Managing Social Activity and Participation in Large Classes with Mobile Phone Technology

• Main Authors: A. Thatcher, G. Mooney
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE) 2008-07-01
• Series: International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies
• Subjects: large class teaching; mobile phone messaging; activity theory; m-learning
• Online Access: http://online-journals.org/i-jim/article/view/525/479

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.