Identifying Mobile Phone Educational Capabilities for Graduate Students

: With regard to the recent widespread application of cellphone technologies in the pursuit of educational, the present study aims to explore the educational capabilities of cellphones for this purpose through a descriptive survey method. The statistical population includes all graduate students of Kharazmi University (4770 students). From this population, 351 subjects are selected by simple random sampling method and based on Morgan and Krejsi sample size. The research instrument is a researcher-made questionnaire and the validity is confirmed by of 8 scholars in the field of education and media sciences. The reliability of 0.93 is calculated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. To analyze the obtained data, descriptive and inferential statistics are employed in the form of two factor analysis of variance analysis and two independent samples t-test in SPSS software version 21. The findings indicate that the students use cellphones especially in searching information, teaching imaging, language learning, classroom activities, educational software, and sharing learning data with classmates. Furthermore, the students believe that cellphones could facilitate the interactions among students and professors, save time and provide easy access to textbooks. But at the same time, they report negative consequences such as the violation of the individuals’ privacy, the tension in the public mind, the lack of concentration and engagement in non-educational issues. In addition, there is no significant difference between the cross-sectional effects of the field of study and the use of training applications by cellphones. Also, the findings show that female students are more likely to use educational capabilities of cellphones than male students. In the end, the findings are discussed and implications were presented.