Factors explaining instructor integration of student mobile technology use at an institution of higher education: A mLearning student perspective

Use of mobile devices in teaching and learning has been much documented in the literature. Through the lens of Fred Davis’ (1989) technology acceptance model, Iqbal and Bhatti (2015) studied college student’s intention to use smartphones for school-related activities and found direct and indirect causal relationships between student perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and their intention to use smartphones for mLearning. The results of their SEM study revealed two exogenous variables: students’ readiness and their psychological readiness, suggesting student perception of smartphone use be affected by variables, including college students’ technical skills, self-reported confidence, and preferences. A study by Chen, Seilhamer, Bennett, and Bauer (2015) reported an age difference in use of mobile technology. The researchers from University of Central Florida found younger learners and those taking lower level courses prefer smartphone whereas older learners and graduate students tend to use more tablet for the learning purposes. They argued in their multi-year study that such demographic difference behooves instructors to plan and act strategically.

Two purposes of this investigation are to (a) follow up on some of the results of a multiple regression study by Pan, Sivo, and Goldsmith (in press) on learner perceived success in eLearning that is explained by four factors: perceived course management support by the university, perceived course management system use by instructor, perceived instructor use of course management system for communications, and perceived affinity for technology and (b) explore plausible patterns of the four stated learner success factors in relation to student expected instructor overall integration of mobile technology for the past year in support of mLearning student success.