Effect of mobile personal information management on university students' perceived learning effectiveness

Abstract

The development of mobile technologies, especially the emergence and rapid progress of smart devices, enable individuals to manage their personal information regardless the limitation of time and location. The purpose of this research is to study the basic situation of mobile personal information management (MPIM) among university students and to propose a conceptual model based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) about the MPIM and its effect on university students learning effectiveness. To figure out these two research problems, in all 230 participants from Mainland China and Hong Kong were engaged in our research and completed the online survey questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were adopted to demonstrate the basic situation of university students’ mobile PIM behavior while quantitative analysis based on the approach of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to study the relationship between mobile PIM and its effect on university students’ perceived learning effectiveness. The results show that there are no significant difference in preferences between students from Mainland China and Hong Kong, except on mobile PIM organizing and managing. When organizing and managing personal information, mainland students agreed more on that folder function in mobile devices is weak, but Hong Kong students felt that a small screen size can hinder those using mobile devices for PIM organizing and managing. Results of quantitative analysis show that the perceived ease-of-use of mobile PIM can significantly affect students’ perceived usefulness; the perceived usefulness of mobile PIM has a significantly positive effect on university students’ intention to adopt mobile devices for PIM purpose; and the perceived intention to use mobile technology also has a positive effect on higher-educated students’ perceived learning effectiveness. However, different from previous studies, perceived ease-of-use has no significant effect on the behavior intention in this research.