Establishing the Need to Use Mobile Phones in Distance Learning in Ghana

Abstract

The study was to establish the use of mobile phones in distance education. It is to find out which of the mobile handsets students possess can be used for learning. This study, therefore, examined how mobile handsets or phones could be utilised in distance education to enable learners to access study materials through the use of these mobile phones.     The purpose of the study was to develop an application that could be used by students to access distance learning materials on their mobile phones for study so that they would be able to learn anytime and anywhere. Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) was used in the development of the application for the mobile phones.  The application was deployed on a network for students to access with their mobile handsets.  The network had a WAMP server onto which the mobile application was installed to provide the web services. After the application was pre-tested, forty students selected at random for the study used four classes of mobile phones (LG–P350, Nokia C3, Samsung galaxy pocket and TecnoN3/P3 mobile phones) to request for the material from the WAMP server. The results of the study showed that the LG–P350, Nokia C3, Samsung galaxy pocket and TecnoN3/P3 mobile phones were able to access the 184kb study material with the four classes of phones.  Hence, these classes of mobile phones were found to be useful in the delivery of lecture notes to distance learners in this global village we live.  The study also revealed that a statistically significant difference existed between the time taken to download the study material from the mobile application and through Short Messaging Service (SMS).