Purpose Nowadays, when mobile devices are actively evolving and penetrating the various spheres of human activity they have a potential to modernize and facilitate the sphere of IT education as well. This paper aims to test the hypothesis stating that introduction of mobile technology to the college-level database course for future IT specialists has a positive academic impact on students. Design/methodology/approach The main theoretical premises for the present study were the general findings of the surveys by Hinze et al. (2017) and Bowen and Pistilli (2012) indicating that: using mobile tools to work on classroom projects improves student’s academic success students, especially those from computing specialties, actively turn to mobile tools in their academic activity students favor the Android and iPhone platforms and prefer native mobile apps to Web-based mobile apps The key idea of the present study was to validate these general premises in the specific case of the college-level database class. Namely, the authors formulated a hypothesis that Android-based mobile devices have a positive impact on the IT students’ academic performance and interest in the subject at the college-level introductory database lessons. Throughout the study, the authors examined both quantitative (students’ scores and attendance rate) and qualitative aspects (students’ and teachers’ opinions) of the hypothesis. Findings Based on the experiment’s positive outcome resulting in students’ increased academic performance and interest in the subject, the authors conclude that in the context of the college-level database course mobile devices can successfully substitute traditional desktop computers and positively affect students’ academic activity. Originality/value Based on the experiment’s positive outcome resulting in students’ increased academic performance and interest in the subject, the authors conclude that in the context of the college-level database course mobile devices can successfully substitute traditional desktop computers and positively affect students’ academic activity.

This article is dedicated to the topic of discovering effective ways of developing students' programming abilities with the means of non-programming disciplines and activities. The authors argue that the process of educating students in programming becomes effective if students participates not only in programming lessons themselves, but also dedicates a significant amount of time to other academic disciplines and extracurricular activities. For example, these other activities are solving number-theoretics and chess endgame problems. The authors find that these disciplines and activities provide efficient means for developing programming capacities and therefore, their methods are the essential prerequisites for programming course. The significance of the obtained results is that they provide an effective alternative approach to the teaching process in educational institutions where the traditional methodology does not bring the desired pedagogical effect.

Higher Education Institutes across the world have started using social media to reach out to the prospective students as well as to interact with current students and alumni. Social media improves the communication on one hand and helps in promotional and development activities on the other. Present work explores the integration of social media in different processes in Higher Educational Institutes. A student enters the institute with admission process and exits after completion of degree. While on the campus, a student is involved in curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. At the same time, a student participates in the communication with the fellow students and other corporate and social forums. In all of these activities, social media can play a prominent and vital role. However, the success of social media roles depends upon; how the different stakeholders are engaged. A comprehensive study has been carried out to identify the role of social media in different activities of the higher education institutes. These activities range from looking for the new students, engaging them on the campus and maintaining communication after they leave the campus. Implications from teaching-learning, administrative, marketing and communication perspective have been identified. A framework has been proposed to integrate the specific social media channels in different processes in the higher education institutes. The framework will be very much useful in developing successful social media campaigns for higher educational institutes as well as to effectively engage the stakeholders.

PurposeThis work is devoted to increasing the effectiveness of a mathematical modelling lesson with the help of mobile devices. It verifies the authors' hypothesis which states that enabling students to solve mathematical models on mobile devices improves their academic results in the discipline.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes an experiment conducted among 38 college students in an extracurricular mathematical club where they solved mathematical models with the help of their own smartphones. The authors describe the mathematical models assigned to students, analyse their academic performance and gather their opinions.FindingsThe usage of mobile devices in the mathematical modelling class positively affects students' scores and interest in the subject. The percentage of positive grades among students working on mobile devices is higher than among students working on desktop computers.Originality/valueThe authors discover that in the context of the college-level mathematical modelling course, mobile devices can be successfully used as an alternative replacement for traditional desktop computers.

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