EMERGING COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY AND EXAMINATION MALPRACTICES IN NIGERIAN EDUCATION SECTOR Emerging Communication Technology and Examination Malpractices in Nigerian Education Sector doi:10.3991/ijet.v5i4.1455 Olufemi Sunday Adeoye University of Uyo, Nigeria Abstract—The breakthrough in communication technology, especially that of GSM phones, in Nigeria is one of the best things that has happened to the nation in terms of its tech- nological advancement. In Nigeria, GSM means Telecom Explosion. The GSM revolution began in August 2001 and changed the face of Information and Communications Technology in Nigeria. It is much easier to reach anybody that you have his / her number, whether they are in the vil- lage or in their closet unless in a place where there is no network of the service provider. As revolutionary as GSM may seem to be, its negative effect on our educational sector is of great concern. The ongoing war against examination malpractice is yet to take its toll on perpetrators as they have devised a new method to continue their game through the cell phone technology. Described as e-cheating, the cell phone technology is providing students a smart way to beat the best effort of stakeholders to stamp out the menace. This paper examines GSM technology, the various ways in which cell phones are employed to cheat and suggestions on how to stop e-cheating through cell phones. Index Terms—emerging communication technology, exami- nation malpractice, e-cheating, GSM services. I. INTRODUCTION The importance of communication can not be overem- phasized. It is one of the vital tools on which the human race exists. Technological advancement in the western world has impacted the rest of the world and it is now a global village. The breakthrough in communication tech- nology which has hit Africa has ushered her into the giant economic field. The rest of the world can easily reach some of the developing countries now; they are becom- ing more accessible compared to a couple of years ago. GSM is now connecting villages to cities, cities to coun- tries, countries to countries and continent to continent. GSM has indeed given Africa a voice. GSM has been of great help in communication. We can reach people and connect them. You cannot overemphasize the feeling of talking to your parent and friends on the phone. You can even be part of occasion back home; all you do is call on the day of wedding or special ceremony and speak to as many people as possible. We can track event and people and stay connected unlike before. GSM has also helped to reduce the pressure on us to come home or travel long distance thus reducing accident on our roads, we are well informed now of what is happening and communication is more frequent and also they can reach us or send text mes- sages. II. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY The Global system for mobile communication (GSM) is an open, digital cellular technology used for transmitting mobile voice and data services. Mobile phones are looked upon as a modern invention. However, their origin could be traced back to the invention of telephone way back by Graham Bell in 1870s and success in the capture of radio message. Since those events, these basic technologies have merged and shaped themselves together as mobile phone. Summing up the history of mobile phones we can say that the telephone were the beginning of the whole sys- tem. Radio charted the progress of radio communications. Both technologies came together to bring Radio Tele- phones. Then came cellular which marked the develop- ment of the popular cellular phone systems. Another step was digital which led to the emergence of a digital stan- dard, GSM. Satellites helped mobile phones emerge as the preferred medium of communication at the global level. August 2001 was a pivotal date in the history of Nige- ria. That was when the first Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications call was made under a democ- ratic government (specifically, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo). This event heralded the dawn of a new era “the era of GSM technology, which has completely changed the face of Information and Communications Technology in Nige- ria [10]. Since the GSM launch, mobile telephony has rapidly become the most popular method of voice com- munication in Nigeria. Growth has been so rapid that Ni- geria has been rightly described in various fora as one of the fastest growing GSM markets in the world”. Indeed these developments have been truly explosive; according to statistic from Nigerian communication com- mission (NCC), compared with just about 450,000 work- ing lines from NITEL in 2001 by August 2004, the GSM operator had recorded over seven million subscribers. By May 2005 Nigeria, with an estimated population of 128,771,988, had more than nine million GSM subscrib- ers, making the country one of the fastest growing GSM market in the world [10]. The GSM family of technologies provided the world with mobile communication since 1991. In over twenty years of development, GSM has been continually en- hanced to provide platform that deliver an increasingly broad range of mobile services as demand grows. Where the industry started with plain voice calls, it now has a powerful platform capable of supporting mobile broad- band and multimedia services.