ON-LINE ASSIGNMENT

Mobile learning

Introduction

Mobile learning is considered to be the ability to use mobile devices to support teaching and learning. It is the ‘mobile' aspect of mobile learning that makes it stand apart from other types of learning, specifically designing learning experiences that exploit the opportunities that ‘mobility' can offer us.

This is because mobile devices have features and functionality for supporting learners. For example, podcasts of lectures can be made available for downloading. Learners are to expected to engage with these learning resources whilst away from the traditional learning spaces. Although some will say that physical books count as mobile devices too, in this advice document we are concerned with electronic mobile devices.

There is a wide range of mobile devices on the market including laptops, PDAs, and e-book readers. However, we will be looking at the most popular mobile device - the mobile phone. Mass proliferation of mobile phones and the features and functionality they offer make the device stand out as an area ripe for exploration. Mobile phones are multi-function devices which are of interest due to their very nature of offering ‘mobility', but also for their ability to create and consume digital media. Furthermore its convergence with the internet offers further potential opportunities to support teaching and learning.

What makes mobile learning exciting is that despite many of the individual features being around for years, it is the bringing together of the features, functionality and ability to connect to the internet that means we have now passed the tipping point regarding learner adoption: thus creating and using digital media can be seriously looked at with these devices. The mobile user experience is different from the desktop computer experience and the face-to-face experience, however mobile learning can be used to support both as well as standing alone.

Mobile Learning

Cameron Moll points out that we are now at a point where we must consider the mobile experience in its own right - the learning objectives remain the same - to provide a rich teaching and learning experience - but that the context of mobile differs from that of designing for a desktop computer experience and that of a face-to-face experience.

Teaching using mobile devices uniquely offers us newfound mobility, and functionality opportunities that are not possible with desktop computers. These opportunities should at a minimum intrigue us and will hopefully lead to many new and exciting uses of mobile devices that we are able to take advantage of.

Current capabilities and applications

Basic mobile phone features include:

Making and receiving calls Sending and receiving text messages Basic office tools e.g. calculator

Advanced mobile phone features include:

Bluetooth Camera capable of taking stills and more commonly now video

(e-book readers, games)

Recording audio GPS / location aware Web browser to connect to the internet

The term smartphone

It is quite common to hear the term ‘smartphone' which is meant to signify that it has many features that traditional mobile phones do not. However in the last few years this gap has blurred as nearly all new phones would fit in this 'smartphone' label so we will just be using the term ‘mobile phone' as we are looking at current and emerging mobile phones.

By now, it should be clear that with the wide range of mobile phone functionality, there will be many potential uses for mobile devices in education, including the creation and delivery of content. Not directly related to the teaching itself, there are also potential secondary benefits, such as the possibilities for making the teaching environment (smart buildings) more aware of learners based on their mobile phone acting as a beacon or identifier and then both parties having the ability to respond or act on pre-defined inputs and outputs.

Opportunities and challenges

There are a wide range of mobile devices, it is estimated that there are around 350-400 different mobile devices to cater for. So where do we start? There are a small number of key players emerging, each with their own operating systems and hardware such as Microsoft, Apple, Google Android and RIM. It would make sense to start by accommodating whichever are the most commonly used in your institution, and also to use any common standards where possible to reach as many devices as possible.

Creating and publishing multimedia

Most new mobile phone devices have the ability to create digital media, typically still images and video with audio. This provides the opportunity for both teaching staff and learners to produce multimedia that may have been expensive in the past and involved institution-only devices. Now, using learner devices that have common features for creating images, audio and video, we can design activities that support

these media such as evidence based learning activities. Other examples include creating media that can then be used for discussion.

Further opportunities include using the context-specific opportunities of a mobile device to devise new teaching and learning activity that takes advantage of mobility, and features such as GPS for location-based activity. JISC is actively exploring opportunities for mobile learning and has already funded projects that experiment with many aspects unique to mobile learning.

Challenges

With the increase in usefulness of a mobile device, its use will also increase and this will dramatically reduce battery life. A huge range of mobile phone devices may make support difficult, for example interoperability issues to do with video file formats will plague us until the key players agree on which standards to use. But even if they do not agree, there are already methods to allow the device to choose from a range of formats to help alleviate problems.

The cost of devices, service charges and range of features will always result in learners owning a wide range of devices. This will make conducting ‘feature specific' activities difficult for all (GPS related activity for example.) However having an alternative suitable activity will mitigate much of this as will institutional support of the infrastructure including wireless internet availability.

Consuming digital media

Many mobile phone devices are able to view and/or download digital media such as audio and video. Once again this provides us with an opportunity for teaching activity including contextualised fieldwork opportunities. For example, listening to audio based activities that incorporate the listener's location are already being used in multiple disciplines. The use of QR codes, which work much like a barcode, can send the learner to relevant media/web services such as the printed session slides having a QR code that send the learner to the download location online.

Challenges

The range of mobile devices means that anything created for multiple devices will have some interoperability issues that need to be considered, which may mean producing alternatives.

Supporting the mobile user

Even if you do not intend on designing mobile specific activities, where possible you can begin to make your current resources mobile device friendly. For example it may be that your video uses a format that works for both desktop computers and mobile devices. It is also important to consider the platform from which the learners will interact with publishing and consuming resources.

Application

Mobile learning in the context of higher education is relatively new and undertheorised both in initial teacher education and more generally in university teaching. Interest in mobile learning approaches in Teacher Education and consequently academics are involved in sharing and exchanging information on research and potential uses of mobile technologies through communities of practice, working groups and professional learning communities Similar interest in the use of handheld devices is evident in Maths Education contexts. Bannon, Martin and Nunes-Bufford (2012) found that both pre-service and in-service teachers saw value in integrating iPads into Maths education as a tool to promote student learning. For example, supporting learning through the use of Maths games applications (‘apps’) targeting specific concepts. The project noted the need for careful preparation in iPad implementation to initiate transformation in teacher education. Also, smart phones have been exploited to extend mathematical thinking and enhance problem-solving procedures . Given the potential of these devices to support collaborative and contextualised learning, their use may address some of the concerns in Maths teaching such as didactic approaches and de-contextualised material removed from

real-world settings. At the school level, Tangney et al explore innovative uses of smart phones among school Maths students studying in ‘out of class’ settings. Informed by a social constructivist pedagogical approach to m-learning, the authors provide examples whereby the functions and capabilities of smart phone applications can be used as a basis for scaffolding learning scenarios occurring in real-life contexts, opening up student exploration of trigonometry and fractions concepts and developing higher order thinking skill. teacher educators need to be prepared to explore the learning possibilities of mobile devices in Maths education and “need to develop a professional attitude of evaluation and reflection about tools for teaching – a thoughtful visioning that investigates and considers the impact of the tools for teaching Maths” .

Exploring Maths in the real-world

A strong emerging theme was the pre-service teachers’ use of the iPad to explore and become more aware of Maths in everyday environments and to initiate their thinking about real-life contexts for K-6 Maths learning experiences. Activities involved capturing and annotating images from rich, meaningful, user-generated contexts. These artefacts subsequently became the focus of university class-based discussions with peers and staff as a catalyst for their thinking about authentic, technology-mediated Maths Education. In this way, they were developing knowledge about their nuanced use of ICT in their Maths teaching . Geometry and fractions were the Maths domains most often used in these scenarios.

Students was walking through the city and noticed geometrical shapes in the urban landscapes. One student used her iPad to take a photo and later, on the train travelling home, annotated it to highlight the shapes in the photo . She later showed these photos and discussed relevant Maths concepts with her peers and lecturer in a small group conversation ‘around the iPad’ during a campus-based class

Mobile learning exercise allowed pre-service teachers to generate artefacts depicting rich contexts, enhancing their recognition and observation skills and developing more positive attitudes towards Maths. The iPad allowed them to follow-up and discuss the Maths associated with these artefact.

The pre-service Maths teachers used their iPads to mediate their own professional learning, exploiting features of authenticity and personalisation in both formal and informal settings. They used their mobile devices to notice and capture ‘out-of-class’ Maths phenomena, following-up and discussing implications for their Maths teaching. They used the technology to facilitate an enhanced awareness of Maths in everyday contexts, and then used this knowledge to develop rich, contextualised ideas for their own ICT-mediated K-6 Maths tasks.

Conclusion

We are at a point where for at least a small percentage of our teaching and learning we can begin to incorporate part of the mobile learning experience into our course design. Initially this may simply mean that we acknowledge that some learners will interact with our course using mobile devices and impact how we choose to disseminate information. We can, fairly safely, expect that many learners are already checking course email and accessing your resources such as podcasts using a mobile device. It won't be long until we are able to fully integrate parts of our courses with the mobile experience. A recent study by Edinburgh University, mobile survey 2010 highlights that 50% of learners have contract phones with unlimited internet connectivity. As more of these studies are released we can take stock of what opportunities we can reasonably pursue.The use of mobile devices is here to stay and we can progressively accommodate this new platform to enhance our teaching and learning. Finally, the use of personal devices for both teaching staff and learners has blurred the line between formal and informal learning. The implications of which we'll know more about in the near future.

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Reference

1) A historical overview of mobile learning: Toward learner-centered education- Crompton, H.

2)Using Network and Mobile Technology to Bridge Formal and Informal Learning-Trentin G. & Repetto M

3)"Use of Mobile Technology for Information Collection and Dissemination" -Matthew Davis

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