Mobile technology: Implication to undergraduate students’ self-efficacy and academic performance

Abstract

This study sought to find out if mobile technology could boost self-efficacy in education, the various activities students  carry out with mobile technology to boost their self-efficacy, and its effects on students’ performance in the University  of Port Harcourt. Three (3) research questions and 2 hypotheses guided this study. It was a mixed-method research,  whose population comprised 281 undergraduate students in two departments, in the Faculty of Education of the  University of Port Harcourt. Two hundred (200) students were randomly selected from the Department of Curriculum  Studies and Educational Technology (EDC), and Department of Educational Management (EDM)) to form the  experimental and control groups, respectively. Data for the research was generated from the students’ examination  scores and a selfstructured Technology Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (TSEQ). Mean, standard deviation and t-test were  used for data analysis. Results revealed that using mobile technology for learning purposes boosted undergraduate  students’ self-efficacy and had a significant positive effect on their academic performances. Mobile technologies  boosted students’ self-efficacy by; increasing their interactions with their course lecturers and course mates on coursework, increasing their study time, and helping them to download different formats of learning materials, among  others. Therefore, using mobile technology for learning purposes is effective in boosting students’ selfefficacy to a high  extent and also had a significant effect on their performances. Among the recommendations were that the policy of  Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) into the classroom should be implemented in the Nigerian Education system.