Gender Dimensions in the Use of Mobile Phone SMS on Note-Taking and Comprehension of Audio-Taped Lecture Materials in Kogi State of Nigeria

This paper examined gender influence in the use of Mobile Phone Short Message Service (SMS) on note-taking and comprehension of materials presented through an audio system. Two research questions and hypotheses guided the study. The design of the study was quasi-experimental non-equivalent pretest and posttest. A sample of 400 subjects was drawn from the research population of 800 using stratified simple random sampling procedure. Two instruments were used for data collection. One of the instruments was the Audio- Taped Lecture (ATL) and the second was the Test for Assessing Comprehension (TAC). These instruments designed by the researcher were subjected to validate. Reliability coefficients of 0.88 and 0.81 were obtained for ATL and TAC respectively. Data for the study were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results of the study included that SMS style of writing improved students’ note-taking competence as well as comprehension of the notes for both the male and female students and that there was no significant difference in performance based on gender. Recommendations included that students be encouraged to use SMS writing styles for note-taking during lectures and that the use of SMS for note-taking could be tailored towards correcting gender differences in achievement.