Mobile Technology for supporting Student Learning at secondary level in Mauritius

Mobile devices such as mobile phones and iPods are capable of treating data at relatively high speed and their attractive displays together with other interesting features made them more successful than were desktop machines a decade ago (Attewell 2004). This has made educators realized that such devices can be useful as new learning tools and indeed they are now considered as a real candidate among the emerging new learning environments.

In Mauritius, the aim of the government is to make the island a cyber regional centre and thus the application of the new technology must be integrated in learning too (ICT Outlook 2004). However an educational opportunity must be identified whereby the concept of ICT-based education can be implemented. The following paper will briefly describe the current educational system in Mauritius and the educational opportunity that arose in the secondary school whereby the mobile learning technology is proposed as a means to enhance student learning in two phases.

Education is vital to a nation addressing human development, satisfying employment and in setting the pace for social mobility. It is also of crucial importance in providing a highly skilled labour force as per the economic requirements of the challenges of time. Information Technology is opening the way for every school to have access to a vast expanse of resources.

Digital technology is becoming increasingly integrated into school curriculum with the aim of preparing students for a world in which digital literacy and global citizenship are prerequisite skills for further education and beyond. Students, and particularly adolescents, use digital technology in their personal lives in a more social context. Learning using mobile technology is reckoned to be the future of e-learning and the best definition for mobile learning that suits this paper, is that given by Freysen (2004), “the use, both synchronously and asynchronously, of mobile communication technology (MCT) to achieve a learning task or outcome...".

Education is free from pre-primary to tertiary level in Mauritius. In general, Mauritius enjoys more than 90 % adult literacy rate. In most countries children are admitted to school at the age of six, but in Mauritius the children start Primary School at the age of five. Mauritius has a compulsory 9 years schooling programme for all. Although some 64% pass the CPE (Certificate of Primary Education) examination at 6th standard, not all of them are entering or complete their secondary education.

While 14,200 pupils took part in Cambridge School Certificate (SC) examination in 2001, the number that took part in Higher School Certificate (HSC) was only 6,800 of which less than 5,000 succeeded. At each level of examination there is a further drop out and competitive selection of pupils. It suffices to say that although the number who is enrolled in secondary education has increased from 50% to 64% over the last decade, there are relatively few who get the opportunity to complete higher secondary education. One interesting feature is that there is a higher success rate among girls than boys when it comes to secondary education. When it comes to access to education there is no inequality based on gender evident from the enrolment rates. But higher secondary education is still very much a privilege for the relatively rich urban middle class families (CSO 2004).

Free secondary education was introduced in 1977. There are at present 58 secondary schools run by the government and the Ministry has built 23 new colleges recently, reflecting that the government gives priority to education but also accommodating higher enrolment and implementing the policy of regionalisation. Most secondary schools are private colleges who receive grant-in-aid from the government. Education in Mauritius is still a very important means of social mobility as it is in most other countries. Education in Mauritius is similar to the English system with a minimum of six years of compulsory primary schooling leading to the CPE examination (Certificate of Primary Education).

After passing the CPE examination from primary school the pupils are admitted to the secondary schools which lead to Cambridge School Certificate (SC) after five years (Form I-V) and HSC (Higher School Certificate) or GCE ‘A’ level examinations after additional two years of schooling. With HSC the students are eligible for university studies either in Mauritius or abroad (India, England, France or Australia). Students who possess SC or HSC can also enter the teaching profession or nursing which require two years of training and three years of further studies respectively

And the education system is still very much 'foreign' in the sense based on foreign languages such as English and French and the curriculum and syllabus has not 13 been subject to some kind of nationalisation or Mauritianised to use such a word. It is an advantage for those who has a certain command of French and English, and have been exposed to these languages, but similarly disadvantaged to those pupils who use mostly “Kreol”, the daily language of communication. The complex language situation in Mauritius with English as the official language, French as a language more widely used in the media and among the resident white elite, and the teaching of several Asian languages is often held as responsible for the differences in achievement in schools.

My role as an education officer in secondary school is to teach Physics to students aged between 15 to 18 years old in state secondary school. It is a great privilege to be working in what is locally called a “Star-School” where the elites are admitted after fierce national competition among the students. My class normally has about 25 students and it is my duty to know the amount of information each one has gathered for the topic I have explained. Interaction is a regular thing among the students and me. During my teaching, I have found that in the various assessments I gave, some of my 16+ age group, the A-level students tend to achieve better in mathematical questions than long definition-type questions. I decided to carry out a survey to understand this asymmetric performance of the students among all the classes I teach so as to work out a general solution. The survey was done by interviewing the students after each class session I had for a two weeks period. The results I obtained can be enumerated as follows:

• The students were getting difficulty in memorizing the definitions from the book and even from my summarised lecture notes
• The time devoted to such tasks by them were relatively short compared to what they gave to their mobile phones and iPods
• They are feeling that the class lectures and their normal academic work are too far from the modern world they living
• The students want a change in their learning systems
• The hot climate prevailing in the school even during the winter season is not at all encouraging them to write long physics definitions
• The regular interaction they get with their peers in other European countries mainly shows that all of them are ready for a change in their learning style at school.

The results of the feedback were communicated to the Head of the Physics department and there was a general consensus among my colleagues that this was an opportunity to start the implementation of ICT-Based education in the secondary school. A similar survey was carried out among the education officers in the college to see the point of view of the teaching department. The points highlighted by the students do match those of my colleagues. Indeed the traditional teaching and learning is no longer the favourites among the academics. A new system of learning must be adopted which will be in the interest of the students and the teaching professionals. It was decided at the administrative level of the school that the Physics education officers will be the first to test a new learning tool in a physics class. I was assigned by the Head of the Physics department to start the use of ICT learning tools in my classes.

Learning and teaching using new learning tools in secondary schools in Mauritius is a real fact for the near future by considering the effort put by the government (ICT Outlook 2002).





(Source: Central Statistics Office of Mauritius)







(Source: Central Statistics Office of Mauritius)

However, the above chart on the ICT penetration in secondary schools in the country and the network readiness index for Mauritius detailed in figure 1 clearly show the current poor use of network technology for learning and teaching in the schools. The implementation of a complete ICT-based education at secondary level will indeed take some years given the amount of upgrade in the network infrastructure and the huge change that must be brought about in the current education system in Mauritius. However such a long wait will further affect negatively the performance of the students and their readiness to learn more will be limited by a growing frustration. It is obvious that even the teachers will no longer have the courage to work at maximum power on seeing the condition of their students. A quick solution had to be proposed to start the use of new learning technology.

The regular interaction I normally had with my students during my teaching and also outside the class, enabled me to see that my A-level students do possess the PDAs such as IPods and mobile phones. Therefore the concept of mobile learning in its preliminary form could be applied.

I again carried out an unofficial survey among the Physics students and the teachers to check out how the popularity and usability of the various PDAs. The feedbacks I obtained were as follows:

• The students are real mobile experts with respect to their age.
• All the physics teachers are at ease with the use of the latest mobiles technologies.
• 2.5G and 3G and iPods are present on the two sides.
• More than 90% of the A-level students possess at least one PDA.
• The characteristics of the mobile learning tools that met 100% approval included:

i. small size – always with you
ii. instant-on (no waiting for an operating system to’ boot up’)
iii. much longer battery life than laptops
iv. the quantity of data they could hold
v. the ‘up-to-dateness’ (currency) of the data
vi. the ease of synchronisation and sharing of data by infrared ‘beaming’
vii. the price advantage over laptops

It is therefore proposed to use the mobile technology to support the learning of the student as well as for teaching purposes. The 16+ students that is, those doing their A-level possess the highest percentage of PDAs and therefore, I will apply mobile learning with them in my first phase of implementation of this technology.

My 3G mobile phone will be my main organisational tool. I am aiming to:

1. Download my lesson notes written on my home computer, transferring them to my mobile for easy reference in school

2. Store activities and background scientific notes for my classes, beaming them with infrared to the front row of my A-level class in which all my students have got IR(infrared), mobile phones who will then use the same method to pass them back

3. Save physics web pages downloaded from my home computer for use by my colleagues

The use of a mobile phone as a data store means that we, teachers at my school can have at our fingertips the equivalent of a huge encyclopaedia. This might include material downloaded from the web on a prior occasion or live use through a wireless link in the near future. The students seeing us using a PDA as a first port of call knowledge bank will be offered a powerful role model.

Lesson planning is always a must before any good teaching. With my mobile, I will download all my students’ information from the administration of the school and kept them in separate folders according to their class and performance. Hence while entering any class, any information regarding this class will be always be ready in my hand and I will not have to search in my copybooks. This will help me especially to distinguish clearly between the academic levels of the students I will teach and to prepare my future work in relation to their respective needs.

To solve the uncomfortable heat problem prevailing in the physics laboratory, I will bring my class to the well ventilated school hall and there I will use my laptop connected to the only projector available in the department of computer to continue my teaching. Hence I will be able to show more physics experiments to the students and also provide more visualization to the abstract physics concepts such as the wave’s theory.

In the Mauritian A-level Physics syllabus (Appendix B), there is a part whereby the students should learn about applications of physics. I am planning to take them to the hospital to show the utility of physics there. With their PDAs they can take photos and even use their iPods to record the instructions provided by the users of the hospital’s equipments. Then later at home, they can include all these in their digital notes for this section of the syllabus.

Some topics like the concept of Electromagnetism, do require lot of explanation on my behalf and it is better to explain at one go rather than stop and dictate notes to the students. Hence, the students can use their PDAs to record my lectures and then later I can email them the notes for their revision. I will ensure in the next class that they have everything in order.

The students are sometimes faced with social or personal problems that hinder their academic progress. They often hesitate to communicate to me or any other teachers their problems. I will allow them to use their IPods or mobile phones to record their case in any language they want and then transfer to me their recordings. This will enable me to understand their special issues and I can thus solve or delegate them to an educational psychologist from the Ministry of Education. The confidentiality of such issues will be maintained by official permission from my school administration.

SMS (Short Message Service) is what the students are “crazy” about in Mauritius. It is high time to use them in education. I will send short SMS quiz questions to all the students ten minutes before the end of any physics lesson to ensure they have understood my lecture. I will also mark some of their answers as part of the assignment requirements. MMS is still relatively expensive in Mauritius and hence I will use MMS (Multimedia Message Service) only rarely if required. However, the Bluetooth technology will be definitely employed to send around in the class small video clips showing scientific phenomena in accordance with it is specified in the syllabus for A-level. I will “text” my students when they are at home to remind them about any forthcoming test or work to submit to me. By transferring all the text messages to my laptop, I will print them out so as to keep them for records.

The quality of learning delivered in highly competitive school like mine does require a monitoring committee to ensure that knowledge is delivered in the best possible way (Buchanan 2004). Hence a panel of officers from the quality control section of the Ministry of Education will be invited by my Head of Department to regularly check whether the use of new learning tool is not affecting the complete social and academic progress of the student. I will also encourage the setting up of a student mobile learning group to further assure that my students are getting the best with mobile learning.

I will use the methods described above in the coming few months in my physics class. A successful first phase of implementation with the 16+ group will allow me to extend the mobile learning to other classes and age groups of students. However the main concern will be the availability of the PDAs which are not abundant among 12-16 years old groups in my college. Hence I will propose to the head of my school to seek sponsorships from the local mobile vendors and also to organise fund raising events so as to gather a sufficient quantity of cheap PDAs. It will then be possible to lend these devices to the students after written consent from their parents have been obtained.

Hence mobile learning will be able to enter the lower classes of my secondary school. If this new learning tool is accompanied by success and improved performance of the students, a general integration of mobile learning in the education system in Mauritius at secondary or even primary levels will be visible in the near future and then the newly created mobile web portal, http://www.mobilearn.org/, which is developed by the European Consortium on Mobile learning, can be applied in Mauritius in all academic sectors.

“The younger generation, aged 12 to 20, is making the most use of computers and the Internet. This bodes well for the future.”
—Mauritian IT executive


Use of mobile learning is a real solution to consider by the government to provide ICT-Based education to all. The route is still long but a first step is necessary. This paper will serve as a path to launch mobile learning in the schools.