Barriers of Mobil Phone Application as an Educational Means in Agricultural Education: Agricultural Extension Expert's Perspectives, Ardabil Province

The goal followed in this study was to investigate the barriers that hinder the application of Mobile phone technology being communication in agricultural education، from the view points of agricultural extension educators of Ardabil Province. Survey research method was used throughout the study. The line and staff experts comprised the statistic population of the study. A sample consisting of 114 experts participated in the study. The instrument of the study was a questionnaire، validated by a panel of experts. A pilot study was conducted to achieve the questionnaire''s reliability. Results showed that a majority of the respondents had used Cell phones in agricultural education، to a limited extent. They had little familiarity with Mobile phone capabilities in different fields including agricultural education. Low proficiency، high communication costs and a lack of organizational financial support to undertake a part of the communication costs for agricultural education hindered its expected extensive use in agricultural education. Among cell phone applications، most respondents said theyused it either as a clock for waking up of making contacts with colleagues. On the other hand، they used it to a limited extent as an instrument to acquire local market information، GPS، getting and connected to internet. Factor analysis categorized the barriers in six categories of: information- communicational، psychological، credit- financial، proficiency، complexity، and improper context which together explained 68. 26 percent of the variance.