The Effect of Mobile User Typology on Mobile Learning Adoption in Higher Education

Abstract

Mobile user typology is absent from popular models for mobile learning adoption though understanding such typology can help with design of learning. This paper explores the salient mobile user typology by applying latent class analysis to reported use of mobile phone features collected from students at six university campuses in four countries (Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago). It also relates the user types to behavioural intention to adopt mobile learning within a structural equation modelling framework. The results indicate four mobile user types which are distributed differently over the campus-territory groups and to which age, sex, programme level and programme type of the students are significantly related. Furthermore, mobile user typology is related to behavioural intention to adopt mobile learning and this avails it as a candidate for inclusion in models used for mobile learning adoption. There is some extent of cross-national specificity of mobile user typology though some user categories seem to be more generalisable