The Smart Phone in Education: A Review of Current and Potential Use Among Students.

Abstract

Background: Technology advancement had an impact in almost all the sectors and education sector is also among one of them. These days’ students are also using smart phone for academic purpose. Now it is possible to perform many functions using smart phone like communicating via email, performing internet searches and using specific applications. In technology industry smart phone is one of the fastest growing sectors and popularity of smart phone has gone tremendously. Objective:  The objective of this paper is to describe the role of smart phone in education. The aim here is to highlight the ways in which Smartphone can enhance academic performance, lifelong learning and communication. And also what evidences are there of smart phone increasing engagement of students with their studies? Methods:   A review was conducted on all published papers on the uses of the Smart phone that could be applicable to the field of education. Results:  We have identified 20 studies and found many uses of Smartphone for the academic purpose; also we found very high quality papers that can help us to understand how to make best use of this technology for academic purpose. Conclusions:  The role of Smartphone is very promising and exciting in education, although more studies are needed to better understand the role of it in this field. As nearly billions of people are using Smartphone, it has certainly vast potential to create right kind of learning. Although this study supports digital learning, higher educational institutions in developing countries are yet to exploit its full advantage.