Student Readiness and Perception to the Use of Smart Phones for Higher Education in the Pacific

Abstract

The emergence and advancement of Information Communication Technologies have transformed facilitation and content delivery in higher education worldwide. The Pacific region is no exception, the most commonly owned used tool amongst the people are the mobile phones. The extensive use of mobile phones in the Pacific is making a niche of its own in the education landscape. This paper explores the readiness and perception of students using mobile devices for learning in the Pacific. An exploratory research design was conducted whereby an online questionnaire was used to collect data for this study. The results revealed that students welcomed the idea of using smart phones for learning. However, the readiness of students for mobile driven education is dependent on various factors which are explored in this paper. In addition to this, majority of the students perceived that using the mobile devices for their higher education learning is a good idea.