Epistemic Mismatch and Mobile Learning Non-Adoption Among Tribal Undergraduates in Mizoram

Studies exploring mobile learning adoption among tribal learners in India have mostly explored issues relating to infrastructure deficiency and personal technology adoption. This study poses the question of whether non-adoption instead reflects a mismatch between platform content and the curricular and cultural context of tribal undergraduates. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, the study involved 1,007 Arts and Social Sciences undergraduates across five government colleges in Mizoram, of whom 586 had not adopted any platform. It combines a structured content audit of five major mobile learning platforms with a twenty-four-item Perceived Educational Value (PEV) scale administered to 255 platform adopters. The content audit found that the government-designated platform, SWAYAM, offers fewer than 2% of its social science courses on Northeast Indian or Mizo topics and no Mizo-language instruction. Additionally, a purpose-built Coloniality Index scored SWAYAM the lowest among the five platforms audited in terms of assumed learner context (ALC), knowledge origin (KO), and linguistic accessibility (LA). PEV results showed that adopters rated items on locally grounded, self-directed study the highest; however, items requiring cultural confidence and local linguistic framing scored the lowest, with the item concerning confidence in one’s own culture’s way of learning being the only one to fall below the scale midpoint. The findings support a content-relevance account of non-adoption that complements, rather than replaces, infrastructure- and individual-difference explanations and suggest that closing the audited content gap is a necessary but not sufficient condition to improve adoption among tribal undergraduates.