Technology in action: Ascertaining the impact of cell phone calls on middle school students placed at risk of drop out

Naseem Hyder Rajput  lowast; Syed Muhammad Ahsan Bukhari; Narmeen Noonari; Jabbar Abbas Rajput

doi:10.17485/IJST/v13i40.1236

Article

Technology in action: Ascertaining the impact of cell phone calls on middle school students placed at risk of drop out

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Indian Journal of Science and Technology

DOI: 10.17485/IJST/v13i40.1236

Year: 2020, Volume: 13, Issue: 40, Pages: 4224-4233

Original Article

Technology in action: Ascertaining the impact of cell phone calls on middle school students placed at risk of drop out

Naseem Hyder Rajput^1∗, Syed Muhammad Ahsan Bukhari¹ , Narmeen Noonari¹ , Jabbar Abbas Rajput²

¹ M.Phil. Associate, Department of Education Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Shaheed Benazirabad, Pakistan.
² Assistant Professor, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women, Nawab Shah (SBA)

∗ Corresponding author:
Tel: 0092-345-2524068
Email:[email protected]

Received Date:25 July 2020, Accepted Date:05 September 2020, Published Date:20 November 2020

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Regular attendance at school is essential for allround development of students. The fundamental objective of this study was to utilize low-cost technology of cell phones to report to parents/guardians about the attendance of their children at schools and ascertain the impacts of cell phone calls on the attendance of Middle School students placed at risk of Drop out. Methods/Statistical analysis: This study was Experimental with a PretestPosttest Control Group by design and descriptive by purpose. The participants were 30 eight graders belonging to a Public Middle School of District Shaheed Benazirabad in Pakistan. These participants were then randomly assigned to Control and Experimental Groups (15 each). For intervention of making cell phone calls to parents/guardians to inform and ask them about the reason for the absence of their child, a teacher in each participating school was assigned this responsibility. The intervention lasted for 3 months. The data was analyzed using SPSS repeated measure t-test to calculate the significance of the impact of intervention. Findings: Results of the present study indicated that the attendance of Experimental Group on Posttest (75.07 %) was significantly higher than that on Pretest (62.87%). Novelty : This study utilizes existing technology available to almost everyone and bridges the parents and school administration to get the best outcome quickly; mobile-based intervention is simple and docile to regulate students’ performance at school level; it also improves the safety of the students.
Keywords: Cell phone calls; impact; students; drop out; middle school

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Copyright

© 2020 Rajput et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original author and source are credited. Published By Indian Society for Education and Environment (iSee).