Determination of Critical Success Factors Affecting Mobile Learning: A Meta-Analysis Approach

With rapid technological advancements, mobile learning (m-Learning) offers incredible opportunities, especially in the area of higher education. However, while interest in this area has been significant and several pilot studies have been conducted within universities, relatively less is known about how higher educational institutions can make efficient use of the m-Learning platform to support teaching and learning. Although there are numerous studies in the area, the lack of this insight is mostly due to the fact that very little effort has been made to collate these studies and determine a common set of key success factors that affect the acceptance of m-Learning within universities. This study conducts a systematic analysis of several studies conducted in the area of m-Learning to assess the critical success factors, by making use of the meta-analysis technique. Our investigation has shown that the most important perceived advantages of m-Learning, from learner perspectives, are collaboration during studies, the prospect of ubiquitous learning in space and time, and user friendly application design. INTRODUCTION The work described in this paper builds on previous work (Alrasheedi & Capretz, 2013a) carried out by the authors, which investigates the critical success factors (CSFs) affecting m-Learning platforms. The mobile phone industry has experienced the fastest rate of growth universally throughout the world. While the technology itself came into prominence in the 1980s, the use of the mobile phone was limited to only about 30% of the global population in 2004 (Paul & Seth, 2012). This figure has increased drastically, and, according to a World Bank estimative, more than 90% of the global population is within the range of a cell phone tower. The number of global subscribers have increased from fewer than 700 million in 2000 to more than five billion in 2010, which was about 70% of the population in this year (The World Bank Institute, 2012). The statistics not only point towards the immense success of the technology, but also highlight the versatility of the mobile phone. The rapid acceptance of the technology only serves to underscore the fact that people are aware of the multitude of benefits of the technology and are interested in using it in their daily lives. The continual addition of sophisticated features has only enhanced the usability of mobile phones in several different application areas. With the rapid rate of advances in mobile phone technology, hi-tech capabilities are now on hand as educational aids and services for both learners (students) and educators. This has led to the growing prominence of m-Learning, with several pilot projects being set up in universities to demonstrate the technical feasibility and pedagogic possibility in the tertiary education section (Zeng & Luyegu, 2011). The reason for the specific interest in the use of m-Learning in higher education, specifically in the engineering and technology field, is because learners are considered to be sufficiently old and technically competent to understand and exploit the mobile phone interface for educational purposes. Further, most of the technical students in this age group already own mobile phones and thoroughly understand their use (Tsai et al., 2005). Studies have shown learners to be completely in favor of using m-Learning as a learning platform as they believe that this will enhance their educational experience. While there are certain concerns regarding the price of inclusion of the technology, most learners consider it to be a good idea. According to learners, the most attractive feature of m-Learning is the possibility of self-learning at their own pace, place, and time (Vate-U-Lan, 2008). All these factors should mean that the rate of adoption of m-Learning platforms in universities should be at least on a scale similar to its overall growth. Statistics show that this is not the case. Campuses have been relatively slow to adopt m-Learning as a mainstream platform. For instance, the 2010 Campus Computing survey showed that only 13.1% of higher educational institutions have already developed or enabled m-Learning (Quinn, 2011). Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, Volume 14, Issue 2, pp. 41-51, April 2015. The discrepancy between distribution of mobile devices and their use in higher educational institutions is a very interesting and relevant one. The growing interest in the field has compelled many researchers to scientifically study the m-Learning phenomenon. Despite this, relatively little is known about the big picture of how universities can use mobile devices to support teaching and learning (Zeng & Luyegu, 2011). This is because most of the research in the area of m-Learning is highly subjective and contextual, tailored to the requirements of a specific educational institution. Additionally, the definitions used by researchers to describe what they mean by m-Learning are also different. This makes it difficult to collate various studies in the area of m-learning (Vӓӓtӓjӓ et al., 2009). However, we contend that, despite the highly contextual nature of m-Learning studies, several characteristics are similar and the results could be developed into a framework for assessment of the success of m-Learning. One such framework was presented by Ali et al. (2012), where learning contexts, learning experiences, and design aspects were used to assess the success of m-Learning (Ali et al., 2012). Our research uses the meta-analysis approach to conduct a systematic literature review to determine the CSFs for the success of m-Learning in higher educational institutions. The paper starts with an insight into the key benefits of m-Learning. This is followed by a brief discussion of the CSFs determined by an historical study. The next section discusses our methodology of meta-analysis to determine the CSFs based on recent studies. This is followed by a discussion of the results of the meta-analysis. The paper concludes with a summary of the conclusions and future implications of this study.