Adoption of Mobile Technology in Higher Education: Students Perceptions of English Language Learning Using Smart Phones

A change in technology is something that keeps on happening in learning and it creates new challenges for pedagogy. The purpose of this study is to explore students’ perceptions of using smart phones and the use of the smart phone during English oral communication activity as a tool to find information by the students. This paper includes the preliminary results of a study on students’ perceptions of using smart phones in the English language learning classroom. In total, 150 students using smart phones studying at a polytechnic participated in the study. The growing use of mobile technology in polytechnics campuses can give future in the classroom which includes teaching learning activities and students’ communications. A recent study revealed a stunning increase in college-age students using mobile technology, such as smart phones: from 1.2% in 2005 to 62.7% in 2010 (Smith and Caruso, 2010). On the whole, the result showed the positive potentialities and capabilities of the smart phones used in the English Language learning classroom. This indicates that education could advantage from utilizing these new technological tools.The paper reports both opportunities and limitations for incorporating smart phones in learning environments.