Mobile Technologies’ Utilization and Competency among College Students

Abstract

The focus of this study is to (1) determine the level of mobile technologies’ utilization and competency and (2) report separately the level of basic operation, communication and collaboration, information Seeking, digital citizenship and creativity and innovation skills in mobile technologies among first year undergraduate students in College of Computer Science and Information Technology at Hadhramout University. The sample size consists of 148 freshmen students. Using the descriptive statistical analysis, the results of this study reveal that undergraduates in College of Computer Science and Information Technology have highly utilized mobile technologies. It was also figured out that they were extremely capable to use these devices. Moreover, it was revealed that undergraduates’ competency and utilization levels were so high in communication purpose due to certain social and educational reasons. Due to the results of the study, wider and greater implication of this method in College of Computer Science and Information Technology and other colleges at Hadhramout University is recommended along with the activation of the university apps. Keywords—Mobile technologies; utilization; competency; college students I. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY World Bank Institute reported that the number of smart phone users in 2010 had increased to 5 billion as compared to only 700 million users in early year of 2000, which indicates that the increase of users in percentages would be more than 70% of the world population in future. With that figure, it would absolutely be doubted whether underdeveloped country like Yemen is on the race with other developed countries or not. A report from [15] declared that the number of mobile customers in Yemen increased in December 2015 to reach to 16.88 million users. In this same report, it is declared that the basic mobile phone facilities were steadily becoming familiar with mobile networks reaching about 90 percent of the population. Moreover, it is discovered that the number of mobile phone subscriptions in Yemen had notably raised to five-fold from 3 million in 2006 to 16 million in 2016, resulting to 56.9-percentage penetration for a population of about 28 million. Furthermore, the report detailed that the claim for internet-enabled 3G facilities was increasing as Yemenis started switching from using basic mobile phones to smartphones and computers such as laptops and tablets [1]. This growth is expected to have an effect of further learning evolution, particularly in higher education institutions (HEI). These institutions will be going through quick changes, especially during the next 10 years due to this rapid growth [15]. Moreover, it is obvious that ubiquitous information systems are altering the creation and dissemination of information in new ways, producing opportunities in all aspects of society [16] [11]. In their study; [13] consider mobile learning as a major evolution in HEI learning sector where students and professors are more enlightened in technology due to its existence. On the other hand, the author in [17], revealed that HEI has extremely modified the reason of the continuous development of mobile computing devices and internet resources. The author in [14] stated that HEI students might be ready to accept m learning sooner than K-12 students do because more college students have their own mobile devices. The author in [15], concluded in their survey, which is conducted in Republic of Yemen, that students in HEI have positive attitude towards the use of e-learning and m-learning. They also discovered that they are familiar with the use of smartphone facilities in daily activities. However, the availability of mobile devices does not necessary ensure high utilization of the devices among students particularly in education field. We must first assess the students’ readiness for mobile learning [2] [5] [6] with regard to these issues. The author in [15] discovered that despite the familiarity of e learning and m learning among undergraduate students in Yemen, HEI students do not use smartphones for learning actively. Therefore, the aims of this study are to (1) determine the level of mobile technologies’ utilization among first year undergraduate students, (2) identify the level of mobile technologies’ competency among first year undergraduate students, and (3) report separately the level of basic operation, communication and collaboration, information Seeking, digital citizenship and creativity and innovation skills in mobile technologies competency. The importance of this study stems out of the fact that mobile learning through mobile technologies will be the centre focus of this study because Yemen is one of the countries that experiencing a scarcity of mobile technology resources, where the utilization of mobile technologies is known to be quite limited. Moreover, this study also attempts to reveal the level of mobile technologies utilisation among the students. Hence, it is hoped that the results of this study will later bring on benefits to the higher authority of the university, to improve the existing learning conditions. Another worth noted point is that this study would later on be a good reference to other future studies within the same context in Yemen or in any Arabic country. With very little searched topics in the field of (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2021 512 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org integrated technologies especially in mobile technologies adoption, it is vital and essential to tackle this topic. II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A. Population and Samples In a country like Yemen where integration of technology is in an infant stage, it becomes very distinguished, remarkable and of a great interest to have a fully equipped faculty. In college of computer science and information technology, technologies like mobile devices are extensively applied. Therefore, this faculty have been chosen for this study to investigate the influence of competency of mobile technologies among the undergraduate students on their frequent utilization of these devices. Another possible reason is that majority numbers of staff in this faculty possesses an outstanding knowledge and are among specialists in the field of computer science and information technologies. All of the staff in this faculty is continuously trying to innovate their teaching method in line with the use of current and available technologies. Besides, using mobile devices like laptops, tablets and mobiles inside classes are compulsory for all students in this faculty to facilitate the learning process. Majority of the given task need to be done outside classes, purposely to let the students experience the mobile learning approaches. More precisely, all first year students in Computer Science and Information Technology Departments in this faculty are selected to participate in the study due to some of characteristics found in them. First, these students are newly introduced to new purposes of using these devices as stated before and uses of mobile technologies especially learning, studying and research purposes. Moreover, they are studying subjects with a relation to the topic of this study like; communication skills, learning skills, thinking skills and searching skills in the second semester of their first year. They are even studying about theory of computation. Hence, they possess at least the basis knowledge of M-Learning in general. Moreover, the choice of time which is the second semester when it is applicable to check whether being in this department studying these subjects and knowing the new purposes changed the way they utilize these devices. In addition to that, the researcher wants to check whether the availability of these technologies and the allowance of using them will affect the way these undergraduates perceive the technologies and use them. Due to the above-mentioned reasons, all of the first year undergraduates were selected as the study sample, which means a census population was chosen. This also means that no sampling was done for this study. Moreover, the selection of the sample of this study is supported by study conducted by (Dawson, 2007; Saunders et al., 2007; Zikmund et al., 2010) who states that census is the most suitable for this research since participants are so rare and distinguished. They are of great interest to the researcher since they have owned previously stated features. B. Instrument Due to the characteristics of questionnaire survey which offers cheap and time saving, hence the instrument is distributed with online and offline method. Moreover, the results of the survey questionnaire can be generalized [4]. The instrument used in this study is divided into three sections: Section 1: The demographic information, Section 2: the utilization of mobile technologies, and Section 3: the competency factor. Table I presents the summary of the survey instruments sections. 1) Demographic information: The items are developed by the researcher to get respondent’s personal information particularly on the history of these technologies. There are four items or questions in this section. All of them are closeended questions. All these items are asking about personal information like, departments (CS or IT), gender, and age. Etc. 2) Utilization of mobile technologies: This part of the instrument is adopted from [12] which quoted from [7]. This section contains 40 items which divided into six sub sections of: i) basic information uses, ii) communication uses, iii) collaboration uses, iv) information seeking uses, v) digital citizenship uses, and vi) creativity and innovation uses. The aim of this section is to explore the undergraduate students’ level of utilization of mobile technologies. In other words, it will reveal how frequently they utilized the mobile application in related to M-Learning. Each item in every subsection