Summary: | Within the context of a developing country, suchas South Africa, access to technology is severely limited.However, most South Africans have relatively good access tomobile phone technology in relation to other portable andmobile technology. In this initiative, students wereencouraged to use mobile phone text messaging to sendquestions to the lecturer during classes or between classes. Atotal of 86 text messages were sent to the lecturer during a 7-week, second year psychology course. At the end of thecourse 136 responses to questionnaire distributed in classwas obtained. This data was analysed using activity theoryas a framework for the discussion. The results indicated thatstudents had strongly favorable perceptions of this initiativeand respondents had spontaneously suggested other uses ofmobile phone technology to enhance the learningexperience. Activity theory provided a useful framework forevaluating the use of mobile phone text messages to enhancestudent participation and learning.
|