Students’ Perception of Cell Phones Effect on their Academic Performance: A Latvian and a Middle Eastern University Cases

This study is unique in its attempt to combine the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with external variables and the Information System Continuance Theory, in the context of mobile learning. It extends TAM with the external variables perceived mobility and perceived enjoyment. Mainly, students’ perception of cell phones effect on their academic performance is investigated. The study was conducted at two different universities—in Europe and the Middle East. Cell phone usage is analyzed from the perspective of mobile learning. The data in this study were collected from 103 students from the University of Latvia and 106 students from a Middle Eastern private American University. This study shows that there is no significant difference on how the two groups perceive the use of cell phone and their opinion of its impact on their academic performance. The obtained results are in line with the theoretical model. They show the influence of perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness on students’ attitudes towards using cell phones. Data shows that there is a positive relationship between cell phone usage and students’ perception of its effect on their academic performance. This study reveals several interesting findings, and it is believed that this research offers the educators and administrators further insight in analysing the current effect of cell phones on students’ academic performance and the possibility of adopting mobile learning as one of the technological tools which supports technology enhanced learning.

Smart Pedagogy as a Driving Wheel for Technology-Enhanced Learning

People have long talked about the use of technology in education and are looking for ways to incorporate different scientific advances into the learning environment, both to help students learn and make learning more interesting for them as well as to ensure that future generations can innovate based on previously accumulated knowledge. Today, when we talk about technology-enhanced learning, we mean the possibilities created by digital technology, which has become widely available to everyone thanks to both the creation of Intel’s digital microprocessor in 1971 (Chan et al., in Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning 1:3–29, 2006) and the creation of the world wide web in 1990 (Berners-Lee, T., & Cailliau, R. (1990, November 12). WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project. https://www.w3.org/Proposal.html). The current crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has given a further boost to technological developments to ensure access to education, which is one of the most important areas of society. Everyone has come across education in its various forms, either by learning at any level or form of education or by being a parent who has become a provider of home-schooling during remote learning (Daniela et al., in Sustainability 13:3640, 2021), whether as an educator or a creator of learning materials and technologies. The Covid crisis has shown that the use of technology is sometimes the only way to provide access to education, but despite the potential of technology to organize synchronous and asynchronous learning, there are still many problems in using technology, both in terms of just sending students materials to learn by e-mail and also with the initial inflexibility of the learning process. For instance, synchronous online classes were organized for students according to the traditional agenda of classes without thinking about the students’ ability to focus on on-screen activities for many hours and, after that, to do independent work.