ABSTRACT
The study focuses on the utilization of smartphones and its effect on reading habit of undergraduate students in private universities in Edo state. The purpose of the study was aimed at investigating utilization of smartphones and its effect on reading habit of undergraduate students in private universities in Edo state.
The study employed a descriptive survey research design to gather information on the utilization of smartphones and its effect on reading habit of undergraduate student in private universities for this study. The simple random sampling and proportionate stratified sampling techniques to select 5% of the total population. The population sample size designed by the researcher for the study was 341. A questionnaire was designed and titled utilization of smartphones and its effect on reading habit of undergraduate students in private universities in Edo state. A total of 341 copies of the questionnaires titled utilization of smartphones and its effect on reading habit of undergraduate students in private universities in Edo state were distributed to the respondents, and 205 questionnaires were retrieved and found usable, resulting to a 60% response rate.
Analysis and discussion of data collected for this study According to the results, the smartphone does help students to improve their social lives, to access learning materials, to improve academic performance or results, as a mark of advantages of smartphones usage among students. Participants advise that smartphones should be allowed in classrooms for lecturers to engage with them using smartphones. Furthermore, students use smartphones to access academic material. Nonetheless, the results also found that smartphone is distractive and students have a high use of smartphones. Overall, this study achieved its objectives in understanding that undergraduate students in private university in Edo state are using smartphones not primarily for academic, but rather for social activities. Then, the effects of using smartphones on university students’ academic lives in a developing country can have positive and negative impacts. Students have good academic experiences and also, many factors motivate students to use smartphones to enrich their academic and social lives. The overall findings indicate that smartphones offer easy access to academic materials, meaning that with smartphones, students within and outside the lecture room can get hold of their learning material without meeting with their lecturers or other students. Recommendation was made that students should be aware and take an interest in using smartphone to support their learning and reading experiences. Students should be more encouraged by their lecturers to use chat rooms, such as viber and whatsapp for group discussion, share images that explains their course concepts and process, read e-books and download learning materials from the internet.
