This post is a discussion forum for ideas related to W01 – Mobility Perspectives.
Specifically, this is a place to share your ideas about what factors, both positive and negative, distinguish the potentials of mobile education from other learning technologies.
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What is so special about mobile phone (mo pho) education?
Open learning is defined as “situations in which learners have the flexibility to choose from a variety of options in relation to the time, place, instructional methods, modes of access, and other factors related to their learning process” (Caliskan, 2012). A working definition of mobile (M) learning is “exemplary mobile learning in any learning experience supported by wireless networks and mobile devices that is unambiguously superior to an equivalent learning experience available on fixed devices and wired networks” (Vogt, 2021). After reading the historiography of previous ETEC 523 cohorts’ Week 1 Mobility Perspectives responses in discussion forums spanning through the pandemic, I would like to add two reasons why M learning is special: disruption and experience design. While both personalize learning with just-in-time (JIT) approaches which make it memorable, they further draw upon tenet’s of Logotherapy (Frankl, 1992) to render knowledge deeply meaningful. Unfortunately, they also offer new vehicles for social anxieties, such as nomophobia and phantom mobile syndrome, which reduces human cognitive participation and accelerates technology’s tendency to isolate humans from one another.
The ubiquity of M learning is already leveraging learning in spaces where traditional educational institutions have been unsuccessful. M learning is compelling because it expedites the historically laborious process of knowledge acquisition. One of the affordances that renders M learning special is this decentralized nature, which counters a traditional curriculum while dually offering significant disruption potential to transcend traditional formal education institutions in a manner aligned with informal learning and apprenticeship systems. M learning in education is a 21st century application of the old adage of Necessity being the mother of Invention; but if this is the case: who is the father? Applying Coase’s (1992) Nobel-winning rationale of the existence of the organization to reduce economic friction for consumers to the existence of traditional school systems to reduce learning friction for students, educational tribology triangulation is required by teachers, learners, and society to determine what teaching and learning strategy and technology will combine to break outside the traditional box in which humans have imprisoned their critical and creative thought processes. In an era of the Frankenstein-ization of inanimate objects through the Internet of Things (IoT), where consumers are both learners and users engaging with algorithmically biased product, people prefer googling answers to questions because it is a more effective means of acquiring information than talking to actual people. Equally frightening is when individuals prefer commanding AI to generate new ideas rather than engage in a more traditional sociocultural and constructivist learning process through communication and community-building.
Experience design, or rather, adaptive learning through personalized content awareness knowledge and creation, is another area where M learning is special. While it can personalize content awareness knowledge, it can do so in a gamification manner which can hold even the shortest attention span. It also, unfortunately, breeds complacency and privilege. While some may argue that training humans to expect constant, clear 5G wireless internet connection is a basic human right, others will allege that devices do not replace human contact. Nowadays, the added disadvantage of algorithmic bias, which inherently has commercial interests for entrepreneurial gain, more deeply clouds truth of virtual experience for users, who may not be aware of or taking advantage of the full spectrum all of technologies’ educational affordances.
References
Caliskan, H. (2012). Open Learning. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encycolopedia of the Scinces of Learnning. Springer. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_52
Coase, R.H. (1992). The Institutional Structure of Production. American Economic Review. 82 (4): 713–719. JSTOR 2117340. (Nobel Prize lecture)
Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy (4th ed.)
Vogt, D. (2021). ETEC 523. Week 1 Mobility Perspectives: Can Virtual Reality (VR) be Exemplary of Mobile Learning. UBC Canvas.
I think what is special about mobile education is that it can bring context to learning in real time. When I apply this to myself from a life long learning perspective I can think of two examples just this weekend! First, I had some electrical work to do, which I was very uncomfortable with, so I Facetimed my dad (5000km away) who walked me through it (while my daughter held the phone). That was a great learning experience, and frankly, if my dad was here, he wouldn’t have taught me how to do it, he would have just done it. Second job this weekend is that I need to replace both toilets in my house. Hello Youtube! Of course I can have the phone right there with me to talk me through it. Not that complicated, but gives me piece of mind. I have used this Youtube for mobile learning for all sorts of home projects or fixing the car etc. The point is, it is like having a guide right there with you (mobile)! I think that is a powerful thing for both the confidence to tackle new things and to provide real-time information connections with the environment. What I mean by real time connection is that it is different than learning something in abstract and then later applying that knowledge. So how could this map on to a school based learning activity? Here is an example that comes to mind. Students are sent out around school grounds for an environmental science activity. They could be given the coordinates to a site and have a list of questions to submit via form (real time) which would force them to do the research on the ground. Take a samples of the plant life, identify them. upload the photo. Take a soil sample. Describe. etc. etc.. Report on observations. etc. The mobile technology (their phone) is like a super powerful field research assistant. This would give them the immediate environmental context to match to the new information. The class could then come back together to discuss the findings adding back in the critical in-person social element. We know that our phones are the most powerful tool we carry with us, that can make us in some ways super-human, but they can also be a super-waste of time and potentially anti-social. I think it is incumbent on educators to help students build habits to use this powerful tool in positive and productive ways as they will use it as their lifelong learning tool.
I agree, as many others have posted, that one of the greater advantages of mobile education lies in its accessibility. Mobile learning has the potential to reach a wider range of learners and offers learners the flexibility to engage with educational content regardless of their location, time constraints, or internet connectivity (as courses can be accessed offline when needed).
However, a challenge which others have mentioned, are the existing disparities in access to mobile technology and reliable internet infrastructure. Not all learners have equal access to smartphones, tablets, or consistent internet connections, which could potentially hinder the effectiveness of mobile education initiatives and widen educational inequalities.
Reflecting on my experiences within a corporate environment, mobile technologies have significantly transformed our learning and development practices. They’ve opened up opportunities for our employees to access on-demand training and content.
Prior to adopting online/mobile learning, most of our training was conducted in-person. Transitioning from the traditional instructor-led training to e-learning and mobile formats not only helped to reduce costs but it also extended the reach of our training programs. It also enabled our employees to engage in more flipped classroom learning, where employees could take foundational training (via e-learning/mobile learning), and then engage in live sessions with our trainers to engage in Q/A. They could also use this time to practice applying knowledge to specific use cases, thereby providing more opportunity (and time) for more participatory and interactive learning experiences.
In addition, our transition to mobile learning has also led to the increased use of microlearning strategies. This approach has been very well received and welcomed by our employees, as they’ve shared that it helps to make their training and learning more manageable. It also increases access to up-to-date information and helps to support continuous learning, and enables re-learning. A challenge, however, is that we’ve encountered some significant challenges in meeting the increased demands for regularly updating our learning content, and the development of these trainings requires substantial resources and efforts on our team.
Nevertheless, despite these obstacles, embracing mobile education in our context has yielded significant benefits, providing our learners with more accessible and flexible learning opportunities.
Reading through the previous posts in this thread, I certainly agree that accessibility immediately comes to mind when thinking about the benefits of mobile education. I think of mobile education as a way to meet learners through a medium that a large majority of people have in smartphones, tablets, etc. In particular, microlearning has become popular in workplace education as it bears many of the characteristic’s employees say they look for in their learning experience; personalization of learning, flexibility, and the ability to keep pace with emerging trends. In most cases, I think this is where mobile education can be leveraged due to its accessible nature.
For identifying challenges, I would look at this from an educator’s lens and from an organizational lens of implementation. At an educator’s level, like most integration of technology into education, there needs to be an identification of what content can be learned in the classroom, what can be learned via a mobile app, and a plan of how these two mediums can enhance one another.
From an organizational/ institutional level, one main challenge comes in its implementation. There needs to be consideration on how to balance the accessibility in the policy and expectations that come with mobile education. Just as it is appealing to meet learners through their mobile devices, the policy in how it is implemented will impacted how effective that can be. In workplace learning, if there is an expectation that learning must occur through mobile devices to complete certain modules related to on-the-job training, I think this becomes a question of being overbearing and has similar concerns as to having a communication platform on a mobile device. Are there expectations of responding to push notifications to complete modules outside of typical work hours? Just as much as it’s important to draw lines between a work-life balance, I think it’s important that organizations consider mobile education as another vehicle for education but consider the risks in setting expectations through policy. It’s easier said than done.
Hey Richard,
Thank you for discussing about attention. I feel the stress and strain that exist in which students’ ability to maintain sustained attention challenging, that students often seek for content or materials that grab their attention, rather than regulating them to therefore build their intrinsic motivation or desire to learn. The battle for attention is so challenging, but also I think an inevitable one when it comes to education, in which education must evolve in order to either equip students with better self-regulation in protecting themselves from these digital platforms that vye for their time and focus, and reframe the structures or emphasis on key skills to be able to equip students with the learning they need, rather than the learning that is most ‘attractive’ or ‘attention-grabbing’.
At my current school, it is apparent that students with behavioral needs are finding themselves over-reliant on technology and digital platforms, often using it as an escapism tool. The awareness of students’ behavior and their intrinsic motivators are essential for all teachers to recognize, identify, and adjust, so that the classrooms can continue to be maintained as spaces of learning, rather than spaces for digital platforms that infringe on skill building, that encourages consumerism rather than productivity.
As an educator, learners’ attention is a factor that I feel like I am constantly battling for, making it very relevant to the discussion of mobile learning. At this moment, I’m not sure if attention is a positive or negative factor…
On one hand, mobile learning may be inherently more effective amongst students who are already engaging with their mobile devices on a regular basis, making it easier to get students’ attention. From this perspective, mobile learning seems to have the potential to capture learners’ attention more effectively than in a traditional classroom setting. However, while mobile learning may allow us to get students’ attention more easily, what about maintaining it? Do educators have an uphill battle to compete for students’ attention with all other readily accessible distractions on mobile devices?
In regard to attention spans, I’m torn on which is the catalyst and which is the result between short attention spans and mobile learning. Has the use of mobile devices shortened people’s attention spans, or has mobile learning emerged because of people’s short attention spans?
Did we always have short attention spans, but were forced to fight against this in more traditional learning settings (e.g. long lectures, text-filled pages in a textbook)? Or, have our attention spans shortened as a result of our mobile devices?
Which do you think was the catalyst and which is the result?
Hi Shannon,
Like you, I am conflicted when it comes to the use of mobile devices in the classroom. While many of the schools in my district boast a one-to-one, Chromebook-to-student ratio, the battle for attention is ongoing. Many of our schools have cellphone policies in place that do not allow their usage during class time and there are discussions taking place at higher levels to roll out provincial mandates on mobile device usage in schools. With that said, I don’t think the use of the devices is necessarily the problem but rather the other distractions attached to them. Social media alerts, ongoing communication requests, games, etc., add to the interruptions and distractions.
Before my assignment this year, I was a classroom teacher and the inclusive education coordinator for one of the high schools in my area. Last school year, I saw more PsychEd assessments with ADHD diagnoses than in previous years while also seeing my portfolio double over 6 years. I wonder about the increased number of students struggling with attention and the connection to mobile device usage. Students no longer have to be bored with unlimited access to stimulation of some kind. With that said, the education model we are currently working with is archaic, so I also wonder how much of the struggle for attention is deeply linked to the “traditional learning environment” that doesn’t suit the majority of learners. Combined with a dated and/or developmentally inappropriate curriculum, is it the student’s attention that is the challenge or is the education model that no longer serves the learners?
Thank you for your thoughts!
Hey Shannon,
Thank you for discussing about attention. I feel the stress and strain that exist in which students’ ability to maintain sustained attention challenging, that students often seek for content or materials that grab their attention, rather than regulating them to therefore build their intrinsic motivation or desire to learn. The battle for attention is so challenging, but also I think an inevitable one when it comes to education, in which education must evolve in order to either equip students with better self-regulation in protecting themselves from these digital platforms that vye for their time and focus, and reframe the structures or emphasis on key skills to be able to equip students with the learning they need, rather than the learning that is most ‘attractive’ or ‘attention-grabbing’.
At my current school, it is apparent that students with behavioral needs are finding themselves over-reliant on technology and digital platforms, often using it as an escapism tool. The awareness of students’ behavior and their intrinsic motivators are essential for all teachers to recognize, identify, and adjust, so that the classrooms can continue to be maintained as spaces of learning, rather than spaces for digital platforms that infringe on skill building, that encourages consumerism rather than productivity.
I think one of the biggest aspects of mobile/open learning will be it’s decentralized nature: people will be choosing content from many sources, not the heavily regimented curricula of conventional education. Mobile implies a lot of on demand learning – what you want to learn, when you need it. That’s likely to cause some friction as what people want to learn will probably have very little with what traditional schools are offering (both K-12 and higher level education). Videos, social networks, etc. respond well at offering answers to specific questions, and for someone dealing with a problem on a given task, that could be much more direct than trying to sort through a course curriculum or textbook.
There’s a big contrast here, with conventional education often being highly controlled (curriculum built by committee with multiple review cycles, course outlines needing approval, selective hiring practices for teachers/professors), in contrast to open materials being more market driven (independent, unvetted individuals offering materials). The first is trying to teach people what they should learn, the second teaching them what they want to learn. Neither is going to be completely irrelevant; regardless of the shortcomings of public education, most people would agree that some education (like literacy) should be mandatory whether the student likes it or not. But for contexts beyond that, classical frameworks are going to have a harder time justifying their position. This could range from interest learning (how to play a specific song on guitar) to professional (nuances of developing software with new programming languages).
One of the challenges many of us educators will face is we can too often try to adapt something new to the old framework, like how to use mobile phones effectively in class (or the related debate of if they should be banned). Again, valid opportunities there, but probably missing the greater potential.
Hi Devon,
I really appreciate your analogy between ‘teaching people what they should learn’ vs. ‘teaching people what they want to learn’ when comparing traditional education with open education and materials. It’s so true because I teach in a traditional educational setting (post-secondary institution) and often times, I focus on course concepts that I think are important for those entering the accounting profession, based on my own experience (aka what I think they should learn). I do try to incorporate what students want to learn by polling students at the start of the course and using word clouds to identify topics of particular interest to students, but I am still constrained by the course itself (course outlines, objectives, etc). As a contrasting thought though…don’t students still retain agency over what they want to learn by choosing their programs and courses?
The other aspect that resonated with me about your post is the attempt to merge the ‘new’ and ‘old’ frameworks, such as using mobile phones effectively in class. What is the alternative if no attempt is made adapt the ‘old’ frameworks…should they be scrapped altogether and everything moved to open models and materials?
Hi Shannon,
Thanks for your reply. I agree that students do have agency by directing the overall path of their studies, and there certainly is value in the more orchestrated approach: if I’m a beginner in a field, I wouldn’t know what I needed to know, and blind spots could be disastrous.
As an example of what I was thinking, imagine if someone wanted to build their own drone (my background started in engineering and I have a love of technology, so this resonates). If they wanted to learn the background material to do this, it would probably be covered by mechanical and electrical engineering degrees. Assuming one could use electives to get this down to one degree, that’s still a very expensive and stressful four years to get the knowledge and skills desired. In contrast, if someone was focused on just this one project, they could dip into the required skill areas (3d printing, control systems, physics) to build up the ability to complete their project much faster and cheaper. The degree aims at being broader and dovetailing into a profession, independent learning is more focused and specific. Both have merits.
One of the things I’ve noticed working (in finance, engineering or education) is that the vast majority of tasks done are so specific that formal education doesn’t cover everything needed anyways. There’s always a need for on the job training, and this kind of on demand / just in time / microlearning is something that open and mobile can do well. What I see happening would be a greater reliance and recognition of this kind of learning.
Ultimately I don’t think it will be an either/or situation. Even the much derided traditional classroom setting has benefits: social interactions, group dynamics, dealing with competing viewpoints and priorities… I’m optimistic about open learning causing massive changes in education, less so about a scorched earth revolution that discards everything we’ve used in the past.
Specifically, this is a place to share your ideas about what factors, both positive and negative, distinguish the potentials of mobile education from other learning technologies.
What is special about mobile education? I think of it as a great equalizer. With our school’s BYOD policy and students required to bring a laptop to utilize, we see a wide range of devices and capabilities. These are computers, yes mobile, but with ties to the decades-old idea of personal computers, and still oriented towards use together in a brick-and-mortar environment. When I think of mobile education, I think of cell phones and tablets, and I think of students on the go engaging in content out in the world. If education is as mobile as a cell phone, that is a device that is increasingly in the hands of everybody and it levels the playing field.
In 2008 I had the chance to travel to Kenya, contribute to the lives of others, and then take a safari. I remember being blown away by the incredible availability of cell phones and cell service in this part of Africa – much greater than what I experienced at home. In a land that lacked infrastructure, cellular technology offered the solution and it helped to equalize and level the connectivity of Kenyans. That is special.
So I return to that consideration in my educational experience, viewing as special the equalization of opportunity, connectivity,, and educational opportunity that mobile education offers. Are there negative factors as well? Certainly! The technology overload, the multitasking that this not actually beneficial, and much more. But for now, I’ll focus on the positive.
Hi Steve,
I appreciate your thoughts and positive viewpoint! I wonder about your school’s BYOD policy in regard to equity. How does your school support families that are financially unable to provide devices or replace lost or broken ones? I can see the potential of the BYOD policy but I can also see how this would negatively impact families that are on the lower end of the socio-economic demographic increasing the learning gap due to financial struggles.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for your comments.
At this point, students in my classrooms really struggle to use their devices for things like presentations, research, discussion writing and they depend on Chat GPT a lot. When they use their phones, they are either on SnapChat, TikTok, or playing games. Of course, these applications also drain their battery heavily. It is increasingly difficult to have students change HOW they use their phones. So many staff and parents have encouraged the no-phones at all policy, which I do not like most of the time (sometimes, I just want them to sit and watch a movie or pay attention to me) because I have them do a lot of work with them.
To your point about laptops and the reading’s points about laptops and mobile learning/BYOD, I think phones are widely more available than computers. I have 1 student of my class of 19, 27, and 30 that don’t have a phone, in comparison, I have about 25 in total that can bring computers to school. I think there needs to be less assumption that students can bring their own laptops to school and perhaps we should be promoting new learning behaviours around cell phones or at least make 1:1 computers (laptops or Chromebooks) available in every school.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Jazz
I’ve read through this discussion thread and agree with what has been included clearly and concisely.
I agree that the most critical factor of mobile learning is accessibility, omnipresence (or over-omnipresence), and versatility today. Mobile devices are everywhere, and as mentioned from a mobility perspective, there are more mobile devices than people on the planet, meaning people have multiple. I believe this is without including Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Mobile devices are everywhere because of their versatility of being taken around. This is because they are the right size to easily be carried but large enough to look at and interact with.
However, their omnipresence in our lives can cause an over-reliance on them or even a fear of losing them, as well as other concerns. As Bragazzi et al. (2014) mentioned, overuse of mobile phones can impact a person’s health. Livingstone et al. (2014) shared that there can be pitfalls, especially in social media (cyberbullying) and the Internet. I believe these things need to be prepared for while planning to use mobile devices in the classroom.
Overall, mobile learning looks pretty compelling for us in education because it is everywhere due to its ease of use (physically and with access to content).
I couldn’t find the way to edit, but I wanted to include my referenced sources.
References:
Livingstone, S., Kirwil, L., Ponte, C., & Staksrud, E. (2014). In their own words: What bothers children online?. European Journal of Communication.
Bragazzi, N. L., & Del Puente, G. (2014). A proposal for including nomophobia in the new DSM-V. Psychology research and behavior management. https://www.dovepress.com/a-proposal-for-includingnomophobia-in-the-new-dsm-v-a16887
What is so special about mobile learning?
I agree with many others who claim that what makes mobile learning special are accessibility and convenience. Mobile learning has become even more special and useful for me as a teacher since the pandemic. During the lockdown, when everyone was forced to teach online, my district had teachers use myBlueprint as one of the online learning platforms. Since then, I have been using myBlueprint with my students. myBlueprint is an e-portfolio where students can upload their work in many different media forms, such as pictures, videos, audios, and documents. Every Friday, as part of our Friday Journal, I get my students to pick one activity or assignment from each week and have them type out a reflection on their learning experience along with a picture of their work. Since parents have access to their child’s myBlueprint page, they can see what their child is working on anytime, anywhere. This has significantly reduced the number of parents asking, “How is so-and-so doing?” as they can easily track their child’s progress on myBlueprint. Using this mobile learning platform allows my students to practice reflective learning while sharing and documenting their learning without having to create a physical portfolio using a binder and sheet protectors. Involving parents in their children’s learning using the myBlueprint app can be one example of the Internet of Educational Things that Dr. Vogt has mentioned this week.
As an elementary school educator, there are several positive and negative factors to consider when using mobile education. First of all, mobile education’s most obvious strength is its accessibility. Of all other technologies, it is safe to assume that mobile education is one of the most easily approachable and available in a classroom setting. The flexibility, familiarity, and straightforward usage support student learning using devices. In addition, it can encourage students to participate and interact when learning by inclusion of multimedia content. Reflecting on my experience at our school, introducing online education through mobile devices was one of the earliest and relatively most effortless ways to incorporate technology in each classroom.
However, mobile education requires proper guidance and a structured framework, especially when students are unfamiliar with such technology. It can quickly become a distraction or the new “toy” if not thoughtfully implemented for authentic learning. In addition, teachers must also carefully consider student privacy and security when using various applications, as students can easily expose their personal information.
What is special about mobile education?
Mobile education benefits students from learning with autonomy. The affordances of mobiles provide users ease of accessibility and flexibility for diverse synchronous and asynchronous learning. Simultaneously, educators should wisely deploy the mobile platform to deliver interactive course content through multimedia. “Without the integration and synthesis of m-learning and broader learning literatures, and reconciliation of their underlying theoretical conceptualizations, educational technologists and educational psychologists will struggle to develop truly comprehensive models of the affordances and constraints of mobile learning technologies and their relationships with cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and affective processes” (Bernacki et al., 2020, pp.1-2). Echoing with the study of Benacki et al. (2020), mobile education is unique for its adaptivity and personalization. Kinshuk et al. (2009) state that “the context-awareness service identifies the personalized context-aware knowledge structure and directs individual students to learn and move in the real world using automatically generated guidance messages” (p.167). With multiple affordances and personalized infrastructures, students are motivated and engaged in learning activities that boost their learning experiences and continue pursuing educational materials with their mobile phones.
References
Bernacki, M. L., Greene, J. A., & Crompton, H. (2020). Mobile technology, learning, and achievement: Advances in understanding and measuring the role of mobile technology in education. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 60, 101827.
Kinshuk, M. C., Graf, S., & Yang, G. (2009). Adaptivity and personalization in mobile learning. Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning (TICL), 8, 163-174.
Hi Wing,
You raise some good points, and I enjoy programs that provide “personalized context-aware knowledge”, but I also feel like I must also play Devil’s Advocate for a second as well, and point out the concept of algorithmic biases. Since so many aspects of mobile education are linked to commercial aspects, algorithms are often tied into those aspects in some way. Algorithms are only able to read binary data, which means that the data fed to an algorithm must be selected, filtered, and converted into a form an algorithm can read. So before an algorithm even has access to the data, the data has already gone through a type of censorship process, where specific data is selected to be fed into an algorithm (Tina Ngata, 2019). Those algorithms that now present “automatically generated guidance messages” while a powerful tool in education, can also be viewed as a form of censorship as they control the information being presented to a person, and that information could be shaped to present a certain perspective, or purposely, or through lack of critical thinking during the design process, leave out certain perspectives or information. Do you think there is a way to avoid these biases, while still maintaining the benefits of personalized learning?
References
Tina Ngata. (2019, August 17). Data, Indigenous Sovereignty and the Doctrine of Discovery by Marisa Duarte [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/33CF1ChhKLY?feature=shared
Mobile education and other learning technologies have the potential to connect people to communities across the world and help people find their identities and forms of acceptance in places that reach beyond their geographic boundaries. This can be connecting with other gamers through a Steam forum on how to navigate a tough level in a game. It could be students looking at shared Scratch projects in order to learn how to fix a problem in their codes. It could also be an 2SLGBTQ+ student connecting with an accepting community, from a location that may not be so accepting. Though at the same time, this ability to connect with other communities and share ideas and information, can also have negative effects, like allowing racist groups to connect online and build a community. This same notion of community, which offers support and can lift up minority individuals, also has the same power to reinforce and validate some negative beliefs in others. People who may normally keep things like racist opinions to themselves due to social pressure and expectations may feel emboldened to express and act on these same beliefs if they feel like they have the support of an online community. So that ability the build communities and make connections, while overwhelming positive, can also support some negative views, just like any piece of technology. Mobile and other learning technologies are tools, and it often depends on how they are utilized.
Though to focus on the positive, mobile and learning technologies can also be life-saving. Professor Vogt (2021) stated that “Smartphones are becoming more essential to trending human existence than computers, televisions, cars and even homes. This makes mobile devices remarkably special.” This makes me think of the stories of refugees, and how for many of them mobile phones were their best means of survival, as it contained so many essential tools in one device. The ability to communicate with other refugees or allies, the ability to look up information, access to geographic maps, access to news, flashlights, compasses, first aid manuals, in some rare instances even the ability to pay for things, and many more tools. Thinking of all of these tools in terms of trying to flee a country, I would value my phone over any other piece of technology. Non-profit programs like Worldreader (https://www.worldreader.org/about-us/our-mission/) are bringing E-book readers to third-world countries because they can store thousands of books, can be read after dark, solar charged, easily updated, and unlike paper books, will survive much longer in humid climates. They are also cheaper and lighter to transport than hundreds of books.
While there are definitely some negative factors associated with mobile education, other learning technologies. I believe that when these technologies are utilized, and designed with a people-first approach they have the ability to be powerful tools for learning and access.
References
Vogt, D. (2021, January 6). Week 1: Mobility perspectives. ETEC523: Mobile and Open Learning. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec523/2021/01/06/week-1-mobility-perspectives/
Hi Sarah
The way you described how mobile technology connects users from all over the world is fantastic. Mobile has indeed revolutionized the global communicative channels. More face-time calls are made instead of travelling to another part of the world for meetings. Customizing mobile infrastructures has also facilitated users to direct and search for desired information from UI and UX perspectives. Tiktok is an excellent example of how values are delivered to others regardless of geographical restrictions. While the content delivered in popular social media may predominantly influence users’ perceptions and beliefs, how should users avoid sensitive or violent content despite being critical?
Hi Wing,
I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, “While the content delivered in popular social media may predominantly influence users’ perceptions and beliefs, how should users avoid sensitive or violent content despite being critical?” Would you be able to frame it in a different way for me for clarifying purposes, and I will do my best to answer?
What is special about mobile education?
Mobile education (or M Learning) is not about the technology but about the learner. The learner is mobile and at the centre of learning and not the technology. Mobile education activates ‘anytime anywhere’ and/or ‘at the moment of need’ learning via smartphone, tablet, or other. Key benefits include convenience: access to information anytime and anywhere, support for learner initiative, personalized learning experiences, flexibility to learner’s situation and device preferences, and support when needed.
Due to covid, we’ve already witnessed/experienced learning move outside of the workplace and into the learners’ environments and becoming more personal and collaborative. And due to the needs and characteristics of the new generation of learners, it is inevitable that learning will also move more and more outside the classroom and into the learners’ environments.
Possibilities for anywhere anytime learning are endless with mobile devices. I’m excited about current concepts in development and future innovations in this area (i.e. AI, AR, VR combined with mobile learning, chatbots with lectures).
Hi Sebastian
Absolutely! The mode of ubiquitous, autonomic, and asynchronous learning via AR, VR, metaverse, and AI applications is a prevailing norm for learners in the future. Let us embrace it.
In my opinion, mobile learning’s main pro is also its main con: accessibility. You can connect anywhere at any time. This opens up a lot of doors. With that, however, expectations at work and school are slowly creeping up in some work areas to respond faster to communication. It’s important to increase accessibility to education for all, but with that, explicit strategies and research needs to continue to be done to teach students and employees how to set boundaries and transition out of work/school without the need to continue to check notifications like one might with social media (although that’s not ideal either).
Hi John,
You raise a good point. It makes me think of the ‘Right to Disconnect’ laws that were recently passed in Ontario (Ho, 2022). That continued access to school, or work can and can often lead to burnout. Some office workers who are working remotely are working longer hours because their work is in their homes, and they find it hard to find that disconnect. We all probably know that teacher who still checks for parent or student emails late into the evening, constantly thinking of their students, sometimes at the cost of their own emotional, physical, or mental health.
References
Ho, S. (2022, June 7). Ontario’s “right to disconnect” law: Who qualifies and what are the loopholes? CTVNews. https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/ontario-s-right-to-disconnect-law-who-qualifies-and-what-are-the-loopholes-1.5936773
Hi John
Thank you so much for emphasizing the connection between accessibility and mobile technology. Mobile applications have advanced the usage of the gadget, and Ballantyne et al. (2018) suggest four principles of accessibility’s core tenets, including perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. While accessibility is one of the usability criteria, how handy mobile applications are is highly intertwined with users’ satisfaction. In my perception, the possibility of abolishing a number of mobile applications is high when instructions are unclear and functionalities are insufficient.
Reference
Ballantyne, M., Jha, A., Jacobsen, A., Hawker, J. S., & El-Glaly, Y. N. (2018, November). Study of accessibility guidelines of mobile applications. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference on mobile and ubiquitous multimedia (pp. 305-315).
Everything has pros and cons. Mobile learning is typically on a smartphone, so a big con for me is the small screen. I have a studio at work which has a huge screen, sometimes I will wait until I have time to use my work computer as I find the big screen easier to use and flip between multiple tabs or use a split screen. Size aside, mobile devices are so ubiquitous and convenient! Students can work and learn at any time and anywhere. I’ve noticed many students seem to work on their math at 2:00 am!!! Mobility has made this possible (also made procrastination easier). Apps on a mobile device allow for a quick check of email, Teams, snap, slack, Canvas etc. Learners can quickly and easily access their LMS or course materials, communicate with their peers and teachers, and compute and calculate, all on the same device that they take everywhere. With mobile devices, learners can also capture images, videos, GPS coordinates, ideas etc. Mobile technology can create new kinds of learning experiences that are engaging and interactive, and that learn and adapt to the user. I think the affordances of mobile education outweigh the limitations, and as technology continues to develop and become better, faster, and stronger, the opportunities are limitless.
From the perspective of an elementary school teacher, I think that the most important factor to consider in mobile education is the students themselves. What I mean by that, is to consider the many factors that play into the reasons why mobile devices are so influential in and integrated into students’ lives. I think the most successful implementations of mobile education will connect with students and allow them to learn within the mobile world that they are already comfortable in. As an educator, my goal is for the students to “buy-in” to the topics that we are learning about. I think that if students are genuinely interested, and feel invested in what they are learning, then this allows for the potential of the learning to move in a relevant direction. I am constantly changing direction on the fly, or applying varying strategies to varying students in order to try and get them to “buy-in”. Mobile education has the potential to make this “buy-in” a little easier, as it brings learning to a world that students are already immersed in, but it also gives educators less control, as they may not be able to directly affect the “buy-in” as much.
When thinking of the actual students learning on mobile devices, I think that one of the challenges that will be faced by mobile education developers is that genuine learning needs to be authentic, and I’d imagine that it would be very hard to create authentic learning goals that move beyond the mechanics of the games/apps themselves. To clarify this, I’ll give the following example: A game called Prodigy is a very popular mobile based Math game that is quite common at my current school. In this game, students play a very immersive RPG that allows them to explore various worlds, and collect/battle little monsters. In order to collect and battle the little monsters, students have to answer Math questions. The game is very well thought out, and after an initial Math skills test, the student is given a grade level, and the questions get continuously more challenging, as the student gets more and more answers correct. This is a great game, but I have observed many students that are focused on learning about the mechanics of the game, and just finding work-arounds to get through the actual math questions. The authentic learning seems to sometimes be based more in learning how to best collect and battle monsters, and based less in actually learning new Math skills.
I think that focusing on the students themselves, and on creating ways to make their mobile learning authentic (outside of just learning the mechanics of a game or app) will be of utmost importance for the future of mobile education.
The two best features of mobile education, from my perspective, are its mobility and ease of access to informal information for ‘just in time’ learning. I use the term ‘learn’ here loosely, because reading an article, watching a video, cruising the news – it’s all learning and we have access to it all in our pockets anytime we need to know something or have a few minutes to spare. Every activity we do on our phones could be placed on a scale educational value, and I presume the majority of the activity has a degree of educational value tied with it. The ability for us to learn a smidge of something new or improve on our previous understanding of a concept almost every time we pick up our phones is remarkable.
As well, the fact that we can take that to the physical location is significant. The gym can be an intimidating place, but the fact that I can Google the name of a machine, or use a QR code on the machine itself, and get a quick tutorial on how to use it properly is just one example. This extends to formal education – having a dictionary/calculator/infinite resource of information in our pockets helps us fill in knowledge gaps in a quiet, unassuming way, so we can keep up with what’s being taught. These are tools to help level the playing field of inclusivity.
I really like your example of the QR codes on machines at the gym. I like trying these kinds of things in my classrooms, where I create digital scavenger hunts using QR codes. The advent of QR codes to help with finding things, learning things and providing a bit of mobility to an otherwise static activity is one of the greatest things that we have come up with. One of the things I, too, like best about mobile learning is the mobility. Here in Fort St. John, we have a Solar System walk along a paved trail, where there are signs posted with the scaled distances between the Sun and each of the planets. Each of these signs also have QR codes for you to find out more about the planet than can be put on the sign. I like that we have the ability now to increase movement while also learning.
You post really resonated with me, as accessibility in education is something that I had to think really deeply about this summer through the Makerspace course. Previously I had never truly seen my devices, especially my cell phone, as a tool for accessibility. But I’ve come to realize that tools like QR codes, speech to text, Google lens, etc. are literally at our fingertips. In a classroom, I can see mobile education as a gateway into new levels of learning for students with varying needs.
Your QR code example and discussion on picking up information and learning as we go made me think of the visual look ups or google lens available on your phone. There are so many times where i have used this feature while biking and travelling to learn more about some of the things I see like plants, dog breeds, statues and art.
I think the most special positive features about mobile education are that 1)it is cost effective for both individuals and organizations, 2)allows for more engagement and knowledge retention since it mostly depends on microlearning, lots of media, and gamification, and 3)it is easily accessible. However, my big question is is the mobile learning experience truly superior to that which isn’t mobile? I reckon I will find the answer through this course. I would appreciate it if anyone who had a significant mobile learning experience could shed light on this!
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I love micro learning, and accessibility is the TOP of my list. I am most excited about access to learning for all. The closer we move, as a global village, towards free education for all, the more likely we are to see barriers, built on wealth and privilege, removed. Private schools, residential schools, public schools, ivy league schools, trade schools… what if education could just be about learning in the moment? How much cheaper could education be for all, if we didn’t need to maintain buildings? Build new structures? How can we improve and equalize access to knowledge and technology for all humans?
I don’t believe that educational experiences should be classified as some types being “superior” to others. All learning experiences are innately valuable, simply in the definition that learning has occurred. To learn is to grow and I am all for growing in all directions and in any way we can. As individuals, as cultures, as communities, as the human race. Apologies for the ramble, Safaa. Hope this helps, though maybe not the definitive answer you were looking for?
Hi Robyn,
Thank you for your insightful comment! I agree that every learning experience is valuable simply because learning took place. What I was referring to is the mobile experience in particular and how it can be superior to that which isn’t mobile, inspired by the Professor’s definition of ”mobile learning” that he mentions in the contents of week1: “Exemplary Mobile Learning is any learning experience supported by wireless networks and mobile devices that is unambiguously superior to an equivalent learning experience available on fixed devices and wired networks”.
My question(s), which I am hoping to explore and find answers to in this course, is how can we create exemplary mobile learning experience? What are the requirements or building blocks? What are the best practices? What are the most helpful trends?
Apologies if that was not clear before!
Reading through the Mobility perspectives page, I was struck by how much I don’t follow many of these “norms”. While my husband does complain about my cell phone use, I did go more than 3 weeks without my phone as one crashed and the next one had yet to arrive. The most common use of my phone is to communicate with friends and family so that we can organize face to face events. I much prefer to not have my phone with me, so I don’t actually suffer from “phantom mobile”. The other thing that came to mind during the reading of the Social Narrative page was the immense popularity of Pokemon GO! when it first came out. I loved the idea of the enforced mobility and the potential for actual face to face social interaction, even if you were hunting invisible monsters.
I don’t know that I have been able to truly use mobile learning in my classroom, and I still struggle against the random scrolling of “InstaSnap and FaceGram” (as I call them), that does more to distract than facilitate learning. The struggle of trying to be as entertaining and engaging as those, or as mind-numbing? I know that when I use technology during my down time, I tend not to want anything that makes me think too much, so I play video games that are very spoon-fed: go here and kill this number of mobs, then go here and collect this many things, etc. I wonder if that is what is happening in the classroom with the phones… tools of mass distraction.
I would like to be able to harness this and have students learn how to use their tools effectively, so I’m hoping to learn more about how to do that, and maybe step out of my comfort zone a bit more.
Mobile learning is flexible and accessible. It allows students and learners to access education without the constraints of physical space and time difference. But let’s be honest, is randomly browsing YouTube videos or TikTok videos considered learning? My response is people learn because they want to either expand their horizons or grow their knowledge reservoir. That is to say, learning is a purposeful and value-driven process. Passively consuming entertaining videos could bring people temporary pleasure, but it can hardly add any long-term benefits to them. Thus, we need to be mindful of what kind of digital content we consume as it may gradually change our thinking.
Speaking of digital content, mobile learning holds content in various formats such as podcasts, audiobooks, tutorial videos, learning apps etc. Learning can be more interactive and fun than traditional in-class teaching. For instance, Minecraft Education is a game-based learning platform that promotes creativity, collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive digital environment. It allows learners to create their own content and game characters. This learning experience is very experiential-focused and learner-focused. Personally, I feel like ETEC 523 is very much like experiential learning in which learners are expected to be content creators and content curators. It is a two-way traffic lane. What I mean by that is learners and educators are both contributors to the learning outcome, not one way in and one way out.
I think the most important thing to considering when thinking about mobile education is accessibility. I just finished taking ETEC 565C: Ableism, Equity, and Educational Technology and that course really helped me to think deeper about accessibility in general but especially when it comes to mobile education and learning. Mobile learning can have a clear advantage to traditional learning when it comes to accessibility because of the access to such incredible and innovative technologies that can enhance the user experience. Even simple tools like speech to text can be easily and seamlessly embedded into mobile learning applications or websites that can change the game for so many learners and allow for a more accessible and innovative learning experience. I really feel that the pandemic has shifted how we view education and the way in which learning can occur. There have been many new innovations as well as existing technologies being refreshed to meet the needs of the people. What makes mobile learning so special is that it can embrace these needs and lean into revitalizing how we view education.
Revitalizing education could occur if ministries of education redesigned their provincial curricula expectations. Without this change, then schools and teachers only have so much they can influence independently. It needs to be an entire school system change. Outside entities certainly can provide guidance and impact, but the implementation of change relies mostly on leadership that determines reported outcomes. Teachers can always influence the process of knowledge construction, but they remain limited to the content that has been deemed important.
Mobile education has extreme potential for furthering our education and making learning much more accessible. As stated in the “BYOD” section of Week 1: Mobility Perspectives, mobile devices outnumber the amount of humans on our planet. Crazy as that seems, our passion for and dependency on mobile devices is what has encouraged companies to create the newest, most user-friendly device. A mobile device has to cater to all abilities, whether that be in regard to age, functional ability, and culturally respective. Although, as many of us are probably well aware of, mobile devices are expensive. For example, Iphones are ranging anywhere between $899 and &1500. For the average person in B.C, that is nearing in on the cost of one months rent. However, in our technological world, mobile devices have become a necessity. Our societies have adapted to the need for instant communication and connection to the online universe. Due to the rising costs of technology and mobile devices in general, we need to find a way to make mobile devices more accessible for those in lower socioeconomic areas. The MET is one of many programs that offers a completely online education option. It is accessible and convenient for those working part-time or full-time jobs. However, a necessity of the program is having a device, whether that be a laptop/computer or cellphone. Without one, it would be hard to keep up with the regular posts and assignments. Accessibility comes in different forms for mobile education, such as cost and online capabilities. How can we ensure people wanting to interact and learn from different countries have the same abilities regarding bandwidth or online access? If this question could be solved, I truly believe mobile education could cause a massive change in the way our education system looks today.
The two important aspects which we should remember about “mobile learning” is (i) the mobility of the user and not the device and (ii) the context/environment they’re using mobile learning. As mobile learning is generally associated with a greater degree of freedom for learning, what makes it special includes low entry barriers seeing how a large population/majority of individuals own a smartphone and the higher degree of efficiency it provides to users. It’s also inclusive on the fact that people of all ages know how to operate on a basic level and use smartphones/tablets, with no further training required. Being able to complete tasks, study, learn or work on the go is definitely more productive when compared to working on a desktop or desk. As most people are trained to multi task in our environment, being able to find solutions and learn anywhere, anytime is a unique aspect which makes mobile learning valuable. There is also increased motivation to learn as in most cases, mobile learning is associated with bite sized/microexpression content as opposed to chunks of text which is dull to read. Learners will make it a habit to learn (rather than viewing it as a chore) while naturally integrating the learning aspect into their daily schedules. The concept of naturally shifting between learning, working, learning and working can only be done through mobile learning. In terms of features, mobile learning is easy to pick up, multimodal, interactive and encourages continuous learning (eg: through the use of notifications, alerts etc)
After reading this week’s “Mobility Perspectives”, I believe the most important factor about mobile education is accessibility, especially for digital natives. They grew up with this “phantom mobile” and living their lives in the absence of this limb would be really difficult to envision. Mobile education could be the most helpful for education in the future if we used it accurately. It should be considered a second brain to use and not a hindrance to education, it could be used as a method to show what the learners have experienced, promote immediate feedback, facilitate discussion with peers, and much more. I believe that we haven’t reached the full potential of mobile education in view of the fact that we’re still in the early development phase of mobile devices and it could be even more anthropomorphic to humans than ever or perhaps be positioned as an anatomical organ (too many sci-fi movies). A lot of people would be worried about the future of mobile devices and the negative consequences they may have on children, but I am definitely optimistic and excited to experience more of these small devices that altered our awareness of our world in every way.
The Mobility Perspective page made me reflect on what makes the mobile unique and positions it at an advantage compared to other technologies that are used for education. One key characteristic is that it is highly personal and intimate. As a tool through which we socially participate in the world, it becomes an agent of identity formation as well as community building. These two, identity and community, are very important dimensions of an individual’s life. If mobiles are most efficient at setting a stage for the development of these, then individuals will feel naturally driven to these technologies. From here, creating educational experiences on our phones can be more engaging and fulfilling.
Another characteristic is that the phone is best positioned to gather data, hence the potential for personalized, adaptive, and open learning is enhanced. When I think about how my phone uses various data to create specific outputs or guidelines through which applications function, I can see that this unique ability facilitates experiences that are better tailored to my needs. If we translate this to an educational context, we can certainly expect more engaging and meaningful learning experiences.
I feel the pros and cons of mobile education really depend on what and how the user is trying to learn. Duolingo while on a bus or on the toilet? Fantastic. Listening to an audiobook or podcast while going for a jog? Even better. Taking notes for an essay you need to write later? Amazing. Actually writing that essay? Painful (unless you include tablets with a decent keyboard). In order to leverage the value of mobile learning, educators need to marry their content with the available functionality of their mobile technology. Personally speaking, as a part-time distance ed student, I almost always prefer a desktop computer to a phone or tablet when it comes to working on MET courses. However, I can try to identify some pros based on my personal observation. Smartphones are personal. Have you ever tried using someone else’s phone to do something? It just feels wrong… and slightly dirty. Downloaded apps on a personal device give users a sense of ownership, while communal computer labs in schools feel outdated and unfamiliar. Secondly, smartphones are relatively intuitive. I’d say most parents, and possibly grandparents, have more ease with an iPhone than a printer/scanner. And this ties back into my initial point – educators need to understand how to use the technology before they can incorporate it effectively. We’re almost all daily users of smartphones, while other learning technology (e.g. immersive tech, AI, etc.) may require training and overcoming psychological barriers. It’s the low-hanging fruit of ed tech.
Hi Aaron, I appreciate you addressing the personal nature of smartphones. I think that having a mobile device has evolved beyond a sense of ownership, almost serving as a token representation of the self. As you mentioned, you could customize the content of the personal device using apps but could take it a step further to change functionality by altering programming, introducing aesthetic elements such as cases or backgrounds, and presenting their devices as an element of their personality (“I’m an Apple/Microsoft person”).
Good point, Aaron. It seems like some forms of content production might be more difficult on phones, such as doing coursework for MET Courses. I would say that on the reception side of content mobiles are usually as good as computers, and probably even better because they’re not limited to a specific point in space. However, when in comes to creating content it is not so comfortable. Writing an essay with citations and all those things must be difficult. With this in mind, learning designers must think of what are the best ways for students to produce content ensuring the learning goals are met.
Hi Aaron,
I appreciate that you addressed the pros and cons of mobile education depending on what a user is trying to learn. I live on an acreage and, at one point, sought to understand more about the many plants growing on the property. There is an app for that. I opened the app and then used my camera to take photos of the plants. The app almost instantly provided identifications and descriptions. Would I use the app to discern poisonous plants from forageable edibles? Maybe not. But having the ability to walk around using cell data without a book was liberating. It felt natural and easy. Mobile education will succeed if designed to fit the purpose.
Because the pros of mobile learning, often being focusing on the flexibility of such learning, are such a commonly discussed idea, I wanted to first focus on the potential cons.
Without the complete equality of access to technology for all, any improvements in mobile online education create social and economic inequality. For teaching school-age children, our structure of public education means that any increased learning outcome from mobile online education must be met with more funding for technological access for low-income students as well. The need for children to have ready access to mobile technology is also financially risky considering how much more likely children are to lose or break their devices than adults. A school iPad is far more costly to replace than some lost notebooks The design of mobile online education may also be held back by both software and hardware differences between students. iPhones and Androids have different hardware and operating systems that must be taken into account.
There are of course positives to mobile learning that go beyond flexibility. One area of design that is forced to be carefully taken into account is the chunking of information because of the user’s small screen. In my own experience, I’ve found that general online learning can be guilty of having for too much information at a time on the screen at any given time. Coupled with the hesitancy that many face when taking an online class for the first time, it can be discouraging and overwhelming. The proper use of chunking is paired well with the on-the-go nature that mobile learning users are likely to have. If users are commuting or just picking up their phones whenever they can to continue with a class, then small chunks of information are well-suited for them. I don’t quite yet have a concrete opinion about mobile learning, but I’m sure that throughout the course I’ll have several perspectives and changes of opinion and I’m looking forward to it.
Liam, I appreciate that you included your thoughts on the necessity of connecting funding to education technology in your response. Educational technology should be funded each year, as it is necessary to support student learning. Often money is given for the infusion of technology devices, but it is also important that there is further funding available for maintenance and service of devices, and for turnover when the devices no longer accept updates of the most recent software. Often when this happens, the devices are unusable because it poses safety risks.
Mobile learning is in seductive in so many ways. The content can be as attractive as the designer or teacher chooses, it is rapid ( if you live in a modern society with well developed IT infrastructure) and its focus is to attract as many followers / students/ learners into its web.
This raises the question of quality of content, its construct and depth of information. Nothing is so misleading as to follow on line classes and possibly engage with the emotional satisfaction which tells us oh yes, I have learned a lot,
Mobile learning has definitely engaged its role as a fixed one today, reinforced by the Covid pandemics which has brought the world to a new playing field and gave greater power and realization of how mobile learning is a part of life – in fact, all professions depend upon it for learning, communication, and professional practice. It has taken the place of legal documents in many instance. .
If content engages the learner and quality controlled, there is indeed a sense of achievement.
But we still live in an unequal world. in West Africa a few years ago, living there, setting up a reliable mobile network involved hiring guards to prevent theft of wires, poles and all incumbent material to create a mobile Internet access. The cost was high and the majority could not afford subscriptions. The alternative is a IT cafe which limits customer use and charges for profit. Mobile learning in the modern sense mandates a good device, Ipad, Iphone or PC, good service and the ability to pay for it. Canada has one of the highest IT rates in the world and is dominated through limited competition. So who is really befitting if we consider these points. .
Mobile learning like anything else on the Internet engages in a exchange of values and freedoms. Any program can be hacked with skilled intent.
Privacy is almost redundant today, in the real nature of things and people are still being scammed.unwittingly.
Mobile learning from an academic standpoint is definitely a plus, encouraging reflection thorugh, well designed questions and provokes the participant to develop excellent word skills and great keyboard talents. I use UBC and this course as one example of well planned and advanced considerations of risks.
I recall one community in Africa using solar powered PCs as another source where electricity supply is unrealiable. We are, in this sense, hostage to a similar fate albeit less likely.
Mobile learning is rather similar to discovering gold in our ongoing search for new pathways for profit with many additional advantage.
Two significant factors stand out for me regarding mobile education; accessibility and variety of content.
Mobile education allows users access to education from anywhere at any time. Since learning occurs through internet access, learners can access the same content from any location as long as users have a stable internet connection. Furthermore, global connections can be developed, and communities can be formed.
Mobile education also allows users to connect to various content and have access to wide-ranging global perspectives. While access to a variety of content does not always lead to improved learning, I would suggest that it is essential in the globalized world we live in today for learners to construct their own research and shape their own knowledge and meanings.
Yet, as mobile education is hailed as a positive shift in global education, I still find myself quite skeptical about how mobile education can help shift the global inequality regarding education access. Perhaps mobile education provides the perfect moment for educators to rethink the way education is delivered. Profit-based education already creates vast inequalities in access to education. Through mobile technology, learning opportunities are more widely accessible. However, many parts of the world lack the technological infrastructure to access mobile education options. As a result, students and professionals in these areas will continue to fall further behind their counterparts in the world with high-speed access and access to resources that allow them to connect to the best learning platforms. I think it is essential that these issues be considered when we consider the potentials of mobile education and the future of education.
While I can see the many advantages of mobile learning, one of the concerns I have is feeling the freedom to disconnect without feeling guilty. Because many of us are constantly connected to our devices, it can be difficult to find balance. For example, I have my notifications turned on my Canvas app for a variety of reasons, and am regularly checking everything that comes in. I know that I can organize my time better, however, I feel the need to check everything that comes in. I always think that if something is sitting there unchecked, I could be missing something important. I wonder if anyone else feels this way sometime?
I can’t quite relate myself with that feeling of needing to check and read potential notifications, but many of my coworkers would agree with you. They think I’m crazy that I have my email on my phone with push notifications without feeling obliged to answering emails that I receive on the weekends. I only have the notifications on in case I get an email from a student with a serious subject line, and other emails I’m happy to swipe up and get to them on Monday. I think it just depends on the person, but the feeling of connection/disconnection from course notifications should definitely be a factor in course design.
To me (and many others in this discussion evidently), the single most important factor that makes mobile education so powerful is its accessibility. Mobile education has shifted the idea of remoteness, formerly painted with a negative connotation and a hindrance to the quality of education, into a tool of convenience for many. So long as one has the essential technological tools used in remote learning classrooms, remoteness can even be seen as a privilege that eliminates the need for a synchronous schedule and consistent commutes that would be necessary for those living in more remote areas, thanks to the convenience that mobile learning offers.
However, this only applies to a physical remoteness; remoteness can also extend to one that is less physical and more about a lack of access to necessary resources. Mobile education requires one to have certain technological tools that may be unaffordable or inaccessible to some people. If you have an older phone or laptop, you may find that certain applications or programs are no longer compatible with your device due to planned obscelence, and your only choice is to get a newer model that is compatible with the program or to simply give up using it. So, in a sense, mobile education unfortunately still does rely on some degree of classism as it seldom makes efforts to cater to those who are not privileged enough to afford necessary tools, though it’s great to see how many schools are putting funding into offering such tools for their students who would not be able to participate otherwise.
I have thought a lot about mobile learning this week and thought about the first time I did a museum tour using an iPad and headphones. It was truly immersive and I loved that I could choose what I wanted to learn about, that the guide on the iPad was interactive based on what I wanted to listen to or learn about. It included music for different time periods, links to additional pieces of art or recorded interviews with different artists. I think we as we move forward into this new era of learning, we are faced with students who are used to having experiences catered to their interests much like my museum tour was. They browse online with their browser history directing what they see and listen to, they create their own identities in video games and they choose who to interact with socially through technology while often at home alone. The pull that we are feeling in education to ‘keep up’ with the pace of technology is going outpace our current learning models/curriculum and consume it completely in my opinion. I think we when think about mobile learning we are looking at the future of a lot of education as students will prefer to use phones for more and more of their daily life including their learning. The ability to work anywhere using a small mobile device that is wireless is becoming increasingly the norm and students are using it in ways we hadn’t previously ever thought of. I just have to watch my ten year old use my iPhone for a few minutes to see numerous functionalities that I wasn’t even aware it had or see it used in ways I hadn’t thought of. I think it is an exciting time to be in education if you are willing and interested in being part of the evolution that is happening, it does feel like it is happening faster than we can understand or keep up with but to me, that’s part of what makes it so thrilling.
Mobile education supplements existing distance learning methods, which ultimately liberates people from the constraints of learning time and space and will significantly improve learning efficiency and meet lifelong learning needs. Accessibility is a crucial factor that mobile education will benefit an individual’s learning. For example, Mobile education is beneficial for adult education, as adult learners are no longer restricted to a specific time and place to engage in learning activities and better organize their lives, studies, and work. At the same time, learners can use their mobile devices to browse online course resources via wireless networks and communicate with other learners. This dramatically broadens the scope of education and is a massive boost to realizing lifelong learning and forming a learning society.
YES! Accessibility is SO important. People need to be able to connect any time, any where for their learning.
Mobile education, specially Virtual Reality (VR) has huge potential in the workforce. I come from a background where I managed employees who are doing hands-on work and I now am working with people in the trades industry. I’ve hired employees who had no idea what their job really entails. Because of the pandemic, most of their technical training has moved online. From the instructors’ perspective, it is very hard to teach a hands-on skill via a screen. If potential new hires were given a VR machine with their daily work environment was programmed, they would be able to see what type of work they are doing. This could even help with on-the-job training and safety training, where they learn the motions of the job before actually practicing it in their real work. Same can be applied for trades training. Apprentices can virtually practice machinery skills or go through project steps before going on a job site. If the scenarios, safety practices, and machinery in VR resembles what workers or apprentices would be seeing in real working situations, they will be better equipped when they are performing their work on a job site.
I agree with you and I also think it has many practical uses in schools. We have used VR in middle schools for students with special needs who are transitioning into middle school and it was school tours created by the students. It allowed new students to ‘virtually visit’ the school from home as for some students it is overwhelming to do a school visit prior to attending or to do a visit their first day, the noise, activity and sensory overload can be too much for many students. ‘Virtual visits’ not only allow the students to take the VR goggles home but they can tour their new school at their own pace in a quiet space and it also offers great learning opportunities for students who create the virtual visits. Many use an ‘apprenticeship’ approach each year to teach new students how to use the software and then how to show new students how to use it. I think it creates more equity for students as well, to access learning in a way that works for them.
That is amazing! Because of the pandemic, many places have stopped allowing visitors to enter. I remember in school, we had multiple career days. It would be cool for students to use VR to experience what a day as a surgeon, cook, bus driver, carpenter, etc is like.
Traditionally, the process of sending and receiving information, knowledge, and instruction – known as Education – has been tied to fixed assets, fixed physical locations, and wired devices. Mobile education, however, has changed this equation and has become instrumental in ensuring that sending/receiving information, knowledge, and instruction can be done in a superior, more flexible, and a nimbler approach, anytime and anywhere. Lack of the need for physical presence – in mobile education – has made the learning experience much more accommodating. Additionally, the emergence of mobile education has left a positive impact on the need for physical classrooms and books. This becomes exceptionally important in developing countries where there continues to be a shortage of classrooms and/or printed textbooks. For instance, while some African countries such as Ghana, continue to encounter classroom, teacher, and textbook shortages, the number of mobile device subscriptions continues to grow in there ( Fredriksen, et al., 2015). According to World Bank statistics on Africa, “in 2012 there were over 650 million mobile phone subscriptions across the [African] continent, rising from almost zero at the turn of the century” (Fredriksen, et al., 2015, p. 93)
Reference
Fredriksen, B., Brar, S., & Trucano, M. (2015). Getting textbooks to every child in sub-Saharan Africa: Strategies for addressing the high cost and low availability problem. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.
Hi Saeid, I agree with the point that you said about flexibility. In the traditional education setting, students were forced to pay attention for the duration of the lesson and the teacher was the one who delivered the information in an authoritative manner. Mobile learning can allow the learner to take breaks whenever it is needed. Also mobile learning allows for a free flow of knowledge transfer between students and teachers and vice versa. Information is really at the learners’ fingertips and they don’t have to wait for a teacher to come to deliver information.
Hi Sarah,
100% correct. Great points. In fact, mobile education is gradually changing/improving the teacher-student dynamics. The teacher is no longer seen in that authoritative manner and classes look and feel more relaxed and flexible.
Mobility as it relates to learning can be an amazing platform for discovery. Whether it is accessible to all learners is a different matter. I really liked the concept of personal storyworlds – a type of “Choose Your Own Adventure” for learners. If designed properly that sort of approach would work well for learners who are inclined to find answers through a constructivist lens, and might inspire others to take the plunge. However, if not designed well, it can also leave other learners confused and not sure know where to turn.
I would love to see “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of training for those in the Service Industry where they have to practice customer service. For those who are new to this type of work or they are new to the country, it would be a fun way for them to learn what a server should say say to the customer that exhibits good customer service. They can see what a customer’s reaction would be if they say the wrong things before trying this out in an actual business setting.
The most impacting factor of mobile learning is that it provides quick and instant access to information that were not available to the populous. The advantage of this factor it allowed anyone to find any information more easier than before. Therefore, for people who have clear learning goals in mind, this factor allows people to instantly access the knowledge that they seek. However, the great disadvantage is that it also offers random information for people who have no clear learning objectives. In this situation, it is very easy for people to be trapped by trash entertainment that offers instant and gratifying information that satisfies emotional satisfaction for brief period but inspires no critical thinking or personal growth. Lets face it, it is more appealing to watch cat memes rather than lessons that forces our brain to think. Physiologically, out brain is lazy, given choice, our brain is naturally attracted towards familiar and cognitive unchallenging tasks rather than foreign and challenging tasks. Thus, in order for people to reap the greatest benefit from this easy and quick access to information offered by mobile technology, the people have to be motivated and goal-orientated individuals themselves.
I 100% agree with the idea that knowledge is more of a sub-product of learning. All the knowledge of the world is at our finger tips. As a teacher I no longer focus TOO much on the material but more on the idea of how to learn, how to develop new skills, how to persevere and connect through academic challenges, how to problem solve, how to think, and how to discuss, argue, and formulate original ideas. So mobile education has allowed it for people to focus on what’s truly important to learn in life (skills and brain development), or like you said “critical thinking and personal growth”. I totally agree with your last idea, that people are losing the ability to truly use their full brain potential (watch movie Lucy) because of mobile distractions. Hence, why we need to be cautious of how we incorporate them in learning environments.
Mobile education can be a very effective tool in teaching because it provides visually entertaining material that can be absorbed through games, interactive activities, creative design, aesthetically engaging assessments, and visual/ auditory components. I use several apps that students can use on their personal devices (or school devices) that incorporates several of the features described above. Although many would argue that mobile education is the future of education in comparison to traditional in class instruction, I would emphasize the idea that mobile education is to work hand in hand within class instruction. Technology is there to assist and be available as an extra tool for learning, without off-setting the balance between social interaction and the virtual world. But like many things in the world, too much or too little of anything is not always the most effective or efficient, it simply needs to be balanced. Therefore, I believe mobile education is special because it’s a new tool in the modern era that can facilitate but not replace educational instruction.
I don’t think there is an either / or here, nor do I think anyone is predicting that mobile learning will replace all learning. Also mobile learning and educational instruction are not at odds with one another, as educational instruction can be a part of mobile learning and often is. What mobile learning provides are newer and different opportunities for learning and teaching. Within this, mobile learning can and has provided opportunities to open learning up to underserved communities that don’t have the same or as accessible access to education. One organization to explore that is doing that is Funzi: https://www.funzi.fi/
Thanks for sharing the link, Erica!
I think mobile learning appeals to me because I work at a corporate setting and at the end of each day, I don’t have the energy to sit in a lecture. Mobile learning allows me to discover new hobbies or courses that could help me with professional development. I could learn all of these things with my phone or laptop and at the pace that I would like to go in.
I agree that younger students have will benefit from a classroom setting with the supplement of mobile learning. They should learn how to socialize in-person and also have an avenue of learning that is enticing to them.
I love your comment here, Miguel. I do know that online learning is the best choice for many learners, however, I think the pandemic has discreetly shown the importance of in-class instruction. I would say there is a “gradual release” effect in terms that the older the student, the more equipped they are for online classes. That being said, mobile education as a supplement is effective at any age.
Agreed, Kendall. I think it comes down to choice. Education needs to meet the needs of all learners and empower learners to choose what works best for them. With that said, there is still great value in the humanity afforded when we learn collectively in a physical space. Knowing there is a human to bridge gaps, offers more organic scaffolding than what might be found on a mobile device. Additionally, there are nuances of physical body language that happen when we are teaching and learning… facial expressions, wait time, physical proximity to other learners etc that enhance the learning landscape and these are lost to some degree with mobile learning. With that, I argue that mobile education might work best when there is a merging of both the synchronous and asynchronous approaches.
The single most important factor of mobile education is the convenience it allows learners who own or have access to a mobile device (and wireless network). What differentiates mobile learning from a traditional online learning experiences (e.g., completing an e-learning module from a desk at your workplace) is that learning can take place on the fly, in small or large chunks, and when you feel like it. Conceivably, I could grab my phone from my purse and add a comment to a course blog (while on the train ride into the city), complete part of a mandatory compliance course (while at my son’s hockey try-outs), or upload my completed bio to this MET course (while waiting in line for coffee). As with any learning modality, the effectiveness of mobile learning largely depends on the design, user experience and meeting the varied needs of its target audience.
Hi Elizabeth,
I agree with your response. Mobile technology is really about accessibility. Most Canadians own a smartphone and have access to the internet via their phone. Mobile learning allows people to continue learning on their own time which is very important in this modern word where we are obligated to work, study, raise families, take care of ourselves and others, and other responsibilities and pleasures. It feels like there is never enough time to complete all these tasks. I feel like this accessibility though comes with a downside. Instead of technology helping us to free up time it seems to actually squeeze more time from us or at least the time that is freed gets filled quickly with a litany of productive to dos. From the examples that you gave, do you think the learning time that gets squeezed in while a learner is waiting in line or sitting on the subway results in high quality learning or production? That’s what I would say is the downside to all of this. I’m highly skeptical that the learning that occurs in these kinds of environments are of as high quality than when you actually have dedicated, uninterrupted time to study. The tasks and homework gets completed but I’m not sure if this is really learning.
Hi Olivia, You’ve raised really good points – thanks. I agree, over using technology, can come at a price (most often our mental and/or physical health). Sometimes, we/I need to keep the phone in the bag and be present, watch my son skate, or day-dream on the train ride! Your question around the effectiveness of squeezing learning-time in between activities is an interesting one. I think the answer depends on the many mobile learning design variables (e.g., length, type of training, user interface, interaction). In general, I would guess short, bite-sized learning such as a three minute video would be easier to consume than something longer such as a 30 min health and safety course. And to change the direction of our conversation slightly, I don’t know if all training converts nicely to mobile; I’d like to figure that out!
While I think this is true for the more affluent world, I think for others that can’t afford a formal education, what mobile learning provides is access. This is where mobile learning and open learning merge, by providing people that may have barriers to formal education with access to learning, and to growing and improving on their skill base. I provided a link above to a company that is doing that for underserved communities through mobile learning. https://www.funzi.fi/
I agree with you Erica, as an administrator of a school that is in a low socio-economic area in Toronto I saw this first hand when schools closed. Most of our students did not have any technology at home, many did not have internet and many were sharing one device between multiple children. These students disappeared when schools closed and we went to online learning in Ontario – they accessed no classroom materials or learning while others who had devices/internet participated. We were able through our school board to provide everything they needed very quickly and have them picked up by parents at school, my phone did not stop ringing for weeks and my email was full with anxious parents trying to get the technology their children needed to continue to learn remotely. This ability to provide families with the technology they needed was critical to being able to do my job supporting my students, teachers and their families. It was an amazing week when all the students were able to log into their online classrooms and talk with their classmates and teachers again and it was a tremendous weight off the shoulders of those parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles who were caring for them at home. Access is a critical piece of equity in education and I think it is an area we need to work harder to improve and find better ways to remove barriers to learning.
Asha, these are really important points. I’ll add that infrastructure needs to be put in place so that technology is accessible and funded by the school system in the same way that text books are. Equity and access are non-negotiable when it comes to current needs of learners, especially in a country such as ours that funds education.
I am so glad you and your school board were able to solve that accessibility problem for your students.
Mobile education has the potential to bring valuable learning experiences right to an individual’s fingertips. The possibilities are seemingly endless given the potential convenience, accessibility, and ability to connect learners without geographical limitations. I am reminded of the Duolingo app when considering the potential positives mobile education can present. The Duolingo app makes it easy and convenient to begin learning another language wherever you are. These lessons were previously confined to either in-class or computer based online lessons where an instructor was present and the learner had a set schedule to follow. The app, which I strongly feel represents only a fraction of the potential of mobile learning, allows a user to be sitting en route to another country while simultaneously learning the language at their leisure. The challenge that mobile education faces, in my opinion, is its perceived merit or value within the more “traditional” educational realm. Many would question the legitimacy and efficacy of mobile learning when compared to traditional in-class learning because it represents a dramatic shift from what is known to what is unknown. Mobile learning as a branch of digital learning is, in my humble opinion, the future of education but must first shatter the barrier that “traditional education” represents in order to fully realize its potential.
Reflecting on the statement in “Future of Work” that “The office and cubicle are essentially obsolete” could be said for the classroom as well. As educators operating as co-learners rather than teachers, mobile education offers the opportunity for learner-centered experiential education beyond the classroom. The foundation of Experiential Learning is that learning occurs when someone creates knowledge though experiential transformations (Kolb, 1984). Drawing from “Digital Doppelgangers” that we feel naked without our smartphones, they are the tool that we are actively engaging with the most. Increasing communication and access to information, interaction and participation through mobile learning is akin to having a digital tour guide of the world as you move through it. Providing engagement and interaction on a place-based level wherever the student is.
Mobile learning has the potential to reduce the friction of navigating life. We can access information, tools and apps that meet the needs of different learnings styles, allowing the learner to create a personal toolbox to enhance how they learn, and access information coupled with experiences. Where I am most concerned is the momentum towards a personalized web and creating and echo chamber of personal views. A responsibility of mobile education is to guide and develop critical thinkers and global citizens.
This first week, I have been thinking about examples of open learning which can be supported by mobile devices. The simplest scene which came to my mind is my former experience of visiting Pearl Harbor guided by an electronic interpreter. Even though the phone sized portable electronic interpreter provided by the museum narrated the history through the single channel of audio when I moved around the site, I think it can be seen as a mobile augmented reality. I guess many people had the same experience in museums. Let us imagine that, if my phone took the place of the electronic interpreter, would it display me the whole historic scenes with more vivid images and sounds augmented to the locations? so that I could learn that history more impressively.
The answer is YES! Because smart phones have the greatest potential of overlaying VR on any physical entities and environments, even without goggles or glasses. It can burst into many practical uses. For example, children can step into forests with their smart phones to have a brilliant course on birds; students who learn architecture can evaluate their design work by putting their building renderings into real street views on their phone. You can imagine almost every learner from every field can use this mobile augmented reality to make sense of what they are learning in the real world. Mobility and multimodality of mobile devices can extensively enhance learning experience anytime and anywhere.
After reading through the initial readings posted my our instructor, I would echo his thoughts in that I believe the most important things for “Mobile Learning” would be for it to “break out of the complexity box of the entire education industry”.
How can mobile reduce friction and allow for frictionless learning based around identity, pace, purpose, community?
Mobile learning is so powerful because it breaks down barriers. These days we can leave the house without our wallets, but we will not forget to bring our smart phones. Our mobile devices are with us all the time, and we are more and more used to doing everything on it. I now use my phone for formal and informal learning. Formal meaning using mobile version of Canvas to access my courses and participating in discussions, and informal meaning accessing reading APPs to read books.
It is special because there’s almost no limit with the kinds of APPs that can be made for learning on our phones. From reading text and watching videos, to interactive learning activities, game APPs, and there’s even APPs that incorporates AR technology. When it comes to mobile learning, I am keeping very positive, but I do think having negative experiences is helpful in driving improvement in user experience. As more and more people use phones for learning, and with the learner’s age starting even at 0 years old, I think user experience design will be extremely important.
When I consider mobile education (with my still-foggy understanding and definition), the idea that comes to mind is the potential for access and equality. Although I don’t think we are anywhere near this yet, I am optimistic about the potential. With the speedy shift to online learning this past year, many of us around the world became more keenly aware of the divide that exists between those who have access to reliable technology and those who do not.
Living in India, where many of the states have still not returned to school, that divide is obvious. There are millions of children who have simply gone without school for almost a year now. The shift that several schools in Delhi have made is to a fully online, synchronous school day. This does not fit my (still foggy) definition of mobile education. My (foggy and optimistic) definition includes more flexibility and adaptability. It embraces the mobility and the learning opportunities that come with that mobility. I believe the potential benefit of true mobile learning lies in the possibility of facilitating learning in different situations, locations, schedules, and with different devices. Mobile devices are becoming more prevalent and as this access increases, perhaps in some future state there will be more opportunity for equality and access to education around the world for all income levels, life situations and genders.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-coronavirus-school-closures/2020/12/23/7e80f628-3efc-11eb-b58b-1623f6267960_story.html
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/lost-in-lockdown-covid-19-7053688/
I view mobile educational technology as a powerful social equalizer as well. In addition to the reasons you mention, it could bring skills and expertise to a community where it does not already exist. I’m thinking of remote communities even in Canada where people with specialized skills don’t necessarily live, though there is an interest in the community in bringing them there. Additionally, youth can be connected with adults they identify with in roles they may aspire to. Beyond the learning potential for the student, these programs would likely be much cheaper than ones currently relying on air travel and the like.
I imagine the trick would be to ensure programs weren’t making problematic assumptions about the learner’s context. There would likely be an assumption to, for example, apply one successful program for remote communities to all remote communities and, for a number of reasons, may not see repeated success necessarily.
I would like to echo your comment on the importance of equal accessibility to necessary technologies in mobile learning. There is a long list of benefits of mobile learning people have identified, such as flexible schedules, locations, real-time feedback, etc.; however, these are possible only if reliable mobile technologies and Internet connection are accessible by all participating mobile learners.
I would like to address two issues of accessibility with regards to mobile technology.
The first is with physical disabilities. Physical barriers are easier to reduce when you can “see” them. A few years ago, I understood the physical barrier of a high curb as I tried to navigate a baby carriage! In terms of mobility, my phone screen is too bright for me to view for long periods of time. Mobile devices with text-to-speech options are great for listening instead of reading, as are speech-to-text apps for text submissions. Closed-captioning is necessary for the hard of hearing. The integration of technologies within the mobile device helps mitigate the learning difficulties due to such physical barriers, but as e-learning designers we need to keep in mind the user interaction and visual design when creating an online lesson.
Next is financial accessibility. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent confinement highlighted the haves and have-nots in society. Although many tools were offered for online learning, only those with updated mobile devices or desktop computers, and who had ample internet bandwidth could access them. I can only speak for larger cities such as Montreal and Ottawa, where certain schools have laptop loan programs and were able to provide students with devices so that they could continue their schooling at home, so long as their homes had a high enough connection to the internet. Questions such as – is the app functional with lower bandwidth connections, older technologies, and – is there an online/offline class schedule for households with limited devices and multiple students, at different grade levels – need to be taken into account when designing course loads. Addressing inclusive design for mobile education would benefit people in all situations.
I would love to hear how other places, companies, and educational institutions have addressed these issues.
As some of the previous posts in this discussion thread have already mentioned, mobile technology does have a lot of potential in enhancing the learning experience in any setting. As an online teacher, I have had the privilege of teaching students from all over the province and even with the complications surrounding COVID, there was very minimal disruption in how we operate because students were already adapted to using mobile technology for learning. Students are finding ways to connect with their classmates even though they might be 5 hours away from each other. I have witnessed students developing relationships and friendships using Google Hangouts, Zoom, and other apps on their mobile devices regardless of where they are physically. Students are working on group projects and finding ways to help each other with assignments and projects.
However, I also have students that live in rural areas that don’t have the best internet connection or using older devices that don’t support the new versions of software. They are not able to participate as much compared to other students that have a more readily accessible connection or devices and this challenge is affecting their school work. I love the idea of mobile learning but is it really for everyone? I think we can all agree that technologies change and advance quickly. Some people will love that change but there will be people who can’t keep up with the quickly changing environment and it’s not their fault.
Covid 19 has revealed challenges and benefits to the use of emergency online teaching. From last semester’s class ETEC 565B, I was introduced to Tony Bates work on effective use of online class environments. Various environments were introduced which included synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid and blended models. In order to achieve the most effective environment, teachers need to pinpoint the limitations and strengths of access to technology, pedagogy, and social interaction to achieve the most optimal learning environment. Now imagine that you were building this for one unit in one of your classrooms.
– How would it look like in an online environment?
– What types of tools would you use?
– Would it be sync, async, hybrid, or blended?
– What challenges and limitations would you need to address and why?
These were some of the questions that my group partner and I asked ourselves when considering our project for Grade 8 and 12 Chemistry for WHMIS ESL in ETEC 565 B. And in doing so, we built some modules for use in her classroom. For teacher who may by struggling with these questions in their own classroom, this might be a good opportunity for discussion or a potential project that could potentially be used within their teaching practices.
I think what is most unique about the potential of mobile education is the capacity to build global learners in a common classroom environment. Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic shift in socialization methods among students, where we are seeing a greater interconnectedness among students from countries from around the world through online interactions, similar to this program. With the platforms available for mobile learning, the boundaries between being a teacher teaching a class in British Columbia or being a teacher of a class of grade 7 students from all around the world in a field of specialization are now being modified. We now have access to teach and engage learners in a more specialized format by having access to mobile learning environments to make the learning accessible to learners from all over the world. This could ideally revolutionize how we see teaching and learning from the traditional context of transmitting content and skills to now a more applicable version of innovation and experience.
Having taught at the end of the school year completely online thanks to the pandemic, I was able to build an extremely engaging, research and project based classroom environment for my grade 6/7 students. The students knowledge base soared and their curiosities flourished as they had access to immediate research, literacy and writing tools, and they could pre-record or present live which eased a great deal of anxieties. The mobile learning environment took away 95% of the classroom management which consumed our time when we were in the classroom before the pandemic. However, these students no longer received the same social learning and practice that may of you have mentioned throughout your discussions as well. As a class that had extreme socialization concerns, I had to take a step back to really evaluate whether or not the mobile learning made them better humans or global citizens, or if it just helped them to be more innovative and academically inclined now that the social distractions were eliminated.
I am a firm believer of the idea that as technologies get more advanced, they become smaller and more accessible. Thus, mobile devices are the natural technological progression to desktop computers and will eventually replace them in the near future. The amazing aspect of this transition is that the functionality has been mostly kept intact, and was even improved in many areas. I would almost treat my mobile device as an extension of myself and my cognition. It seems natural to use it as a way to offload the cognitive load on myself in order to allow me to accomplish tasks more comfortably and keeps me connected to the digital universe. This makes it all the more meaningful to make sure that enough attention is paid to mobile education since a significant amount of our identity and lifestyle relies on our phones.
However, there is a fine line between controlling technology verses being controlled by our technology. If we are able to incorporate phones into our students’ education, we would be harnessing the power of this technology while removing the possibilities of potential negative influences from it.
During my experiences with middle and secondary students, I started to notice that there is a trend towards moving towards tablets/chrome books, which I find to be fundamentally different than laptops/desktops. Unfortunately, the schools that I work in still treat mobile devices as a distraction for the students, and requires them to be put in lockers/bags during school time. If educators were educated on how to teach students on how to use these devices properly, then mobile education could become a strong tool for learning.
I wanted to build off your well worded idea of the “fine line between controlling technology verses being controlled by our technology.” This idea has been a a reoccurring thought in my head throughout the entirety of my existence in the MET program. In different courses, I have looked into the concept of deep learning and predictive technologies in relation to education and educational technologies. I keep coming back to the question of whether it is possible to be “too connected” and whether the level connection to technologies shifts our level of control over these technologies (the more connected, the less control). I feel fairly new to the concept of “Mobile Learning” but I would assume that given the current technological landscape, especially in relation to education, that most mobile learning is “connected”. My question that I would pose in relation to mobile learning is whether being too connected is giving up too much control over the technology itself. What is being learned by the technology, and how is that learning shifting the information that we access and are exposed to?
This is a good point Wynn. The importance of educating teachers in how to various modes of mobile devices effectively in a classroom. I think this would be a great topic for the feast! What do you think?
I totally agree with you. I think it’s amazing that people from different countries could learn together in the same classroom, and sharing ideas. Something that could only be achieved by physically moving to another country to experience the culture, could now be achieved simply by taking an online course.
I agree.
What is stopping the majority of “public school teachers” from quitting the public system, paying Canvas/Study Forge for access to their content, and taking our students with us to Outschool or some version of becoming a “school” of “one teacher”/becoming our own school? With students from anywhere? Teaching the things we are passionate about with other like minded students?
The most important positive factor about mobile education is that it allows information to be accessible to people, almost anytime time in almost every place. Last Spring I was able to teach my Foods classes remotely by giving students more choice for labs, using the foods they had at home. I posted recipes and information on our Google Classroom and they were free to prepare the recipes when they had time. I had student uploading pictures of the bagels they made at 2am! I also gave them multiple links to blogs and information to inspire them to create recipes that they may have never tried before at home.
A concern with this access to information is that we all need to look critically at the information we find online and determine if the information is correct and relevant to the context we are using it for. Luckily, our curriculum in BC has been updated to shift the focus away from content to competencies. I am now teaching my students about how to look critically at websites, social media and other media – what makes a recipe posted on a website good? How do you know it will turn out? Lots of this requires some previous knowledge or experience and a critical lens.
The fact that almost everyone over the age of 13 (or even younger) has a smart phone in their pocket means that we need to make the best use of these and not just for social media purposes!
This is a very good post Meg. I like how you used Food class as a good example. I have noticed that some courses work very effectively under a mode of online delivery verses others. For example classes in the Natural Sciences tend to not work as well particularly when considering the new online environment with emergency teaching. What we have not really explored is how different online environments (sync, async, and blended) can be used for different types of classes. As we as, what type of mobile devices can be used to get the most bang for one’s buck, for lack of a better term. Perhaps a discussion such as this would be good for the feast. What are your thoughts?
Hi Brittany! It’s hard to imagine a hands on class online, but I am lucky with Foods that most kids are able to do the “experiments” (cooking labs) at home somehow. That said I think all courses have the opportunity to thrive online. I personally see the academic courses to be a blended model, with some synchronous lessons and discussion, while applied skills courses like mine do fairly well asynchronously. I think a tablet or small Chromebook is best bang for one’s buck. The keyboard and larger screen are nice for students to sit down and focus, giving a break from their phones that they often use for personal reasons (that can be very distracting!).
I agree – this is a great feast discussion!
Meg has made such a great point. “A concern with this access to information is that we all need to look critically at the information we find online and determine if the information is correct and relevant to the context we are using it for.”
As our learners have access to an unlimited amount of information, I think it’s crucial to not only give them tools to critically evaluate the resources but also how to curate and share information with their peers. I find the OER community has great resources for curation (example: The Learning Portal – https://tlp-lpa.ca/oer-toolkit/finding-curating).
I think that a positive and negative to mobile education is accessibility.
The positive is that the technology can be assessed anytime and anywhere if the student has a device. They can research and look up information on the spot as soon as something catches their interest and they don’t have to wait until they get home or get into a classroom to look into it. It has definitely helped with my classroom organization in the sense that I can use Microsoft Teams and have my students access their notes, assignments, handouts, etc. all in one place and not need to dig around in their binders or folders (the number of “exploding binders” has definitely decreased in my class since there are fewer paper handouts). Functions offered on mobile technology such as speech to text has also helped my struggling writers as they don’t need to worry as much about their typing speed or neatness of writing. As David mentioned however, with these advantages comes some sacrifices as students are not practicing how to physically write on paper as much.
The negative to mobile education is also how accessible it is. To some, it has made them “wonder” less. Instead of exploring ideas, they just think “I’ll just find the answer on Google” or worse yet, find it on Wikipedia, and once they found the answer, they stop diving deeper. One example would be for Math questions. Instead of trying to problem solve and figure out the problem themselves, they’ll just type the question verbatim on Google to find the answer. The other negative, whether it can be called accessibility or equity is that not everyone has the same access to technology. Those with more capable devices may be able to perform better than their peers even though the peer with the lesser device may have given significantly more effort, it may still pale in comparison.
Obviously, the educator plays a large role in influencing how mobile technology can be used and to try and find equity for everyone where the capabilities of devices does not affect how the student is assessed.
Juliano Ng makes an excellent point in the negative aspect of accessibility. In my field of early childhood education (ECE) we advocate for the creative process (and I know we’re not the only field to do so). In this process, learners identify their goal, identity their tools, plan, enact the plan, evaluate, and begin again until their goal is achieved. With the availability of instant answers and video how-tos, learners may be likely to use the creative process less. This reduces practice in important skills such as critical thinking, self-regulation, problem solving, among others.
I think that having the ability to take learning with you anywhere and have access to it at any time is invaluable. However, through two of my recent teaching experiences, I notice that there still seems to be a definite rural / urban digital divide. I would have hoped that Canada would be more of a leader in ensuring more equality in high speed internet access throughout the country. And I’m not talking about extreme cases like going from Edmonton to Inuvik. My case is moving from Fort McMurray to southwestern Alberta in the Crowsnest Pass and seeing a definite divide between those two locations.
There were definitely more families in the urban center that had high speed internet as well as having multiple mobile digital devices. These families were also more regular users of digital apps to communicate with the school and individual teachers. Now living in a rural area, it has become apparent that people do have devices, but the number and variety of devices definitely seems to be less. There are still a number of families in our division that don’t even have wifi. It was even strongly considered to have busses act as mobile wifi hubs to provide families wifi during the COVID school closures. We were aware that yes, there was definitely a disparity between families having access to technology and their level of comfort with online learning, but it has now truly hit home with the COVID school closures.
I don’t think we can simply put this off as a high income (urban) vs. low income (rural) disparity. I think this is truly a rural vs. urban access problem. A problem that I didn’t think was still so pronounced in Canada. If internet access is truly a human right, in my opinion, Canada isn’t doing enough to ensure this is happening.
Or, is this more of a willingness to adopt a digital lifestyle problem, rather than an access problem? Or a bit of both?
I’d like to echo what my peers have said about the positive elements of mobile education: convenience, accessibility, and connectivity. Under challenging circumstances such as the ones we are currently facing, mobile education has been a blessing for me. Though I feel as if we are hanging by a thread, video conferencing is helping rebuild classroom community in my Grade 2/3 class. With no other option but to use technology to support learning, I am finding so many new online resources to support student learning. I am learning so much more than I would have if I was still engaging in classroom teaching. Though I was apprehensive at the start, taking the leap and experimenting with new platforms to support learning makes me feel hopeful.
I also believe that mobile education has the potential to hinder the development of important social skills that children acquire through physical interaction with one another. I also feel as though I am doing a disservice to students who are not participating in online learning for different reasons. I wonder how I can support my at-risk students, as access to technology is not necessarily feasible. The children I am teaching are quite young (Grade 2/3) and require varying levels of parent support in order to complete learning activities. In speaking with some of the parents, I’ve found that many of them are working from home and thus, struggle to find time to work with their children.
Apart from the already great mentions of accessibility and connection that mobile learning brings to the education table I think mobile technologies also offer a huge advantage in terms of familiarity for our students. Students of today have to a large extent (of course not all can be included in this category) had access to mobile phones and other mobile technologies to play digital games, watch videos or even construct a song on an app like garage band. The academic (or educational) world with its authoritarian style textbooks are more foreign with its formal structure and language. How to extract the important information from such a densely packed source of knowledge is far more intimidating than watching a video made by someone that looks like you, sounds like you and gives you exactly the information you had asked for. The academic world with its many restrictive rules and unfamiliar ways of doing things is not the natural habitat of today’s learners. However, these two worlds do not have to exist mutually exclusive from one another as mobile learning has come to show.
As for this week’s discussion,
Relating to my previous post, accessibility is the main benefit of mobile learning for me. Being able to access learning content anywhere and anytime enables students to learn on a flexible basis, in a location that suits them, (bus, train, cafe), and at a time that suits them too. This is particularly important for working people who are also studying at the same time. These professionals also have other commitments such as family obligations. Furthermore, many people nowadays have to travel to meet clients and customers. So whatever time they can spare will be dedicated to learning. Mobile learning makes that possible for them.
Nonetheless mobile learning does come with some drawbacks. The biggest one is the reliance on wireless connection. More and more people nowadays have at least one portable device but if they want to reap the benefits of mobile learning, they need a stable internet connection. Poor connectivity in rural areas or in developing countries can seriously hinder the learning experience of students. Many schools in Africa can’t offer wireless internet connection to their students and these students at home are less likely to have access to internet. A data mobile plan can be quite expensive in some parts of the world.
Hi Pascaline,
I have had many of the same thoughts over the last few weeks using online learning. It became very clear that for primary students it wasn’t so much about motivation or wanting to learn but more so about devices, access, time and ability for parents to assist. One thing that has been especially difficult is families who have English as a second language and are unable to access the learning tools provided. The connections needed and time to develop these families relationships with technology was very much so underestimated in my mind and I didn’t realise how hard this could be.
As we move towards assessing this time students have had with online learning, a staff member spoke about it being more of an assessment of privilege than it is an assessment of learning. As difficult as these words are to hear it really hit home for me in my experience ( in this short time) of being an online Grade Two teacher. This is definitely a flaw in mobile learning, as you have spoken about wifi connection being a huge one as well.
Lindsay, you bring up a great point about families whose L1 is not English. I read this thread (https://twitter.com/Maire_from_NJ/status/1260163240925040642) on Twitter this week and thought immediately of students who are ELLs and how difficult it must be for them. There is just a way a teacher knows their students and how to explain things that can’t be done online, even with Zoom or other types of modeling. Something about being face-to-face, proximity, and feeling supported is hard to replicate online.
Exemplary mobile learning
In my mind, mobile learning consists of two main parts: mobility and connectivity. Mobility can be described as the learners’ ability to be engaged in educational activities regardless of their physical location. Learning outside the classroom or on the go becomes possible. Mobile learning cannot take place without a portable device usually in the form of a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop. This device also requires connectivity. With a stable and reliable connection to the internet, communication and collaboration can occur.Additionally, students have access to the vast educational resources of the internet. Therefore, mobile learning is affecting teaching, learning and the connections between formal and informal learning, work and leisure.
But what about exemplary mobile learning? “The most common mistake of students in this course is assuming that because some aspect of education can occur on a mobile device it is automatically exemplary of mobile education.” Our tutor eloquently questions the concept and notion of exemplary mobile learning. Though I’m no expert, my take on this matter is that for learning to be meaningful and memorable, whether through mobile devices or within the traditional setting of the classroom, students have to fully be engaged and participate in their learning.
Exemplary mobile learning is active, constructive, and long-lasting. It should foster understanding and push learners to relate new information to prior knowledge. It incites students to evaluate, analyze, remember and make comparisons. This can be achieved by rendering your teachings relevant to your students and also by allowing them to draw from their own experiences to understand specific concepts.
First off, I want the record to show that I have to say that I have found immense value in using mobile technology to teach, interact with, and support my students during this pandemic and the virtual model many of us are now working with. At a time when, were it not for mobile technology, interaction with my students would undeniably be greatly impaired by the lack of in-class instruction, I find that I have been able to maintain connection with most willing participants. In some cases, I feel as though I have even been able to connect and bond more with certain students that I have only had limited interactions with in the past. Though this forced-upon, emergency model of 100% remote learning is lacking in many ways, mobile educational technology has been a saving grace.
With that said, I have concerns that mobile education has some undesirable factors at play when compared to other educational technology. For brevity sake, I’ll highlight just one: that the accessibility it brings is a two-edged sword. It is amazing that my students can so effortlessly send me private messages at any time of day, and I highly encourage it from them. At the same time, it brings about this idea of being able to keep your work at work, and saving your home as a sort of sacred space. I know teachers who will not bring marking home – what gets done at work, gets done at work, and the rest can wait. I know there are workarounds to protect our at-home time (I generally don’t check my work e-mail most evenings and my phone isn’t set up for notifications of that nature), and no doubt many teachers will be able to successfully set healthy boundaries regarding when they are willing to respond to students, but I fear that the draw to support my students in their times of need (I’m thinking of night-before-test desperation pleas) will mean a greater blurring of the line between work and non-work periods and facilitate some teachers placing undue pressures on themselves to be unrealistically available.
With mobile phones being rapidly woven into the fabric of our daily lives, there occurs growing interest in employing this mobile technology in educational contexts. I agree with David that the increased ownership of smartphones can help education systems manage digital divides, total cost of ownership (TCO) and other infrastructure impediments to learning.
However, from another perspective, researchers also find that the digital divide is even widened given the global, social and democratic disparities (Rossing et al., 2012). Here are two sets of powerful statistics: there is an emerging “app gap” wherein lower-income children (ages 0-8) have more than 50% less experience using mobile devices than higher-income children in the same age group” ; and only 2% of lower-income children have access to a mobile tablet in the household, compared to 17% of the higher-income group (as cited in Rossing et al., 2012).
In addition, the intuitive use and convenient portability of mobile phones are both advantages and disadvantages. The intuitive use can make the learner easily distracted, thus leading to fragmented learning, while the tiny screen of mobile phones (nature of mobile devices) makes it harder to organize learning materials compared to learning in traditional or laptop environments.
References
Rossing, J. P., Miller, W. M., Cecil, A. K., & Stamper, S. E. (2012). iLearning: The future of higher education? student perceptions on learning with mobile tablets. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 12(2), 1-26.
One thing I think of when I hear mobile education is that yes, it is good to be able to connect with students all over the world, however what do we do for those students who do not have access to great WIFI or the affordability to purchase technology. How do we connect with them, keep them connected, and motivated to learn through online learning?
We have to remember that not everywhere is the same, and WIFI signals come and go depending on where you are around the world. For remote communities in Canada it is still harder for them to stay connected via their technology devices. Just a thought I had.
Hi Tyler, I agree with you. We are aware of the digital divide that exists in Canada and elsewhere in the world. I recall my experience living on the Reserve. The cell tower was near the central area and near the school and so we had Internet access and cell service. At their homes many of the students did not have cell service. When they are in town they would go and sit in the Tim Hortons and download movies to their cell phones that they would watch at home. How do you use and teach technology in such a situation?
Hi Tyler, accessibility and affordability of technology are definitely two things that I’ve been concerned about and these two factors have become more evident with the pandemic and our shift to online learning. Teaching in Burnaby, I assumed that almost everyone would have WiFi and some sort of device that can access the internet at home but that is not the case. Schools have done their best to supply students with access if they didn’t have it at home but they may still be at a disadvantage compared to their peers. Their device may not be as fast or have as many capabilities as the device their peers have. With this in mind, I think that mobile technology can definitely help enhance the learning experiences of students but it may not be for everyone as it is difficult to make it “fair” for everyone.
Hi Juliano, I was surprised to with the lack of technology at home for some students in my district. It was pretty tough getting that up and running. We were able to get tech to those who needed it so they could be connected during the pandemic.
Mobile devices, and phones in particular, provide us with the ultimate learning toolkit – not only can we access a seemingly infinite amount of information with them, we can create and share in limitless social and participatory opportunities. Mobile learning, by virtue of our mobile devices, is unique from other learning technologies because the devices themselves have so many capabilities that have replaced the need for other tech devices and analog objects. The saying “The best camera is the one you have with you” can be applied here: The best mobile learning device is the one you have with you. What technology will they contain/replace next and what learning opportunities with they afford us in the future? Like David has mentioned, XR/AR/VR will be an exciting area of mobile learning development. There are limitations with using mobile devices such as functionality and size of screens, but these issues can be easily solved by wearables, other external accessories, or adaptive technologies.
My main concerns lie in equity and privacy. I just finished Upload on Netflix, and the show has touched on the issue of equity in reference to the 2 gigs – no spoilers, I promise, but people with only 2 gigs of data per month are literally frozen in time until their next data refill, and that 2 gigs goes FAST. Those of us in reality with limited data are also frozen and held back because we cannot participate fully in society. The pandemic has demonstrated to me that most of my current students (high school seniors) don’t have reliable access to desktops or laptops or Wi-Fi at home. In the fall, I taught college students in their first semesters, and only a handful didn’t have laptops. It was clear to me that those students struggled and were held back by not having laptops. Now, nearly all my students are accessing my research writing course with their mobile devices on Canvas and some are doing 100% of the work on their phones. Imagine having to research using the library database, read PDFs, keep all of that information organized, and type up your essay with your phone, and maintain proper formatting. I feel guilty I couldn’t make curriculum adjustments to modify our essay assignment, as I’m stuck teaching to the course outline, into a multimedia report where students could use video/audio/other visual media to achieve the same objectives. Our traditional models of learning don’t always fit on a mobile device, and students without access to laptops and desktops are at a clear disadvantage.
With all of the data collected from our mobile devices, content can be personalized for us, for good or for bad, for educational purposes as well as marketing/advertising purposes. A check-in of my Off-Facebook activity showed 1600 external sites/apps that Facebook has linked me to, and that frightens me. Before privacy was a concern, we became too comfortable with the exchange of our personal data for a service, and it has snowballed out of our control, and companies are not keeping their end of their promises to help us maintain our privacy and limit the amount of personal data that is collected (TikTok, most recently). Will ed tech/mobile learning companies really be any different?
Hi Mel, your equity concern resonates with me as well. I often ask myself whether Internet access should just be a fundamental human right, as so much of mobile learning depends on it.
In ETEC 512, we explored issues of access for a group project. One of the challenging, counter arguments we encountered was that even with positive intentions, we can make assumptions that lead us down a slippery slope. One example is the infamous Facebook Free Basics platform, intended to provide free Internet connection to first-time users in India. It was met with backlash and rejected, on the grounds of digital colonialism. Our group ended up presenting one of our topics on equity considerations, specifically around MOOCs. If you’re interested, you can check out: https://etec512diversityinlearning.wordpress.com/equity-considerations-moocs
I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are on this.
(On a lighter note, I also finished Upload and it was highly relevant!)
Aiann, thank you for sharing your project. I have checked it out (beautiful UX, as always, and great content) and I will bookmark it for future reference. You’ve given me a lot to think about, as I really haven’t dug into the issue of equity but am really just starting to – I had to google some terms to read more. I absolutely love the TED talk and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi. I hadn’t watched the video in quite a few years, so I rewatched it for a fresh take. Too often, the teacher has control of the narrative as the sage on the stage, and teachers come to the classroom with their personal beliefs, histories, and biases they are not yet aware they have or how those biases affect their students. I agree that the social-construvist classroom where students control the narrative is certainly better than a classroom where the teacher maintains full control.
Regarding Facebook Free Basics, I learned a bit about this In ETEC522 when I analyzed the non-profit venture Girl Effect, whose mission is to provide girls with information about relevant topics they may not have access to because of social norms surrounding gender: https://mddrake.wixsite.com/girleffect
Girl Effect also harnesses Free Basics as a learning and social discussion platform in some geographic regions, such as India. In my analysis I was conflicted about the price of free access and who bears it and other issues with the programming and content which could be interpreted as a type of digital colonalism – a question I researched but never got an answer to was who was authoring the content – someone in the country or someone sitting at a desk thousands of miles away?
On MOOCs and language diversity – it would be amazing if there were automatic translations or clickable translations (like in Facebook and Instagram) for all content and discussions in MOOCs! What other ways can language diversity be improved?
I’d say the most important factor about the potential of mobile education is balance. Of all the many learning activities, pedagogies, and technologies available in our world, mobile education is the only one that follows you around anywhere and everywhere.
The unique affordance of constant connectivity (which also has many benefits) is what makes balance particularly critical for mobile educational technologies. The need for balance is particularly compounded when we consider that creative and problem solving skills are becoming more and more in demand in the workforce. How can we be creative when we’re constantly distracted? How can we really engage in deep learning when our educational devices are incessantly bleeping and blooping at us?
Mobile education affords us so many amazing opportunities that we’ve never had before, but without balance, those opportunities risk being cancelled out by distraction, overwhelm, overwork, and burnout.
How do we build mobile educational experiences that support work/life balance and the crucial downtime needed for learning and creative thinking?
Hi Anne,
I agree with you that mobile learning has the downfall of distractions. They have the benefit of immediate connectivity, but at the same time the amount of apps that we use, demand our attention constantly. As adults, it is a challenge to find that balance, for our students is even harder. In Ontario, cellphones were ban in schools, specifically for this reason, the amount of distractions it creates for student learning. Although the ban might not address the issue, the issue of distraction is still there. As educators, we need to understand this and along with mobile learning, we need to educate students in the responsible use of mobile phones, how to manage online distractions, and the importance of finding a balance. I remember in one of the courses here in the MET program, that there was an opportunity for a day where we were encouraged to take “off”, I don’t exactly remember the course or the term used for this, but I remember it was a nice way to help taking the pressure off for one day a week, and not feel that I needed to be connected all the time, to see what is happening in the course. If anyone knows what I am talking about, I’ll appreciate if you can add to this, I really would like to remember this approach.
In conclusion, I believe that mobile learning has many positive aspects, and as educators it is our responsibility to include that support and education about balance.
“Cellphone Ban in Ontario Classrooms Starts Today | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 3 Nov. 2019, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cellphone-ban-ontario-classrooms-1.5346207.
Anne, yes you bring up such a good point about balance. If we start relying solely on our devices all the time, what will we or our students do when they don’t have them. For example, my class has a set of iPads and one day I leant them out. A student wanted to draw a picture at the end of his writing and he said “how will I draw a picture then?” This raised a red flag for me in the sense that these kids (any myself) rely on these digital tools too much. I now will have lessons where they can use technology and others where they can’t.
Also David brought up a good point in the comments below about digital learning creating less paper, but also we are moving away from teaching out students the basics of printing, spelling, grammar, etc… because our computers just automatically underline wrong text red or change it. I know I have become reliant on the spelling that pops up on my phone for certain words and it is decreasing my ability to have to memorize spelling. Sometimes I feel that mobile technology is too convenient.
Adriana, I too believe that it is our job as educators to create that balance for students. There are times and places to use our devices and other times to put them away and critically think for ourselves.
From my experience, technology or mobile education was used as an additional tool for students and even teachers. There might have been thoughts on “one of these days” shifting from traditional to mobile education. With the sudden pandemic around the world, institutions shifted to mobile education in a snap. It is the MAIN tool for education.
Had I been asked this question before the pandemic, my first thought would have been “practical”. I believe that mobile education facilitates ‘things’. It has its advantages and disadvantages.
Students tend to get along with technology. Switching to a mobile platform should not be a problem. They can access to class material while they are on the go, even make an instructor or comment while on their doctor’s appointment. The assigned application or platform can facilitate communication among students and instructor.
However, the disadvantage or should I say the concern is the detachment of students to traditional aspects of education that I believe should still be valued. Can social interaction via a platform replace the face-to-face interaction that we get in class?
The use of mobile devices has made writing easier. The spell and grammar tool embedded in the word processor automatically corrects our typos. Is that beneficial for students who are learning to ‘write’? As a Mandarin Chinese instructor, I believe it is essential for students to learn how to handwrite Chinese characters. Would this create a trend among us to know how to read but not to write?
Books. Mobile device has allowed us to have all the material we need in one device. We no longer need to carry tons of books that might cause us back pain. Those who have born in this technology era, will know the concept of a book and appreciate it?
With the current situation, mobile learning is being used by youngsters to adult learners. Should children be introduced to mobile devices at an early age? Will they become too dependent on electronic devices and the internet?
HI Silvia, this is a great critical thinking on the ideas of mobility devices. I agree that the art of reading, writing have disappeared completely with the emergence of not only mobile, but more so tablets. Reading and writing on mobile phones was still in its infancy at the start, but tablets bought, what one never imagined, a faster assimilation of knowledge through more books via apps, drawing and painting apps, and also allowed being creative in a total different way than mobile phones. One can say, the mobile era switched to a creative mobility instance via tablets since 2007. The point you mentioned are true, that, with help from technology, a little of our heritage is lost. At the same time, we are learning faster, acquiring knowledge through mediums more diverse about our own history and the world, and all in real time, than we ever did as kids. All at our fingertips.
The issue I see with mobile learning is distraction – the multitasking in all of us, will be our downfall, since we are bombarded with media and content, social media; so how are we suppose to manage our selves and concentrate like we used to do – like read a book. 🙂 but of course there are apps for breathing, relaxing, and everything else which sometimes feel comical and strange, that we need to depend on apps to make our selves feel normal, and less busy when all we really need is to turn off the device and be physically social sometimes. (post Covid of course)
Hello Luke,
I am one of those who gets distracted. Guilty! For example, if I am working on my computer, I might use my cellphone to search for something. In the end, I would not go back to work but keep on playing with my cellphone. Maybe what we (people like me) is to concentrate and not get distracted.
Have you tried turning your device(s) off? I cannot imagine myself these days without an electronic device. I sometimes wonder how our parents survived. When the computer and iPad became more accessible, we bought these for my parents. We thought that they needed to “upgrade” themselves. These days they can pretty much manage the computer and iPad without our help. I believe that this is also a type of learning, but at the same time, it seems that they are hooked to these devices now. In this COVID period, I am so glad that they have an iPad. The iPad is their entertainment device. Has this COVID pushed us to become even more dependent on these mobile devices? You have no idea how desperate they get when the internet is down or if the forgot to charge their electronic devices.
Hi Sylvia
I share your concern regarding the detachment of students from some of the more beneficial aspects of traditional education and in particular your mention of whether interactions on a platform can replace f2f interactions like we would have in a class. I would say it can be achieved BUT it requires a huge amount of effort and the right kind of user experience design to get to that point. Case in point, I teach in a course that has 900 students at the moment, we have discussion forums and a daily live chatroom session on the LMS available for communication apart from the normal email availability of lecturers. Heck, we even have a welcome video with the lecturer every week that students could comment on and on top of that there is a weekly live Video chat session too. Do you want to venture a guess as to how many students have made use of these opportunities to not only communicate with their lecturer but also their peers? Not even 10%. When you pause though for a second and assess these communication channels, more light is shed as to what could be the obvious problem contributing to the low turn out. The discussion forums and live chatrooms on the LMS are super user-unfriendly and the chatroom on it’s own looks like it could date from the 80’s (you can only type text, no images, no emoticons and you have to keep refreshing the screen or else you won’t know when you’ve been kicked out of the chatroom). The discussion forum is slightly better but still awkward to use and without regular lecturer check-ins, I think students get frustrated and tend to avoid posting questions there (it’s not the instantaneous question you would get to ask in class, check your understanding and move on scenario here). This could all be rectified though with better user designed options for communication but I think that is probably less than 20% of the real problem. What needs to happen is for our students and our educators (I suspect teachers are more aware of this than university lecturers are) to come to realize the importance of the social learning factor. Our students simply aren’t aware of how powerful those moments in a traditional class are when they get to chat about a problem that needs solving or take a second to ask for help when they aren’t sure in class. They are very much in the mindset that they are in it on their own (who could blame them when an educator would say “remember only you will write the test, no help from your friends then….”). The traditional classroom makes it easy- we are all there so the interaction takes place whether or not everyone thinks its important but for it to gain traction in mobile learning my thoughts are that we will need to address students and educators’ mindsets about this important aspect of learning for them to start engaging socially in a mobile learning environment OR the user experience has to be so outstanding that everyone just automatically gravitates towards using a specific app. as an example. Maybe it’s not an enigma and others here have figured out how to get that social learning interaction going in which case I’d love to hear from you.
Hello Carla,
Do you teach a course of 900 students?! WOW! Do you divide the students into sections? Sounds that the platform that you are using is giving you more work rather than making things smoother.
In my case, all my classes are synchronous. I personally think that this works better with small groups, I would say less than 10 students. There is more interaction among students and, between the instructor and student. In my courses that have more than 10 students, there is not much interaction. Everyone mutes their microphone and I am the only one who is speaking. If the student has a question they would unmute themselves. Sometimes I fell I am talking by myself. However, there is not much interaction as I would see it in a traditional class. There is not much social interaction between us. Pair work is challenging for me. In a traditional class, I usually walk around the class once in a while peeking what the groups are doing. Even once in a while sitting down with them and chat a little bit, even get to know them better. We do have Whatsapp Groups but there is not much interaction either.
[Originally posted by Che Katz – August 16,2018]
In the context of the Majority World, mobile learning is an exciting prospect, because mobile devices, by comparison to other devices (ie laptops) are more affordable, less complex to maintain, easier to use, less dependent on infrastructure (ie electricity), and are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Furthermore, the challenges of training teachers and supplying school infrastructure to rapidly increasing populations is an insurmountable task for resource constrained governments. Mobile phones provide the opportunity to deliver learning experiences that are not dependent on poorly resourced institutions (ie schools, training institutes, and universities); potentially putting learning opportunities directly in the hands of the learner. However, although penetration rates of mobile devices in emerging economies is rapidly accelerating, significant constraints to mobile learning remain. These include: (i) access and equity issues with rural/remote communities, and women by comparison to men, being less likely to own a mobile device, (ii) connectivity remains variable with remote communities being most poorly served, (iii) the majority of devices in emerging economies continue to be basic phones (call/SMS and limited internet connectivity), and (iv) limited usage behaviour of functionalities even for those who have to a smart phone. In this respect, simple learning content in the form of SMS on mobile phones is the most realistic for the moment (ie the project I worked on in Timor Leste). Nevertheless, I predict that over the next 5 years we will see more uptake of smart phones if costs can come down, which will bring more complex mobile learning experiences for those in developing countries, with access to smart phones, closer. Language barriers will also be a major consideration unless translation technology can be further improved, and capacity for local content creation will be important. However, if we look at the Frontiers Poll, the pessimist in me worries that the digital divide will only become ever greater; except for the big players like China and India.
[Originally posted by Johnny Wu – August 16,2018]
Hey everyone, great discussion! In other threads, I have mentioned that I am currently using google classroom and mobile devices as the main form of course delivery for the first time. It has been an incredible shift and very liberating. From a teaching perspective, what I absolutely love is that I do not have to photocopy. I have not spend one moment of my day waiting to copy material, nor have I had to fight with a copier to ensure proper copying, or solve jamming issues. That alone is enough to keep me on the mobile learning train :-).
Another thing that I truly enjoy is the the opportunity for class collaboration and accessibility of course content. With respect to class collaboration, my students are connected to each other and myself via google classroom. If ever there is confusion they simply post a question and everyone has the potential to answer because every student has google classroom downloaded to their device. With notifications enabled, we will all be notified. So a simple, what time is class today, or where are we meeting is easily answered by myself or anyone else. Particularly special to me is how students consume and/or create their learning. For each of my lessons I have a shared google doc with edit access for everyone. This allows students to collaboratively add thoughts, notes, images, clips to the topics being discussed asynchronously or synchronously. Other students have the option to simply absorb and digest the information by following along with the lesson (could be a google slide, video, etc.).
Storage of course content has also been liberating and worth mentioning. All content is uploaded chronologically to the stream of google classroom. Students do not have to ask “what did I miss” or “what will we be doing next week” because everything from day one to current time is available. The storage of course content makes accessibility both in class and out of class simple and convenient.
Another aspect I appreciate and believe is special about mobile learning is the willingness of students to post their perspectives and reflections. Previously when I posed discussion questions to the class, many, if not most students would shy away from offering an response. Generally the same few students would always offer their opinions. Mobile based discussion prompts seem more natural for students and participation rates have noticeably increased and have even generated ongoing, back and forth discussion on debatable topics.
The concerns I have noticed have been mentioned in this thread. Socialization is a factor that I find needs to be addressed, discussed, and taught when working with mobile learning. To mitigate this, I have weekly talking circles where my class comes together to discuss both content related topics and issues and topics that are important in mobile learning such as distracted learning. This is possible for me because my class is not online — I meet my students every day in class (or some space that we want to learn) so discussions and talking circles are a key component to addressing and building socialization and interaction.
Other teachers are playing with google classroom, but to my knowledge, I am the first to tackle 100% mobile learning. It has been exciting and the feedback has been great so far. I am excited to continue in this fashion and see what other unique opportunities present themselves.
[Originally posted by Johnny Wu – August 16,2018]
Anywhere, anytime, on any device. This coupled with big data and AI excites me to no extent. The possibilities of effective and automated just in time learning is fascinating. I recently watched a webinar (https://www.watershedlrs.com/xapi-case-study-caterpillar-modern-ecosystem) where one of the learning folks from the company Caterpillar was discussing their learning ecosystem. They have no standard LMS, the two main systems they use are “Degreed”, which is something like a social learning network and a tool called “Inlking”.
All of their corporate education and resources are housed in Inlking. Inkling is an HTML 5 and responsive authoring tool and app. Using and API called xAPI (the next standard API for eLearning) and a LRS (learning record store), they’ve hooked their customer service management system into the ecosystem. If an employee is meeting with a customer to sell them a product, their learning ecosystem automatically sends the employee product updates, videos, eLearning, spec sheets, etc. This is a fantastic example of just in time learning. Depending on how deep the data is analyzed, we could send them learning in modalities we know they like (they like to watch videos versus reading articles). We could see products that they have more difficulty selling and send them more learning versus someone who has no issue selling that product. If we add AI into the mix, we can start to better predict what someone will need and then. I can’t wait to see how this develops.
Thank you for sharing this story, it is impressive, and I can see the potential when using it in a school system.
To extend your imagination a little bit if I could. Let’s imagine how the combination of high-quality mobile devices+5G+AI+big data+AR can be so powerful for students, or everyone literally, to access the information and knowledge in anywhere at any time. Whatever appears in a student’s vision or on his/her screen, there are multiple links ready to click, which can connect the student to infinite knowledge about a specific target. Students can learn any knowledge within its context. For example, when a student is visiting a zoo, a guide becomes unnecessary because whatever animals he/she is looking at, many links appeared on the mobile devices, waiting for him/her to click. With the help of AR, a student can even interact with an object through the device to experience a more vivid and in-depth interaction.
On the other hand, learning is not merely about collecting knowledge (know-what) but also about using the knowledge (know-how) as well as other higher-order thinking skills such as reflections, critical thinking and creative thinking. Some of these statements require time and space for people to focus, to go deeper into the mind, to be “alone”. This may be what mobile technologies cannot offer. I read a book BrainChains from Theo Compernolle ( https://www.amazon.ca/BrainChains-Discover-potential-hyperconnected-multitasking-ebook/dp/B00M039OUM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=brainchain&qid=1589761986&sr=8-1) who indicate that our brain desires the disconnection from the status of multitasking and always online to achieve deep thinking.
However, if used properly, mobile devices can be excellent tools to drop off insightful ideas and life moments as the raw materials for initiating in-depth thinking.
[Originally posted by Johnny Wu – August 16,2018]
Hello everyone,
Thank you for sharing your perspectives on the advantages/disadvantages of mobile learning. To share abit of my experience with mobile learning, I have used a similar application to google classroom in my grade 6 class this year by using an application called SeeSaw. It is almost like an instagram for classrooms where students can post pictures, documents and videos to share their learning with their peers and families. People can like and comment on their posts. Naturally, students have become very engaged with this platform because it has a social media feel to their work. All of the activities that we do in the classroom has an online connection now, and it has been a successful so far.
I have found several advantages to using mobile learning as the base of my classroom. To name just a few, It has taught my students to organize their work in a digital space in which it saves time, paper waste and energy. Students have direct access to their work with more mobility and we have been able to explore learning outside the classroom environment. As an educator, I have been able to save time by doing everything through a digital space and no longer do I deal with the “I lost my handout” excuse.
The main disadvantage I am concerned with however, is this generation’s growing disconnect with printed text and the ability to write by hand. As we become more and more connected to our devices and reliant on them as an extension of ourselves, we shift further away from the foundation in which we built our literacy and writing ability in a time before these devices existed. I am curious about whether or not a child can the same foundation of skills through mobile learning as the technology gets further woven into the curriculum.
I find this post relatable for a variety of reasons, but especially because I felt like, at the last school I worked at, there was this constant back and forth between colleagues, parents, and even within my own mind about the advantages and disadvantages of having technology get more involved in our education.
At the last school I worked at, we did not integrate technology into our lower primary classrooms at all before the pandemic hit and we started online learning. Everything changed over so quickly that we used technology as a ‘band-aid’ to help us with the transition. Some of these changes were made more permanent, like the use of an online platform where students could always access their work and communicate with teachers. This left some teachers and parents a bit upset as they felt as though this is now being used solely for the sake of using technologies.
Technology within an educational context can offer such a vast variety of learning experiences. It would be a shame to use it simply as a replacement, when it has so many more uses and will only continue to have more as time goes on.
Some of the fears about technology having a bigger presence in our classrooms is perhaps how some skills might be less developed or take longer to develop. I wonder to what extent it’s technology’s failure to educate, or to what extent it’s our lack of knowledge in how to properly fully use technology to learn and develop.
[Originally posted by Michael Cebuliak – August 16,2018]
One of my biggest worries about mobile learning is that it has the potential to undermine cultural identity and subvert its evolution.
While working within Cariboo Chilcotin school district, in the interior of British Columbia, I have had the opportunity to work with many Indigenous students through a rural educational program that is centered around eLearning. One of the underlying ideas behind the program was that it would allow First Nation high school students, in grades 8 to 10, the ability to live in their community while attending school. Previously these students were living in dorms, and at private residences, in Williams Lake while they were attending school and unfortunately, this arrangement proved unsuccessful because there was no real sense of belonging for these students within the town’s high schools. These students were immersed all too quickly in a community, and culture, that was very different than that which they were familiar. Needless to say, the high school failure rate for these students was exceptionally high. The new rural educational program in the district, centered around elearning, was an attempt to create higher graduation rates amongst our rural First Nation students.
For several years, while attempting to teach our rural Indigenous students English I have developed an appreciation for the relationship of culture to technology. The assumption that technology is culturally neutral is entirely absurd. A culture is sustained and shaped by the technology that it employs. For example, I have heard it said that language is technology and while books can be considered both technology and text they are very much absent from the traditional way in which First Nation’s people learn. Many of my students, learned about their world through oral communication and experiential ways of learning that were place based and they can not represent this knowledge through printed text nearly as well as they can orally or experientially. There are many myths and legends tied to geographical features around the places where these people live and these stories contained much of the knowledge that was necessary for these people to survive for thousands of years. In short, the land is a place that these people are inextricably tied to. Mobile learning has failed these students once before when they were transplanted to a world that was not their own and mobile learning through electronic devices again merely serves to supplant these people from their land, culture and traditions. Evolution lies in a respect and understanding of the past and if no persons are prepared to respect and understand First Nation’s culture and history, how can it evolve?
In reading this post, it reminded me of any article I read about Digital Storytelling from an indigenous perspective. Though digital storytelling is great to continue the legacy or spread the culture of indigenous people which was lost due to society and politicians, it is not authentic to their cultures. Stories are usually told orally and each time the story is told, there are slight differences. So on the one hand, the positive influence of mobile education is the ability to record these stories and share them with ease, the con is that we may be disrespecting the culture and altering the true authenticity of the culture. Thus, the comment “…in a community, and culture, that was very different than that which they were familiar,” is similar to digital storytelling in that it seemingly demonstrates performance of a cultural oral storytelling by an elder. However, not in its authentically practiced way making it different than what Indigenous people are familiar with.
[Originally posted by Ken Lees – August 16,2018]
I think the most important positive factor about the potential of mobile education is its potential to influence the promotion of equality of opportunity and personal expression in a global community. Given the number mores of Internet and Digital Technology of Canadians there is ample opportunity to increase multi-literacies and develop a variety of skills and abilities that could change the way we live.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2017032-eng.pdf
Our first world status puts Canadian educators in a massive lead of the instructional and training of students. Three facts from Statistics Canada illustrate the potential reach of education technology. Canadians use the technology to communicate, to make more informed decisions, and to be creative. “Nearly all Canadians under the age of 45 use the Internet every day.” The percentages of ownership of smart phones, laptops or netbook, tablet or e-reader, and desktop computer add up to 251%; which suggests that all public-school students have some form of access, and presumably some form of experience with digital media devices. Educators must act to instill virtues and ethics in digital media use. As students grow in this environment of participatory media it is hoped that the virtues and ethics of the educated citizen extend to the hyper-mediated digital citizen.
Respect,
Ken Lees
While the percentages of ownership of smartphones and computers may be high, what about the quality of these devices? Ticking yes on owning a computer that’s pushing ten years old really isn’t the same as a new top-of-the-line setup. While simply owning one does open a lot of learning opportunities, it certainly limits the kind of tasks one can do and the level of frustration the user will experience. This frustration in getting something working, or freeing up space on the hard drive, or dealing with compatibility issues on old hardware/OSs can be enough to turn many away from the experience. I see this in my own grade 6 & 7 students with the current e-learning situation. Some students thrive with this type of challenge while others are left behind. Without the in-person relationship to help with motivation it has been harder to reach those students.
I believe it is a worthwhile exercise to be teaching digital literacy and ethics in digital media use so in the end, I’m thinking that this will be an overall good learning experience for my students. It is clear to me that simple ownership of a device while ignoring its quality and capabilities does not mean there is equal access.
Great observation. If I may add, I think there is also an issue with the quality and depth of usage. In my home my wife and I own two phones. We are both educators (in a sense) and we use our phones a great deal to teach, learn and communicate but our house has lower mobile phone count than that of my aging parents. My dad has two smart phones. As an electrical contractor is business phone is primarily used to connect with the permitting office, inspectors and clients – but only ever by voice. He rarely uses any functions beyond calling and voice messaging. He amazingly still dials every phone number and I am convinced he is unaware there is a contact list. His personal phone is most often used as a paper weight on the dash of his truck and as a business right-off. My mother’s phone is rarely charged and when it is, its primary function is as a photo album. The PEW survey of 2019 suggests that “the vast majority of Americans – 96% – now own a cellphone of some kind,” and this is an impressive figure but I strongly agree with you that ownership does not reliably correlate with usage.