Cell Phone Applicability in Providing Educational Content to Students

At the recent years, the interest in the mobile learning and the use of the portable equipment like the mobile phones has increased. The mobile phone technology is one of the aspects of ICT, which, like other communicational technologies, has entered into the domain of teaching and considered as mobile phone based teaching. The aim of this study was to investigate the usage of mobile phone in providing educational content for students. This applied and semi-experimental study was performed among the midwifery students’ society of Islamic Azad University, Sari branch. The study samples were, according to a selection of a special course, all 40 students of the fourth semester, who were entered to the study with the usage of census method. The tool for collecting data was 20 questions researcher made test. The content validity of this test was obtained by the experts’ confirmation and its reliability was obtained with the usage of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.84. Data were analysed, using SPSS 18 software and descriptive and inferential statistics (independent and dependent T tests). There was not a significant difference between the average of the scores of the true responses in control group and experiment group, at the pre-test stage and, also, at the post-test stage. The averages of the scores in the control group at the two stages of pre-test and post-test had a significant difference with each other (p=0.15). Also, in the experiment group, the averages of the scores at the two stages of pre-test and post-test had a significant difference (p=0.003). Transmission of the course materials via mobile phone and in the SMS format is effective on the students’ learning, though there is no special preference for this kind of transmitting the course materials than lecture method.