Appsolutely Smartphones: Usage and Perception of Apps for Educational Purposes

Abstract

Mobile education, in particular mobile learning, which uses applications on smartphones (i.e. apps), is growing in popularity at the higher education level. Driving factors are the anywhere, anytime learning experience, the dynamic and customisable nature of apps and their scalability. A total of 241 chemistry majors from the National University of Singapore were surveyed about ownership of smartphones, how they used them for academic purposes, frequency of use of educational and chemistry apps and most importantly, their perceptions of mobile devices and apps towards academic success. All respondents owned smartphones, using them 1 to 2 times a day for academic purposes mostly to search for information relevant to the lecture/discussion via search engine apps. On perceptions, there was a stark disparity between students’ keen interest in mobile apps for technology-enhanced learning and lecturers’ sparing use of mobile apps for technology-enhanced teaching. Those who showed greater interest in these non-traditional methods of learning were first- and second-year students who attained above average Cumulative Average Points (CAPs) for their year of study. The results of this study justify that there is value in creating apps specific to the institution’s modules, where the novelty is in localising and tailoring them to enhance the experiential learning of the user base we have, our students.