THE ROLE OF MOBILE PHONES IN EDUCATION AND COUNSELLING
BY
NSISONG A. UDOH Department of Educational Foundations, Guidance and Counselling, University Of Uyo, Uyo e-mail:
[email protected]
PAPER PRESENTED DURING THE ONE-DAY REFRESHER PROGRAMME FOR PRINCIPALS OF SCHOOLS, HEAD TEACHERS, VICE PRINCIPALS ACADEMIC, PROPRIETORS OF SCHOOLS, AND PRACTISING COUNSELLORS IN AKWA IBOM STATE. DATE: MONDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 2015 VENUE: COMMUNITY COMPREHENSIVE SECONDARY SCHOOL, AKA ETINAN, UYO
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INTRODUCTION
The advent of mobile communications technology was welcomed with open arms because it promised advancements in knowledge sharing which in turn would significantly enhance development in all spheres of modern life: commerce, medicine, transportation, construction, and education among others. However, the experience in the 21 st century reveals that modern societies were not well prepared for this technology. Little did modern societies know about how much ills this piece of technology could harbour. And unfortunately, modern man is currently struggling to rise above the ills of modern technological advancements and seek out more and newer beneficial ways to utilise the wide array of available technology, most prominently, mobile technologies. The use of mobile phone in the education sector is not immune from this dilemma. Throughout the world, from developed through developing to underdeveloped countries, the debate on whether to use or not to use mobile devices in education, in the school, in the classroom is still on, with experts from various fields of the education enterprise advancing sound and valid arguments against and in favour. Admittedly, mobile phones in the education sector have, up till now, caused much harm than good due to frequent misuse and misapplication of these devices. Speaking of preparedness as highlighted at the onset, students and educators in today’s schools failed to prepare for, adopt mobile devices and utilise them in education effectively and beneficially. Hence the current outrage on students use of mobile devices while in school. It is well known that several education ministries around the world have prevailed on their governments to place a ban or in some cases partial ban on the use of mobile phones in schools, especially by students. and there are scores of reports on how such bans have resulted in improved gains in students overall academic performance. This presentation will however focus on the positive prospects of utilising mobile phones in counselling and education. Following the current attempts by educational technologists to adopt and develop and use m-learning (mobile learning), m-counselling has a bright future and deserves research attention, in depth exploration and pilot studies. For the purpose of disambiguation, mobile phones in this context subsumes handheld telecommunications devices with or without regular cellular phone functionality, that facilitates information exchange over some sort of telecommunications network.
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2.
THE ROLE OF MOBILE PHONES IN COUNSELLING AND EDUCATION
To appreciate how mobile phones may benefit education and counselling, it is important to examine what roles these mobile gadgets may play in (1) improving access to education and counselling, (2) promoting new learning and alternative counselling processes, (3) sustaining continuous learning and counselling 2.1.
Improving Access to Education and Counselling
Mobiles supposedly impact educational outcomes by improving access to education while maintaining the quality of education delivered. The same would be true of counselling services. In theory, mLearning increases access for those who are mobile or cannot physically attend learning institutions. MLearning makes education more accessible in that it enables learners to pursue their studies according to their own capacities in terms of chance (time), cost, mobility…and so on. The portability of mobile technology means that mLearning is not bound by fixed class times; mLearning enables learning at all times and in all places, during breaks, before or after shifts, at home, or on the go. MLearning can also increase access in those situations where cost represents a significant barrier to learning. For those in rural or remote areas where environmental and infrastructure challenges hinder other learning modalities, mLearning presents great opportunities. The ubiquity of mobile phones means that educational services can be delivered with learners’ existing resources and know-how. In regards to cost, the benefit of increased access afforded by mLearning is particularly relevant in the developing country context. In sum, mLearning and mCounselling could significantly broaden the availability of quality education and counselling materials through decreased cost and increased flexibility while also enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of education and counselling administration and policy. 2.2.
Promoting “New Learning” and “Alternative Counselling”
Historically, learning was teacher mediated and highly localised. Counselling too was seen as a face-to-face and scheduled helping encounter. In the modern context, the new learning, in keeping with current trends in communications technology, is personalized, learner-centred, situated, collaborative, ubiquitous, and lifelong; because mobile technology is increasingly personal, user-centred, mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and durable. The concept of “new learning” in the modern education context advocates that education—teaching and learning—
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is more learner-centred and personalised, more knowledge-centred and authentic, and lifelong. The same would be pertinent for guidance and counselling in the modern context. According to proponents of new learning, mobile phones facilitate designs for personalized learning in that they are responsive to difference and diversity in the way learning occurs. They facilitate designs for situated learning by providing learning during the course of the activity – in the field for a botany student, in the classroom for a teacher trainee, or in the workshop for an engineer. In this sense, mLearning also facilitates designs for authentic learning, meaning learning that targets real-world problems and involves projects of relevance and interest to the learner. These would also apply in mCounselling: personalised and authentic counselling services in the school system. The value of mobile phones also arises from the manner in which they facilitate lifelong learning. Mobiles can support the great amount of learning that occurs during the many activities of everyday life, learning that occurs spontaneously in impromptu settings outside of the classroom and outside of the usual environment of home and office. They enable learning that occurs across time and place as learners apply what they learn in one environment to developments in another. In a similar vein, the use of mobile phones would allow counsellees to utilise guidance and counselling services across time and space. Mobile phones theoretically make learner-centred learning possible by enabling students to customize the transfer of and access to information in order to build on their skills and knowledge and to meet their own educational goals. MLearning thus exerts a democratizing effect on the learning experience as learners take a greater responsibility for the learning process instead of being passively fed information by an instructor. Whereas in traditional models of education the goal is the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, mLearning empowers students to actively participate in the learning process. As a facilitator of new learning, mLearning goes beyond an emphasis on the possession of information to enabling learners to find, identify, manipulate, and evaluate existing information. MLearning and mCounselling therefore represents learning and counselling that is not ‘just-in-case,’ education for the sake of producing a bank of knowledge or merely forearming an individual for problems that may never arise, but rather represents learning and counselling that is ‘justin-time,’ ‘just enough,’ or ‘just-for-me’. Mobiles can also supposedly facilitate knowledge-centred learning by providing efficient and inventive methods by which students can learn with understanding – meaning that they deepen their understanding of a specific subject matter rather than merely memorizing large 4
amounts of information – and then use this knowledge as a basis for new learning through integration and interconnection. 2.3.
Sustaining continuous learning and counselling
Mobile phones have the potential to take learning and counselling beyond the confines a class period or even the school environment. From prep time to personal study periods, mobile phones can significantly impact learning by allowing collaboration through which ideas could be shared, subjects clarified, support provided and enhancing the overall learning experience. In real counselling scenarios, counselling homework may be more effectively enforced and follow-up may be more efficiently carried out with the ubiquitous nature of mobile telecommunications technology. 3.
USING MOBILE PHONES IN EDUCATION AND COUNSELLING
3.1.
Common Mobile Facilities
BlogSpots: Blogging is very common activity among young mobile phone users. Video blogs, MP3 blogs, art blogs, audio blogs (podcasts), photo blogs, online dairies, and edublogs can be created and furnished with educational contents and counselling information. Because these blogs can be created and accessed free, besides network access charges, they are a useful way to put mobile phones to use in education and counselling. Facebook pages may be used for blogging. Chat rooms: A chat room is another facility in mobile devices that may be utilised in counselling and education. The teacher or counsellor may form a chat room to address a subject of interest to the learners. Learners may form a chat room to collaborate and address a difficult subject matter, possibly arising from homework or class work or a just concluded lesson or even to prepare for an upcoming lesson on a known subject. Whatsapp group chat may be very effective in this regard. Sharing of Electronic resources: Mobile devices allows for increased knowledge sharing. There is currently more information on the World Wide Web that may ever be accessed in any single location or library holding, let alone in a typical class room. Hence, mobile phones enhance the potential of accessing and sharing these knowledge resources in more convenient ways and at a much reduced cost in the shortest. It therefore becomes pertinent that the teacher or counsellor is familiar with existing electronic libraries and fetches and makes ready educational resources that are suitable to the real learning and counselling needs of the
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learners. Then these electronic resources may be transmitted to the learners via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or other file sharing protocols. 3.2.
Solving common problems with using Cell Phones in Class
Students without Cell Phones / Smart Phones: Not every student has a cell phone. The easiest way to work around this is to have students working in groups, collaborating and solving problems together. This way, those who do not have may still benefit from the use of mobile devices in education and counselling. Wireless Access: Wireless access might be another problem. Smart phone users will usually try and find a wireless network instead of going through the provider signal. It would be more cost effective if schools provide network access which students can log on to and use. Keeping Cell Phone Use Appropriate: Thinking about using cell phone in the classroom we need to make sure we involve our students in the conversation. Let them teach us about how to reduce the fear of theft or inappropriate use. Every student should be reminded every day about appropriate technology use, and what to do if the rules are broken. We need to help students understand the consequences of things like cyberbullying, sexting and posting things to social networking sites. When proper guidance is provided and the ground rules clearly established, inappropriate use of mobile phones will be significantly curtailed. 4.
Conclusion
Some people may want to ban cell phones from classrooms for good reasons. But, as some advocate of mobile learning would argue, we did not ban pens in our schools because students can pass notes around during class. The pencils have also survived even though you could poke someone in the eye. And the amount of paper that is generated in most schools is almost criminal in our era of climate change and campaigns to safe the trees and the environment. This is a new time in education. And with dwindling budgets in a biting economy, an avalanche of knowledge seeking assimilation, myriads of everyday problems seeking solution, and the average learner literally submerged in their mobile devices, there is an urgent need to rethink possibilities, stretching available technology, to enhance the performance of educators and practising counsellors. The mobile phones come with the learners to school every day, now is the time to put them to profitable use.
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