Text Message in Education

Required reading:

When fingers do the talking: a study of text messaging
Faulkner, X, Culwin, F.

Abstract:

The article examed Short Message Service (SMS) activities using questionnaire and diary recording. 565 return questionnaires were collected. 265 (45%) and 298 (55%) were completed by females and males respectively. 24 mobile phone users took part in the diary study. Most participants were United Kingdom university students, others were mobile shop customers.

Findings:

People of various age used text messaging for many activities. Females slightly preferred to use text messaging than males.

Comment:

This is a phenomenon study with no obvious intention for exploring SMS educational use. I need to find an article target to SMS in education use.

Self-pick article:
Improving learning performance in laboratory instruction by means of SMS messaging
Martinez-Torres, M. R., Toral, S. L., Barrero F., & Gallardo, S.

Abstract:

The authors used a case study to compare performance difference between traditional approach and SMS service enabled approach in a microcontroller course. 142 students took the course.

Students were asked to rank the importance of 12 dimensions that impact learning performance. The authors found out that 4 top factors were significantly improved by the SMS messaging (motivation, real examples and practice, feedback), thus confirmed the contribution of SMS messaging to learning performance.

Critic on both articles:

The required article "fingers talking":
1. it was a phenominon study. Many SMS-relate issues were covered while not specificly address SMS's educational use.

2. Both authors were from UK, and citing European studies, most of them were from Finland. We need to be aware of the geographical and psychological difference.

3. This article was about mobile phone SMS environment, but not computer-generate Instant Message environment.

The self-pick article:

The learning performance measured in the research was by motivation, satisfaction, desired behavior change and desired interactions, mostly by naturalistic observation and self-report.

Somehow, it is different from what I expect: score.