International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 118 No. 8 2018, 1-7

ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
ijpam.eu

Reviewing the Impact of Smartphone Usage on

Academic Performance Among Students of
Higher Learning
Dr.K.Sumathi, Mrs.N.Selva Lakshmi and Ms.S.Kundhavai
Assistant Professor, Dept. of CS & IT, Kalasalingam University, Virudhunagar Dt.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Commerce, Senthamarai College, Madurai Dt.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Business Administration, Kalasalingam University, Virudhunagar Dt.
([email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

Abstract – Adoption of Smartphone by students of higher I. INTRODUCTION

learning has been a global phenomenon in recent years. It is Learning is imperative for growth and in today’s era the
more than an integral part of adolescents’ daily lives and has gadgets become a supplement to add value for learning
become the most popular form of electronic communication. activities. Invariably the students are those who either become
Infact, the Smartphone has turned from a technological tool to a beneficiary if they use the gadgets in appropriate manner or
a social tool. become a trap if used inappropriately. This study as indicated
Smartphone and tablets play a very significant role in higher previously focuses on the impact of Smartphone among the
learning student’s information seeking behaviour in meeting students who takers of higher education and the relative
their learning and research needs. This paper explores the impact on academic performance.
impact of Smartphone on academic performance of higher
learning students. The study revealed high level of awareness A mobile phone is an electronic device used for two-way
about the usage of smartphones by higher learning students radio telecommunication over a cellular network of base
for their academic works. Results showcases that smartphones stations known as cell sites (as defined by Vijayakumaran
have tremendous impact on their higher education. Especially Nair.K & Vinod Chandra S.S, 2014).Many definitions of
with easy internet access and high speed browsing as it saves mobile phones validates the point that its existence in the
time and money rather than going to cybercafé/college world was for emergency purpose but over the time the usage
library. Moreover, lack of experts who are technically strong has taken varied purposes.
on repairs during fault occurrence, operational difficulties, If students have a mobile phone, then it is easy to contact
high cost of data subscription from service providers and anyone at their needs. For instance, if a student is in danger,
fragility are the major problems that are encountered while he/she can contact their parents for rescue and safeguard
using smartphones. This study aims in finding out the themselves. Likewise, a student with a phone can contact
relationship between smartphone usage and academic police at any harmful situation, or contact fire brigade if they
performance among students of higher learning. The study find fire somewhere, or even they can call any useful
involved data collation based on description of the phone departments on their needs. Therefore, mobile phone is one of
usage habit such as browsing frequency, information sourced, the best solutions for any emergency situations.
sites visited, and examining the effect of smartphones on Mobile phones have become an essential part of anyone’s day
students’ academic related activities. The hours spent on the to day life since 1990s. As cell phones have become more
phones by students were also gauged and compared with one available, they are increasingly owned and used by
another focusing on studies and learning perspectives college/university students as well.
respectively. The aim of this research is to assess the impact of mobile
phones in learning as they enhance students’ learning in
Key words: Smartphones, Student academic activities, different ways. Smartphones easily promote collaborative and
Higher learning students, academic performance

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

different types of learning through their wireless connection to have a classroom at home or wherever making use of
the internet. Their adoption in learning processes by the higher communication and educational applications offered by
institution management as student-learning and smartphones. she also mentions another finding about how
communication device tools is useful. Taking a step ahead, the smartphones are influencing and changing educational
impact of mobile learning on students’ learning behaviours practices. For example, changes in the way to gather
and performance have also been highlighted in recent research information, to receive instructions from teachers, to do
(Wand, Minjuan et al 2009). Mobile phones motivate students homework, to collaborate with classmates, among others.
in a classroom environment to be more engaged to the lesson
promoting learner-centred participation. This indicates the The independent variable namely age becomes an important
dynamic support that the Smartphone has brought to students’ factor to be considered to gauge the impact of cell phone
learning practice. usage among students and in addition the age being at the
level of adolescence is very critical which has been postulated
2. LITERATURE REVIEW by (Elkind, 1967), in his theory. As the theory focuses on
The survey conducted by D. North, K. Johnston, and J. adolescent egocentrism, pointed out heightened self-
Ophoff (2014) showcased few signs of addiction to consciousness during adolescence. The theory highlights that
respondent’s mobile phones. Their study explored the use and the adolescence stage is critical because of authority,
role of mobile phones among South African university unwillingness to accept and quick to find fault with others
students. The focused on four main categories to examine the which leads seeing from one’s own perspective alone and not
students’ mobile phone use were namely a) reasons to use being empathetic which has been conducted among students
mobile phones b) pattern of mobile phone use c)purchasing of the University of Ibadan. Similarly, his study also
factors d) behaviour-related issues. showcases that ostentatious mode of using and disposing of
the internet enabled phones at will, in order to be abreast of
Differences in mobile phone use by gender were found, with current trends which validates his point that today’s students
female students showing increased mobile phone use for are more of attention seekers.
safety and socializing, interest in brand and trends, as well as The West African Examination Council WAEC Chief
signs of addiction. They found that Males and females differ Examiner Report, 2014 has shown the data from the Taraba
significantly in some areas of mobile phone use. State that most of the students fail English Language and
A recent study conducted by (Gretchen Krebs, 2012) shows Mathematics. This may be partly attributed to high usage of
that smartphones have a huge impact on student achievement. Mobile Phone telecommunication gadgets and student spend
Skeptically, including some parents, worry about kids wasting more time in mobile phone usage instead of concentrating
time in class, but so far the benefits of allowing personal their classroom work. The free night calls, chatting, instant
technology in schools outweigh the risks. messaging, social networking and exam malpractices etc are
A research conducted by H.M.Abuhassna and I.M.H. Amin greatly influencing the student’s academic performance.
indicates the differences due to age and gender do not appear M. Tayseer, et al(2014) proposed a research article titled
to be particularly significant; most significant differences "Social Network: Academic and Social Impact on College
appear to be due to the mobile devices used or technologies Students. “ and found that there is a correlation between the
available. The use or not of certain technologies like social students GPAs and their frequent usage of social networks
networking among students is high compared to downloading like twitter, face book. They also found that many of their
podcast or searching for answers during examinations. respondents do not use social sites to look for academic
According to (M. J. Stollak, et al, 2011) students who have related information; however, many of them support the idea
smartphones were more likely to both access social networks of having online learning. Another finding showed that the
and spend time in chatting with others. From an educational students tend to use social networks like Face book and
point of view, student can enhance their academic Twitter in social purposes rather than the academic ones.
performance level by watching online resources and This work concentrates on finding the Impact of smartphone
professors may have to be wary of assigning project works usage on academic performance of higher learning students in
involving social media to students as some may have an virudhunagar district which includes 12 Arts and science
advantage in completing the work than others. colleges, 12 Engineering Colleges and one deemed university.
(P. Jubien, 2013) in her qualitative study concludes that
graduate students combine their personal lives with their 3. METHODOLOGY
student lives influenced by the use of smartphones. This The subjects of the study included students from the
finding can be understood as a statement that students can Virudhunagar. Quantitative research method was adopted and

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

data were treated accordingly. The population of the study

comprised of 40% of the students from the various institutions 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
during the year 2016. This constituted to the sample for the Based on the data collected 60% of the students
study. The data obtained for the survey was collected between reported that they have android mobile with internet
October and November 2016 by questionnaire method. connection and have the internet enabled phones. Around 90%
Closed-ended questions were adopted which in-turn were of them have been actively using the internet mobile services
interpreted and analysed. A total of 85 copies of questionnaire to surf and browse the net. The following figure shows the
were distributed to students of the various institutions analysis of browsing frequency of respondents. Data was
including those from the various departments of which 80nos collected around 373 students. Among them the 223 students
were returned with a response rate of 88.9%. The returned having mobile phones with net connection and 200 students
copies of questionnaire were analyzed using percentage and actively used internet mobile services to surf and browse the
frequency count. net.
Table 1: Showing average hours per day spent on
4. RESEARCH DESIGN both academic and social communication by respondents
The design was such as to trace vital predictive
relationship and degrees of association among variables. In Table 1 Average Hours Spent Per Day
order to analyze the information collected, the sampling
method of research design was adopted. Simple random Total Hours
Frequency Percent
Valid Cumulative
Spent Percent Percent
sampling method is adopted for data collection. less than 2 27.5
55 27.5 27.5
Simple Random Sampling (SRS) is a simple random hours
sample of a given size; all such subsets of the frame are given 2 to 5 hours 58 29 29 56.5

an equal probability. Furthermore, any given pair of elements 5 to 7 90.5

68 34 34
hours
has the same chance of selection as any other such pair. This more than 7 100
19 9.5 9.5
minimizes bias and simplifies analysis of results. In particular, hours
200 100 100
the variance between individual results within the sample is a
good indicator of variance in the overall population, which
makes it relatively easy to estimate the accuracy of results. According to the table above, the average hours spent on
The study population consisted of all higher learning usage of smartphone by majority of the respondents (34%)
students of the Virudhunagar District, Tamil Nadu State. Thus lies on 5 -7 hours per day which is too much for students to
students were randomly selected on campus to administer the spend those hours on academic activities rather than non -
questionnaire. Henceforth it is noted that the findings of the academic issues which eventually improves the academic
study will have equal applicability to other students in the performance because the time needed by student to
schools. The survey questionnaire was accordingly, concentrate on his/her studies is almost occupied by academic
administered physically and taken back immediately and some interactions like online materials, registering online courses.
after few days. The information on the table 1 above can also be presented in
This is dependent on the choice of the individual figure 1 below.
making up the sample size. A self -administered process
whereby the respondent himself reads the questions and
records answer without the assistance of an interviewer. The
questionnaire was designed to collect relevant information the
questions were numbered for easy references and arranged so
that the respondents can understand easily the reason and
important attached each question.
The form of questionnaire used provided on easy
quick way of collecting objective information from primary
sources without necessary allowing the respondents to strain
his or her brain for answers. The content validity ensured of
the validity of the study. Coincidently, test-retest method was
also used in this study in order to test the reliability, out of
forty questionnaire returned, 15 questions were marked for
test-retest.

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

Table 2: Showing the use of smartphone Medium 35 20 55

Cumulative
High 63 14 77
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Percent 123 77 200
Valid
110 55.0 55.0 82.5
Academic
Non
Table:4 - Computation of Test Statistical for Academic
65 32.5 32.5 32.5
Academic Purpose Compared to non academic purposes
Both 25 12.5 12.5 100.0 (O-
200 100.0 100.0 Browsing Responses O E O-E (O-E) 2
E)2/
Frequency
E
The information in the above table can also be presented in a
Low 25 41.82 16.82 282.91 6.77
pie chart shown below:
Academic Medium 35 33.83 1.17 1.37 0.04
High 63 47.36 15.64 244.61 5.16
Low 43 26.18 16.82 282.91 10.81
Non
Medium 20 21.18 -1.18 1.39 0.07
Academic
High 14 29.65 -15.65 244.92 8.26
Calculated Value 31.11

Where E stands for expected value and O is the observed

value
As it can be shown above, the majority of X^2 =∑ ∑(O –E )^2 /E = 31.108 (H1)
respondents responded positively on the use of smartphone for X^2 table value = (r –1)( C- 1) = (3-1)(2- 1) = 2 X 1 = 2
academic purposes(55 %) like sharing of materials or notes 2 at 0.05 = 5.991 (H0)
provided by lecturers/instructors compared to 32.5% who use Conclusion: Since the X^2 calculated value of 31.108 is
their smartphone for non academic purposes (32.5%) like greater than the X^2 table value of 5.991. Hence, we reject H0
communications, charting with friends browsing some social and accept H1. There is significant relationship between the
news for celebrities. usages of the mobile for academic purposes like sharing of
So the above testament shows that most of students materials or notes provided by lecturers/instructors compare to
in higher learning institutions tends to use smartphones for non academic purposes like chatting on Facebook, Whatsapp
academic purpose than non-academic purpose which let them and BBM.
to improve the quality and updated learning and increase the
concentrations in class when instructor/lecturer is giving Discussion of Findings
his/her lectures and this causes the better result in academic From the analysis of result in table above, the following
performance. This is also analysed with the help of Chi findings were made during the research;
Square test.  213 questionnaires were administered; 200 were collected
while 13 were rejected because of incomplete source of
Hypothesis: information.
H0: there is no significant relationship between the usage of  Most of the respondent expressed their academic
phones for academic purposes and non academic purposes. performance was improved due to the proper usage of mobile
H1: there is significant relationship between the usage of phones.
phones for academic purposes and non academic purposes.  Most of the respondent believed that the biggest issue in
Table 3: Showing the browsing frequency of smartphone for mobile phone usage is the addiction to usage of social
academic and non academic purposes: network.
 Most of the respondent believed that the students use their
Browsing Non mobile phones on academic network (using it to learn eBooks)
Frequency Academic Academic Total than using it to social network.

low 25 43 68

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

So we concluded that if the use of mobile phone is managed grades among college students,” in Proceedings from ASBBS
and properly harnessed, it would definitely improve the annual conference, 2011, pp. 859-865.
academic performance of students. [6]P. Jubien, "Shape Shifting Smartphones: Riding the Waves
in Education," Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology,
6. CONCLUSION vol. 39, p. n2, 2013.
Based on the chi square test, it is observed that there [7] Twum, R. (2011) Students’ Questionnaire on Mobile
is no significant relationship affecting the academic Phone Use in Learning
performance of students in using smartphones. Data was (SQMPUL). Kenyatta University, Kenya
collected from students around Virudhunagar district. The [8]M. Tayseer, F. Zoghieb, I. Alcheikh, and M. N. Awadallah,
relationship between smartphone usage and academic "Social Network: Academic and Social Impact on College
activities among higher learning students was found. Each Students."
and every technology has its own advantages and [9]P. A. Kirschner and A. C. Karpinski, “Facebook® and
disadvantages for students and mobile phone is one of them. academic performance,” Computers in human behavior, vol.
Students, who passed in first class, must be gained some extra 26, pp. 1237-1245, 2010.
knowledge and surely which is from the internet. Before the [10]J. Lee, B. Cho, Y. Kim, and J. Noh, “Smartphone
library helps the student to gain some extra knowledge and Addiction in University Students and its Implication for
now the whole library is in the student’s pocket as a mobile Learning,” in Emerging Issues in Smart Learning, ed:
phone. In this study data both Description of the phone usage Springer, 2015, pp. 297-305.
habit such as Browsing frequency, Information sourced, Sites
visited and etc., were collected and found that there is no AUTHOR’S INFORMATION
significant relationship affecting the academic performance of
students in using smartphones.
Dr.K.Sumathi currently serves as
RECOMMENDATIONS an Assistant Professor in
 Further study may be undertaken as to the specific Computer Science and
extent when can smartphone usage can be disruptive Information Technology
Department, Kalasalingam
of learning processes and detrimental to studies.
University, India. Her overall
 The professors should give orientation on the use of teaching experience includes 14
smartphones especially for information to maximize years in various Engineering/ Arts & Science/ Polytechnic
their use as an aid to learning processes. Colleges. Her notable publications include seven papers in
 College Administration may create a hub wherein international journals, apart from that she has published in
texts messages and pictures can be sent twenty-four many national journals. She has presented papers in various
seven (24/7) for a safe campus. national and international conferences. She is a recipient of
Elite Certificate in Programming in C++ and Elite & Gold
 A mobileapp may be generated to monitor the
Medalist in Problem solving using programming in C, NPTEL
students’ behaviour on Smartphone usage to exhibit online course. She also serves as a reviewer in International
the accurate results. Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Data Mining (FSDM 2017),
Hualien, Taiwan. Her research interest includes mainly in
REFERENCES programming and data mining. She is a life member in ISTE.
[1]D. North, K. Johnston, and J. Ophoff, “The Use of Mobile
Phones by South African University Students,” Issues in
She currently serves as an Assistant
Informing Science and Information Technology, vol. 11,
Professor and Head of the Department
2014. of Commerce, Senthamarai College of
[2]http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865566925/Smartphon Arts and Science, India. She is a caring
es-smarter-students.html?pg=all. and compassionate professor with a rich
[3]H. M. Abuhassna and I. M. H. Amin, “Students feedback teaching experience of 17 years in
and perception regarding mobile phone applications at the various Arts & Science Colleges. She has
published research papers in four
faculty of education in-UPM.”
international journals and presented
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescent_egocentrism almost twenty five papers in various national and
[5]M. J. Stollak, A. Vandenberg, A. Burklund, and S. Weiss, international conferences. She is certified as an Elite
“Getting social: The impact of social networking usage on Certificate in Marketing Management course offered by IIT
Kanpur(NPTEL online course). She is having strong

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

analytical skills, capable of assessing research problems and

implementing appropriate statistical tools to solve research
problems. She is a life member in Indian Commerce
Association.

Prof. Kundhavai Santharam

currently serves as an
Assistant Professor and heads
the department of Business
administration at
Kalasalingam University,
India. She has Business
Administration as her basic degree and post graduated
specializing in Human resources. In addition, had completed
her Masters in philosophy in Management Studies from
Madurai Kamaraj Univesity. She is a recipient of best alumni
award from her graduating college. She has served about
eight years with TVS group and two years in IIM, Ahmedabad
as an academic associate in Organisational Behaviour area.
Being in the capability of Human resources incharge for TVS
group of schools she has hands on experience in handling
training modules for teachers, counseling, conducting exit
surveys and employee engagement surveys, training need
assessment project, emotional intelligence, time management,
case study approaches, workplace creativity and personality
traits and performance management system. She has vast
experience in conducting case study based research work and
has continuously participated in conferences in the area of
her research interest both at national and international level.
Her accolades include best case study award in human
resources track in case conference conducted by Jansons
Business School, Coimbatore, India in the year 2016.

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