Feasibility Of Mobile Applications In Education Institutes For Student Engagement

Benefits of Mobile Applications

Education has witnessed major transformations since the introduction of the technology and they are proving to be of great vitality. The technology has made it readily simple for thee students to understand the concepts while the educators are availed with the opportunity to simplify the educating process (Scott 2015). Technology have also increased the ratio of student engagement in the education and one of the technology that is dominating the field of student engagement is the mobile applications. Smartphones have emerged as a basic need for today’s world and the smartness offered by the technology is based on mobile application. The mobile applications come with different features according to the need of the users (Yang, Maher and Conroy 2015). The discussed paper is aimed to discuss a proposed research work that will assess the feasibility of mobile application in education institutes for student engagement. To attain the objectives different aspects of the proposed work have been discussed that includes project objective, scope, review of the past works along with the research methodology that will be adopted and the schedule of the project.

Education based apps that are interactive in nature are the most prominent choice for the organisations. However, it has been identified that the extensive usage of mobile applications has also exposed the academic life of students to certain threats (Fojtik 2015). Hence, the proposed research work is aimed at identifying the feasibility of extensive usage of mobile applications (subject) in the educational organisations for student engagement. It will include understanding of the need for mobile application in educational organisations, its importance, opportunities offered by the subject, challenges faced due to usage of the subject and potential solution for those challenges. Project objectives have been listed as follows:

Primary Objective: To identify the needs of organisation for increasing mobile application usage for student engagement.

1. To understand the importance of mobile application.
2. To assess different opportunities that can be availed by extensive use of mobile application.
3. To determine the challenges faced by the organisation on extensive dependence over mobile applications.
4. Potential solutions for the identified challenges.

The outcome of the research work will assist the educational institutes in deciding over the usage of the mobile application whether the mobile applications should be used extensively or should they be limited to an extend in context to student engagement. Furthermore, identifications of the opportunities from extensive usage of mobile application will enable the institutions to leverage the subject. While the identification of challenges and their potential solutions will enable devising of proper solutions to mitigate the threats.

The review of the literary work has revealed that the mobile application in educational institutes offer several benefits. The most prominent advantage of using a mobile application in the educational institutes is that it enables an effective interaction between the educating entities (professors, institutes and others) and the student (Abolfazli et al. 2014). The interactive benefit could also extend to the guardian of the students. Learning can some time develop a generic feeling of boredom, however, introduction of mobile applications has developed a feeling of novelty and in the processed offered an enhanced student engagement. The ease of resource availability is another perk that needs to be considered as part of the benefits offered by the mobile applications in the educational institutions (Ebner 2015). Researches have also made it evident that the online resources can also be availed through websites however, the websites lack in certain aspect that offer the prominence to the mobile application. Those aspects include better functionality, improved interactivity, pop up notifications, ease of availability and similar others (Mehrotra et al. 2015). Similarly, multiple identification of the benefits offered by the mobile applications have been done by reviewing the literary work of past.

Challenges posed by Mobile Applications

However, certain restrictions that are posed by the mobile applications to the academic life of the students were also identified. The first and foremost of them was th privacy & security threat that are associated with the adoption of mobile applications. Other issues such as the management issues that the governing entity faces regarding defining of the policies for effective and ethical use of the application, designing of suitable mobile apps, technical challenges and similarly multiple other challenges. Another notable challenge identified was where professors and students as well believes that mobile applications can be a disturbing factor for the academic life of the students (?ad and Gökta? 2014). Moreover, a survey by ECAR (Educause centre for analysis and research) revealed that the students believes that the mobile application will mitigate the gap between personal and academic life (Sánchez, Cortijo and Javed 2014).

It has been identified that the mobile application usage is beneficial for the academic life but they also offered certain constraints. However, the amount of usage that needs to be done is a question that is gap in the literary review and the paper aims to fill that gap through the proposed work.

Taking basis of the research objective and the gap identified in the literature the following questions have been defined.

1. Is the extensive usage of mobile application for student engagement feasible?
2. What opportunities are presented to the institutions on extensive mobile usage?

• What are the challenges for extensive mobile usage in academic life and what are the potential solutions?

The project in discussion is based on usage of mobile applications in academic institution for student engagement and hence, the data collected for the research will be collected from the academic domain of the student that is the author’s college. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be part of the data collection procedure. The quantitative data will be collected by an online survey form that will be developed on Google Forms and maintained on the google Spreadsheet (Birtley and Moreland 2014). The college professors and students will be the population and random sampling will be done to collect 200 samples including both the students and the professors. The collected data will be analysed using One Sampled Analysis of Variance (one sample ANOVA) that will contain an independent variable (mobile application usage) and others will be dependent variables (Busk and Marascuilo 2015). T Test may also be adopted if two variable relations need to be identified.

The qualitative data will be collected from a sample size of 20 through means of interview and will include both the students of the research region and the professors along with the data analyst of the college. The students will be offered open ended questions to identify their perception towards the extensive usage of mobile application while the professors will offer an insight into the difference before and post adoption of mobile applications. The Data Analyst will be interviewed to identify the change in student’s performance pre and post introduction of the mobile application.

Research Questions

The project is aimed at identify the feasibility of mobile applications in academic life and hence it will be limited to the researcher’s academic domain and hence, the findings of the research cannot be generalised. Another reason for limiting the research to the author’s academic domain is because of the limited budget, time and approach to extend the work and collect a broader sample size for research work. Additionally, the findings from the paper will be identified from a university’s perspective and hence, cannot be enforced for all academic institutions. It may differ for schools and other academic institutions.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Phase 1: Initialisation	15 days	Mon 03-09-18	Fri 21-09-18
Topic selection	2 days	Mon 03-09-18	Tue 04-09-18
Background establishment	5 days	Wed 05-09-18	Tue 11-09-18	2
Brainstorming	2 days	Wed 12-09-18	Thu 13-09-18	3
Minor Review	4 days	Fri 14-09-18	Wed 19-09-18	4
Determining Research Objectives	2 days	Thu 20-09-18	Fri 21-09-18	5
Phase 2: Planning	11 days	Mon 24-09-18	Mon 08-10-18
Research Plan	5 days	Mon 24-09-18	Fri 28-09-18	6
Budget	3 days	Mon 01-10-18	Wed 03-10-18	8
Developing Research Question	2 days	Thu 04-10-18	Fri 05-10-18	9
Formatting	0 days	Wed 03-10-18	Wed 03-10-18	9
Proposal Submission	1 day	Mon 08-10-18	Mon 08-10-18	10
Phase 3: Execution	41 days	Tue 09-10-18	Tue 04-12-18
Primary Review	10 days	Tue 09-10-18	Mon 22-10-18	12
Identifying Patterns from review	5 days	Tue 23-10-18	Mon 29-10-18	14
Questionnaire Development	2 days	Tue 30-10-18	Wed 31-10-18	15
Quantitative Data collection	5 days	Thu 01-11-18	Wed 07-11-18	16
ANOVA & T-testing on Data	6 days	Thu 08-11-18	Thu 15-11-18	17
Qualitative Data Collection	8 days	Fri 16-11-18	Tue 27-11-18	18
Grounded Theory testing	5 days	Wed 28-11-18	Tue 04-12-18	19
Phase 4: Analysis	23 days	Wed 05-12-18	Fri 04-01-19
Summarising Findings	6 days	Wed 05-12-18	Wed 12-12-18	15,18,20
Discussion	4 days	Thu 13-12-18	Tue 18-12-18	22
Concluding	8 days	Wed 19-12-18	Fri 28-12-18	23
Report Development	5 days	Mon 31-12-18	Fri 04-01-19	24
Report Completed	0 days	Fri 04-01-19	Fri 04-01-19	24,25
Phase 5: Closure	14 days	Mon 07-01-19	Thu 24-01-19
Report Submission	4 days	Mon 07-01-19	Thu 10-01-19	25
Oral Presentation	10 days	Fri 11-01-19	Thu 24-01-19	28

Figure: Gantt Chart

(Source: Created by Author using MS PROJECT)

Conclusion

The discussed paper has proposed the research work that is to be undertaken along with the methodologies that will be adopted. Mobile application usage in the educational institutions for student engagement is a matter of discussion because several researches have shown that it offers better opportunities while other reflects its downside. Hence, the paper is aimed to identify the whether or not extensive usage of the mobile application is feasible. To attain the discussed objective both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected that will be tested using ANOVA analysis. The time frame of the research work has also been attached to conclude on the paper.

Reference List

Abolfazli, S., Sanaei, Z., Gani, A., Xia, F. and Yang, L.T., 2014. Rich mobile applications: genesis, taxonomy, and open issues. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 40, pp.345-362.

Birley, G. and Moreland, N., 2014. A practical guide to academic research. Routledge.

Busk, P.L. and Marascuilo, L.A., 2015. Statistical analysis in single-case research. Single-Case Research Design and Analysis (Psychology Revivals): New Directions for Psychology and Education, 159.

Ebner, M., 2015. Mobile applications for math education–how should they be done. Mobile learning and mathematics. Foundations, design, and case studies, pp.20-32.

Fojtik, R., 2015. Ebooks and mobile devices in education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 182, pp.742-745.

Ledford, J.R. and Gast, D.L., 2018. Single case research methodology: Applications in special education and behavioral sciences. Routledge.

Ledford, J.R. and Gast, D.L., 2018. Single case research methodology: Applications in special education and behavioral sciences. Routledge.

Mehrotra, A., Musolesi, M., Hendley, R. and Pejovic, V., 2015, September. Designing content-driven intelligent notification mechanisms for mobile applications. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 813-824). ACM.

?ad, S.N. and Gökta?, Ö., 2014. Preservice teachers’ perceptions about using mobile phones and laptops in education as mobile learning tools. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(4), pp.606-618.

Sánchez, R.A., Cortijo, V. and Javed, U., 2014. Students’ perceptions of Facebook for academic purposes. Computers & Education, 70, pp.138-149.

Scott, D.M., 2015. The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.

Yang, C.H., Maher, J.P. and Conroy, D.E., 2015. Implementation of behavior change techniques in mobile applications for physical activity. American journal of preventive medicine, 48(4), pp.452-455.