Using mobile instant messaging to leverage learner participation and transform pedagogy at a South African University of Technology

One of the most complicated academic endeavours in transmission pedagogies is to generate democratic participation of all students and public expression of silenced voices. While the potential of mobile phones, particularly mobile instant messaging (MIM), to trigger broadened academic participation is increasingly acknowledged in literature, integrating MIM into classrooms and out-of-the-classroom tasks has often been confronted with academic resistance. Academic uncertainty about MIM is often predicated on its perceived distractive nature and potential to trigger off-task social behaviours. This paper argues that MIM has potential to create alternative dialogic spaces for student collaborative engagements in informal contexts, which can gainfully transform teaching and learning. An instance of a MIM, WhatsApp, was adopted for an information technology course at a South African university with a view to heighten lecturer–student and peer-based participation, and enhance pedagogical delivery and inclusive learning in formal (lectures) and informal spaces. The findings suggest heightened student participation, the fostering of learning communities for knowledge creation and progressive shifts in the lecturer’s mode of pedagogical delivery. However, the concomitant challenge of using MIM included mature adults’ resentment of the merging of academic and family life occasioned by WhatsApp consultations after hours. Students also expressed ambivalence about MIM’s wide-scale roll-out in different academic programmes. Introduction The surging popularity of mobile devices as technologies that support collaborative learning has been widely debated in recent years (Echeverría et al, 2011; Hwang, Huang & Wu, 2011; Koole, 2009). Echeverría et al (2011) articulate the multiple academic purposes of mobile devices as follows: access to content, supplementation of institutionally provided content and acquisition of specific information, fostering interaction and information sharing among students. Despite this tremendous potential of mobile phones to activate deep student engagement with content, mobile instant messaging (MIM) remains one of the least exploited functionalities of mobile devices in higher educational institutions (HIEs). The academic uncertainty about MIM at African HIEs is British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 44 No 4 2013 544–561 doi:10.1111/bjet.12057 © 2013 British Educational Research Association possibly explained by (1) the distractive nature of text messages, (2) limited academic conceptualisation of how textual resources can be optimally integrated into mainstream instructional practices and (3) uncertainties about the academic rigour of discussions generated via text messages. Notwithstanding these academic concerns about MIM, this social practice promotes subscriptions to information, builds social networks, supports brainstorming and fosters mutual understanding through sharing of assets like opinions (Hwang et al, 2011). Therefore, MIM enhances productive communication among learning clusters through the sharing of mutual intentions, social objects, learning resources and needs. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic • Mobile devices are productive technologies with potential to foster informal collaborative learning. • Mobile phones are useful tools for the transmission of basic content and the supplementation of institutionally generated content. • Academic potential of mobile instant messaging (MIM) has been suboptimally exploited in higher education in general and South African higher education in particular. What this paper adds • Underutilisation of MIM can be attributed to lecturers’ limited conceptualisation of how to integrate textual resources into mainstream instructional practices and their uncertainties about the academic rigour of discussions generated via text messages. • Lecturer’s use of an instance of MIM, WhatsApp, for peer-based engagement in an information technology course contributed to peer-based coaching and informal work teams, which transformed his hierarchical models of teaching. • WhatsApp impacted student participation by promoting social constructivist learning through spontaneous discussions, boosting student self-confidence to engage anonymously and enhancing the sharing of collectively generated resources across multiple spaces. • WhatsApp’s supplementation of student academic material after hours bridged the information divide for geographically remote students who had limited access to academic resources after work hours. • Mature, married students conceived the provision of academic materials after hours via WhatsApp as disruptive of their family life as quality family time became seamlessly integrated into academic pursuits. Implications for practice and/or policy • Academic use of WhatsApp should consider the additional responsibilities that it requires—need to contribute to an online learning community, expectations to interact at odd hours, and the pressure to read and reflect on peer-generated postings. • Interaction after hours should be well timed and streamlined to account for mature students’ competing family commitments, and additional software that signals and triggers to their learning clusters their availability for interaction should be installed on WhatsApp. • Lecturers should harvest (mine) collectively generated resources on WhatsApp to support the institutional memory and sustained student meaningful interaction. Using instant messaging to leverage participation 545 © 2013 British Educational Research Association Despite the aforementioned academic incentives, what is least understood in literature is MIM’s influence on pedagogy (student academic participation, lecturers’ ways of instructional delivery) and digital inclusion of learners from diverse academic backgrounds. The rationale of this paper, therefore, is twofold: (1) to explore the pedagogical value of a MIM service, WhatsApp, particularly its potential to enhance academic participation of all learners and transform lecturers’ teaching practices and (2) examine its capacity to breach the digital divide among learners in geographically dispersed informal contexts. An informing framework comprising WhatsAppenabled lecturer–student and student–peer consultations was drawn upon to explore the potential of MIM to promote equitable participation in diverse informal spaces. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: a literature review and theoretical framework are articulated, research questions and methodology are presented, findings are discussed and a conclusion is given. Literature review M-Learning For Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler (2005), mobile learning (m-learning) is generally about enabling flexible learning through mobile devices. However, new constructions of m-learning embrace the mobility of the context of interaction that is mediated by technologies. The Centre for Digital Education (2011) suggests that a new direction in m-learning enables lecturer mobility including mobile device-mediated creation of learning materials on the spot and in the field. This new approach foregrounds a transitory context in which all learning resources (interacting peers, lecturers, pedagogical content, the enabling technology) are all “on-the-move.” Consequently, m-learning potentially breaches the spatial, temporal and time zones by bringing educational resources at the disposal of the roaming learner in real time. MIM MIM is an asynchronous communication tool that works on wireless connections, handhelds and desktop devices via the Internet and allows students and peers to chat in real time (Dourando, Parker & de la Harpe, 2007). It fosters unique social presence that is qualitatively and visually distinct from email systems. As Quan-Haase, Cothrel and Wellman (2005) suggest, IM applications differ from emails primarily in their focus on the immediate delivery of messages through (1) a “pop-up” mechanism to display messages the moment they are received, (2) a user-generated visible list of other users (“buddy list”) and (3) a mechanism for indicating when “buddies” are online and available to receive messages. By providing a detailed account of the online presence of users (online, offline, in a meeting, away), MIM provides a rich context for open and transparent interaction that alerts communicants to the temporal and time-span constraints of the interaction. However, what remains unknown are the influences of MIM social presence on lecturers’ instructional practices and the digital inclusion of students with varied exposure and experience in MIM academic usage. Cameron and Webster’s (2005) study on IM usage by 19 employees from four organisations suggests that critical mass is among the core explanations for the widespread adoption of IM. IM was considered appropriate when senders wanted to emphasise the intentionality of messages, elicit quick responses and enhance efficient communication (ibid.). What has not been explored, nevertheless, is the influence of pedagogical intentionality on the meaningful academic participation of underprepared learners. Sotillo’s (2006) study explored English as Second Language (ESL) learners’ negotiation of interaction and collaborative problem solving using IM. IM environment rendered interactions that facilitated student awareness of grammatical structures of second language communication. Although the study examined technology-mediated interactions of students with varied linguistic competences, it did not interrogate the relationship between MIM and digital inclusion of students. 546 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 44 No 4 2013 © 2013 British Educational Research Association The educational benefits of MIM are as follows: encouraging contact between students and lecturers, developing student-based reciprocal interactions and academic cooperation, promoting active learning, providing instant feedback, emphasising