The use of smartphones for educational purposes in higher education: Nursing students’ perspectives

Mobile technology use in nursing education is quite a new trend. Over the past decade, mobile technology is increasingly used in nursing education as a way of improving communication between teacher and student, providing timely access to information and improving learning efficiency. This study explored nursing students’ educational use of smartphones. A sample size of 128 students was used for the data analysis. Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, Mann-Whitney test, and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to analyze the data. The study found that students mostly used their smartphones for sharing notes with classmates, reading lecture notes, performing library or literature search, taking photos of their work, and surfing the web for learning materials. Additionally, the study revealed that there were significant differences in the educational use of smartphones in terms of gender and level of skills. However, there were no significant differences in students’ attitudes toward the educational use of smartphones in terms of gender and level of skills. Generally, students showed positive attitudes toward the educational use of smartphones. © Common Ground Research Networks, Charles Buabeng-Andoh, Fred Totimeh