A Study of Students Experiences of WhatsApp Mobile Learning
These days mobile phones are ubiquitous with everyone and there is lot of craze for messanger applications. Researchers has oftenly found their students asking them “Do you use WhatsApp?” or “Are you on we chat?”. This tickled their mind and made them think how these mobile applications can help in education. This very thought triggered the first step to this research. During session 2013- 2014, 37 student of B.Ed. (Bachelors in Education) programme were selected. All the selected students were using smart phones and mobile application named ‘WhatsApp’. A WhatsApp group was created and students & teacher interacted with each other through it during 40 days teaching practice schedule. After the end of teaching practice schedule, students were asked to fill in the questionnaire on the experiences of WhatsApp m learning and for knowing their attitude towards it. For in depth analysis, Interviews of 10 randomly selected students’ was also taken. Findings of the study show that student find learning through WhatsApp very interesting and educationally useful. They found that their social interactivity with their peers and teacher has increased moreover they learned collaboratively. The attitude of the students toward WhatsApp m learning was favorable. The study also revealed that married students found learning through WhatsApp disruptive and that they prefer learning in traditional classroom as it does not collide with their family time.
