Over the past ten years mobile phone technology have been adopted and become integrated into the daily lives of the larger South African population especially students at higher educational institutions (HEIs). Given the realities of South Africa, as a developing country where public information access can be unreliable or even non-existing in some areas, mobile phone access has become the preferred communication channel and most students have become mobile-centric. In contrast, the public provision of administrative and academic information by universities is mostly pc-centric. Against the background of the global drive towards equal access to learning opportunities, institutions in developing countries are challenged to provide access through technologies that are accessible, usable, scalable and sustainable. Therefore, there is a need at institutional level to develop strategies for providing mobile cellular technology access to services, content and interaction. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate the critical categories and their characteristics for providing content and services for facilitating students' private access and interaction through mobile cellular phone technology at HEIs. Literature analysis was used as the research strategy to propose a conceptual framework for categorising the provision of mobile centric information access and interaction at HEIs. The framework could be a useful tool for informing HEIs' ICT strategy when rolling out mobile phone information access and structuring policies.
Students enrolled at Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institutions tend to combine study and work and to succeed they have to optimize free time for studying. Therefore, many ODL students access and interact with information in a mobile context, which implies that interaction takes place in dynamic and changing environments. This presents students with a number of overlapping contextual challenges that need to be managed when accessing and interacting with information. Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) are also confronted by these challenges as they strive to provide access through technologies that are accessible, usable, scalable and sustainable to students. Against this background, it is important to have an understanding of the categories of information that students would want to access and interact with through the devices that they privately own, of which mobile phones are the most common.
This study investigated the categories of information that students would want to access through mobile cellular phones. The data capturing involved both qualitative and quantitative data. In order to get a comprehensive and representative set of information access needs it was necessary to start with openended questions. Based on the analysis of the 50 responses to the open-ended questions, fixed-response questions were formulated.The 84 responses to the fixed-response questions were then analyzed to determine the importance of the information access needs as well as the access frequency. The contribution of this paper is a set of prioritized information needs that provide some insight into the mobile centric information needs of students at the University of South Africa (UNISA) as an example of an ODL institution.
Many higher education students live and operate in mobile-centric environments. The question is whether the policies of higher education institutions (HEI) are aligned with students’ readiness for mobile technology information access and interaction. To investigate this question from a policy perspective, nine policies from the open and distance learning (ODL) university in South Africa were analysed for providing institutional mobile-centric support. Policy document analysis was used to evaluate five information and communication technology (ICT) polices and four teaching and learning policies. The analysis focused on how the policies support the provision of mobile infrastructure, technical support and learning resources. To investigate from the students’ perspective, quantitative data was captured on Information Systems students’ readiness through a survey of a total of 129 respondents from the same university. The mobile-centric readiness of students was evaluated based on factors that could affect the readiness of students in accessing and interacting with mobile-centric services. The factors investigated were infrastructure ownership, knowledge of mobile phone features and mobile phone Internet activities. The findings revealed that Information Systems students are ready to use mobile phones as tools for information access and interaction, but some inadequacies were observed in the way the policies support the students’ needs. This study proposes some recommendations on how the policies could better support students’ mobile phone information access and interaction.
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