How do Faculty Members React Towards the Use of Personal Mobile Devices by Students in the Classroom?

Abstract

In recent years a growing number of students use mobile technologies in classes, e.g. laptops, tablets of all sorts or smartphones; these are uses as substitutes to the traditional means of taking notes in class (Kurtz & Meishar-Tal, 2015). Usage of mobile technological means in class enables several advantages to students, such as immediate knowledge organization, access to online information that supports in-class learning, or student communication. These may empower and support the learning process altogether (Sharples, 2000). This new situation is beneficial for the institute itself: the fact that students arrive with personal mobile devices to class saves a vast amount of resources as an alternative to expenses for the construction of computer labs and their maintenance. In fact, this new situation turns all spaces within the organization into potentially capable of becoming ICT-saturated zones (Emery, 2012; Hamza & Noordin, 2013; Nykvist, 2012). For faculty, this may serve as an advantage, since students’ accessibility to online information via mobile technologies enables lecturers’ usage of these devices in their lessons, thereby creating interest and a variety of learning modes, as well as allowing constructivist pedagogy and active learning (Campbell & Pargas, 2003; Meisha-Tal, 2014).