A Case Study To Investigate Students' Readiness, To Use M-Learning In Saudi Arabia

No longer are classrooms restricted to the teacher-student environment; instead, there is increasing use of technology to assist students and to supplement traditional teaching methods. Recently there has been a huge growth in the smartphone and tablet market and the aim of this research is to investigate students' readiness and willingness to use mobile technologies such as these as part of their learning process.The study involved 156 students enrolled on mandatory English language courses taken as part of all degree programmes at Albaha University, Saudi Arabia. Students received mini lectures on their mobile devices delivered via different interface styles (text, audio, cartoons, video). As well as completing comprehensive pre and post questionnaires in order to explore pros and cons of using mobile learning and their experiences of using it, the students were asked to complete a test to ascertain how much content from the mini lectures they had retained. Findings revealed that, the majority of students, both male and female, had experience of using mobile devices in educational environments and that they were highly motivated to use them further if study opportunities arise.This paper describes some of the initial findings from the study with regards to students' readiness to use mobile learning and serves as a foundation for a more detailed investigation into preferences by students for how learning content is presented to them on their mobile phones.