Group Admins
Description
Mobile technologies such as smartphones, tablet devices, and laptops have taken on an increasing presence in the higher education learning environment (Melhuish and Falloon, 2010). The proliferation of mobile technology provides not only myriads of opportunities to support teaching and learning, but also challenges or even stress to the mobile device users. This study developed a framework to investigate the double-edged effect (Kuznekoff and Titsworth, 2013) of students’ academic usage of mobile devices. Specifically, we compared the positive (boost academic performance) with the negative effect (technostress (Tarafdar, Tu, Ragu-nathan, and Ragu-nathan, 2007)) on university students. Furthermore, a moderating effect of technology self-efficacy was tested. The research questions are:
- Does students’ academic usage of mobile devices boost students’ academic performance?
- Does students’ academic usage of mobile devices induce students’ technostress?
- Does technostress negatively influence students’ academic performance?
- Does students’ self-efficacy toward technology usage moderate the relationship between students’ academic mobile devices usage and technostress creators?
The research model and hypotheses were tested among 200 undergraduate students in Hong Kong, where the proliferation rate of mobile devices is very high among youngsters (same in Europe). Our session is related to the third and fifth conference themes, since it is a forefront report of research on students’ mobile technology usage, a large-scale institutional project, and an inspiring work for policy maker, researcher, and university teachers to understand both the positive and the negative effect of students’ academic usage of mobile devices.
Main paragraph
In the 20 minutes’ presentation, we will first introduce the literature on technostress, mobile devices usage, and technology self-efficacy; we will then present the research context, research model, and method; third, we will discuss the research findings and implications on theory and pedagogic practice; last, the conclusion will be given. After listening to this session, the participants could understand the dual effects of mobile technology adoption among university students on technostress and academic performance; they are also reminded to consider students’ personal specialty/individual difference (technology self-efficacy) when investigating the technostress phenomenon. The research results revealed that students’ mobile device usage would simultaneously lead to technostress and the enhanced academic performance; however, fortunately, technostress would not significantly affect students’ academic performance. We also found that, contrary to our previous assumption, students’ technology self-efficacy positively influenced technostress. This means the more confident the students are with the mobile technology usage, the more stressful they will feel when using the mobile devices for academic purposes.
Reference
Kuznekoff, J. H., & Titsworth, S. (2013). “The impact of mobile phone usage on student learning,” Communication Education, 62(3), 233-252.
Melhuish, K. and Falloon, G. (2010). “Looking to the future: M-learning with the iPad,” Computers in New Zealand Schools: Learning, Leading, Technology, 22(3), 1-16.
Tarafdar, M., Ragu-nathan, T. S., Ragu-nathan, B., & Tu, Q. (2007). “The impact of technostress on role stress and productivity,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 24(1), 307-334.
