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THE ROLE OF MOBILE PHONES IN EDUCATION AND COUNSELLING

Conference Paper · September 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1737.2881

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 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
1. 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 ‘just-
in-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

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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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