Putting Learning into Context with Mobile Devices

Keynote at ‘Mobile Learning – Now and the Future’

28th September 2011College of North West London

John Cook

(with help of Carl Smith & Claire Bradley)

Learning Technology Research Institute

London Metropolitan University

Email: john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk Home page: http://staffweb.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj1/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnnigelcook Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook Music wiki: http://johnnigelcook.wetpaint.com/page/MusicAcademia.edu: http://londonmet.academia.edu/JohnCook/AboutBlip.fm: http://blip.fm/johnnigelcook

Johnnigelcook

or Jonni Gel Cook!

Structure

• Relevance & jargon buster• Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!• CONTSENS project• Context of urban education• Reuse in context of language learning• Conclusions & Future

Relevance for learning and teaching (Horizon, 2011)

• Do not have to buy or maintain: virtually every postsecondary student has a mobile

• Portability and Internet-capability• Store of reference materials and learning

experiences, – Fieldwork to record observations via voice, text, or

multimedia

• Convergence of several technologies– electronic book readers, location-based services,

annotation tools– applications for creation and composition, and social

networking tools.

Jargon Buster

• MOBILE LEARNING. “Mobile learning … is not about delivering content to mobile devices but, instead, about the processes of coming to know and being able to operate successfully in, and across, new and ever changing contexts and learning spaces.” (Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010, p. 6)

• LOCATION BASED LEARNING. “Location-based learning takes advantage of the ability of mobile devices to know where they are located and deliver information that is time-and-place-relevant.” (Horizon, 2009)

Jargon Buster

• VISUALISATIONS. Formats can include images, maps, 2-D or 3-D animation, 3D models, timelines and Augmented Reality (AR) environments.

• Learner Generated Content. Using digital devices to capture photos, videos, interviews, reflections, etc. – <clip quote2> from Managing Events students– for detail see Cook, Pachler and Bradley (2008).

Visualisationsand mixed reality

Allow people to study objects that are too fragile to be physically handled, to reconstruct past events and landscapes, or to see behind the scene ‘on location’

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!

Image credit: http://www.swifteconomics.com/2009/08/14/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-a-primer/

Stats from mobiThinking, (27th September 2011)

• There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers– that's 77 percent of the world population

• Growth is led by China and India• Does your VLE offer that reach?

• Half a billion people accessed mobile Internet worldwide in 2009.

• Usage is expected to double within five years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web.

• Just in China there are 277 million mobile Web users.

Web-enabled handsets

• By 2011, over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web

• In US and W. Europe, it is already surpassed that

• Lots of new handsets support 3G – fast Internet

• Smartphones are only a fraction of Web-enabled phones

• Unlimited data plans• Widespread availability of unlimited data

plans drove mobile media in Japan, – now it’s driving the US; – but in W. Europe, lack of availability is holding

up progress.

Image credit: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/18/26overview.h29.html

CONTSENS PROJECT(SEE HANDOUT)

• Context Sensitive Mobile Learning • See http://bit.ly/oU9bj• Involved European-wide consortium

headed by Ericsson Education, Ireland.– Cistercian Abbeys– Urban Planning Tour – Second Language Learning– Marketing

European Projects - CONTSENS

European Projects - CONTSENS

The gap between the physical space (Cistercian ruins) and the 3D mobile space is inhabited by the shared cognition of the students (Cook, 2010) <clip>

• Focus of this talk on the successful reuse of the context – of one subject (urban education) – in another (language learning)

• Rapid reconfiguration of – the required scripts/information – within the mobile device mediated augmented

space for learning.

• Both tours (urban education and each of the language tours) use the same physical space

• Used and evaluated with representative teachers and learners, feedback was very positive (see Smith et al, 2011, for detail).

Context of urban education

Work Package 4:Training for Urban Education

• The initial tour was developed with the aim of – enabling HE students to visualise urban

education – through various collective images and

representations. • A tutor had developed the original tour in

North London and was closely involved in the creation of the mobile tour.

• The development and production process involved the following elements:

• (i) Initial field work and documentation of the site;

• (ii) Learning narratives/scripts for each task episode in a GPS zone,

• (iii) Capture and digitisation of oral histories, Pathé news clips and local historical stories,

• (iv) Capture and digitisation of material elements that detail changes in the urban form, such as photographs depicting the evolution of school buildings and historical maps, and

• (v) MEDIASCAPE (location-based mobile production to support the underlying pedagogy of the tour).

Evaluation

22 students took part in the first trial in 3 distinct groups

Feedback:– CONTSENS

questionnaire– informal group

interviews afterwardsTutor feedback:

– interview

Enhancement of the learning experience

• 91% thought the mobile device enhanced the learning experience

• The information was easy to assimilate allowing more time to concentrate on tasks.

• Allowed instant reflection in situ.• The mobile tour promoted “active learning”

– they were less passive than they would have been on a tutor-led tour

– they were not “merely taking in information” – the mobile tour triggered their own thoughts and

encouraged them to think more about the area

“The information given was underlined by the 'experience' of the area and therefore given context in both past and present.”

“it was triggering my own thoughts and I was getting to think for myself about the area and the buildings.”

Reuse in Language Learning

• Would our pre-existing spatial design act as a catalyst and activate the abilities of language learners if carried out in situ?

• The tour was translated into four languages: – German (next slide), Spanish, Italian and French but

the content remained exactly the same.

• The users were tested in the classroom using this content as text only and then in situ using our design.

• Reusing another iteration of our design here for language learning was very easy and quick to achieve

• We see as a pointer to the generality of our approach

• 9 international students used the software in the same location as that used for the Urban Education tour.

• Their command of English ranged from that of the beginner to intermediate.

• 89% rated it as being useful for learning the subject.

• 100% thought the mobile device enhanced the learning experience,

• 2 users made comments that it provided them with “situated learning”:– “Situated learning.”– “Situating your learning experience”

• 2 others said that it made it more concrete and real: “More concrete.”; “Made it more real.”.

• 3 suggest that they found it to be a new and interesting way to learn languages: “Better than a course book for languages.”; “It was an excellent new approach to learning languages.”; “It allowed me to learn English in interesting way.”

• They all agreed that the mobile learning experience was fun (33.33% answered ‘strongly agree).

Conclusions

• Several group interviews participants commented that – the mobile tour promoted “active

learning” –students were less passive than they

would have been on a tutor-led tour (some learners had also taken the ‘analogue’ tour).

• The tutor of urban tour stated that – students can take more control over their learning,– they can be engaged in more productive pedagogical

approaches, such as small group work and investigative problem-based learning.

– mobile tour afforded the opportunity to be more focused, but at the same time provides a multi-tasked and multimedia experience that allows students to get below the surface of the tasks.

– mobile technologies employed excited and intrigued the students, and helped them to become more engaged in the tour.

• One aspect that is common to both of the studies is that our design has fostered active learning.

• As the content was pushed to the mobile devices it engaged the learners in the task, and encouraged them to interact with– the material and learning content on the

devices– the physical environment and the other

students in their group.

• The tasks then made them think and reflect on what they were looking at and being asked to do (a finding from Iteration 1).

• Another common aspect was that the whole learning experience was “more concrete” and “real” because it took place in situ, and was directly related to the learning context.

• We (Smith et al., 2011) claim that the mobile tours appear to be acting as part of what Vygotsky calls the ‘more capable peer’

• Assisting the learners as they move through stages of development in the Zone of Proximal Development.

• However, further issues about scaling up were surfaced which we return to in future work.

The Future?

• Technology Outlook UK Tertiary Education 2011-2016

• http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-technology-outlook-uk

• All three advisory boards — a group of 108 acknowledged experts — agree that– Mobiles will likely tip into mainstream use in

educational settings in the coming year– Embedded in the mobiles category in

previous NMC Horizon Reports, tablet computing has emerged as a topic distinct from smart phones and tablet PCs

• The availability of educational content for mobile devices is increasing as more providers develop for these platforms.

• Gartner Research projects Internet-capable mobile devices will outnumber PCs by 2013

• As we have seem, promoting active and deep learning with mobiles is a challenge, but one at LTRI we think it is worth rising to.

What next? Trans-reality?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzIBZQkj6SY

• Situated learning that is fun?

Thank you & References

• Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Phones as Mediating Tools Within Augmented Contexts for Development. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 2(3), 1-12. (see http://bit.ly/czg9k6&nbsp or email for pre-print)

• Cook, J., Pachler, N. and Bradley, C. (2008). Bridging the Gap? Mobile Phones at the Interface between Informal and Formal Learning. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, Spring. Available from: http://www.rcetj.org/index.php/rcetj/article/view/34

• Horizon (2009 ). Horizon Report Australia-New Zealand Edition. Web version: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon-anz-2009/section/location-based-learning/, accessed 28 October, 2010.

• Horizon (2011). Technology Outlook UK Tertiary Education 2011-2016. http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-technology-outlook-uk

• Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices. New York: Springer.

• Smith, C., Bradley, C., Cook, J. and Pratt-Adams, S. (2011). Designing for Active Learning: Putting Learning into Context with Mobile Devices. In Anders D. Olofsson and J. Ola Lindberg (Eds), Informed Design of Educational Technologies in Higher Education: Enhanced Learning and Teaching. IGI Global. Due 2011.