phone. Most youths use this facility probably because it is relatively cheaper added to the fact that delivery is more efficient especially when network is either busy or bad.
To send and read text messages as most youths or users do, require creative skills. This is because of the coding and decoding processes that are always involved in attempts to condense information to save time and money. They combine letters and numbers to make word sounds. For example, words and phrases such as “function”, ‘tonight’, “I love you”, “why me”, “together” “and thank you” are creatively designed as “4ntn”, “2nite”, “I Luv U”, “Y me” “, “2geda” and “10q”, respectively. This facility encourages brevity and probably, creativity (word creation) and could improve the users’ reading and writing skills as well as cognitive ability. For instance, the law of “use and disuse” in learning believes that memory can decay as a result of disuse. Therefore, creativity and other forms of brain exercises could help improve the memory. If this is a truism, it then implies that embarking on word creation exercise using mobile phone, which, of course is a deviation from the conventional way of writing, could be seen as a mental exercise that could possibly have positive influence on the cognitive development and functioning of users of this facility.
