15. Mobile Learning Cochranev3

1 Chapter 15 Design Considerations for Mobile Learning Thomas Cochrane Auckland University of Technology Centre for Learning and Teaching Dr. Thomas Cochrane is an academic advisor and senior lecturer in educational technology at Auckland University of Technology's Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLAT). In 2011 he was awarded as an Ascilite Fellow. His research interests include mobile learning, social media, and communities of practice. Thomas has implemented over 50 mobile learning projects, enabling student-generated content and student-generated learning contexts, bridging formal and informal learning environments. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, receiving best paper awards at Ascilite 2009, ALT-C 2011, ALT-C 2012, and has keynoted at several international educational technology conferences, and was an invited speaker at EdMedia2014 (Tampere, Finland). Vickel Narayan Auckland University of Technology Centre for Learning and Teaching Vickel Narayan is a learning and teaching consultant at the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLAT) at the Auckland University of Technology. Previously, Vickel was an academic advisor (eLearning) at Unitec Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2011. He has a keen interest in Web 2.0 technologies and their potential to engage students and teachers in the teaching and learning process. Vickel is particularly interested in exploring mobile Web 2.0 tools for creating, nurturing, and maintaining virtual communities, social connectedness, fostering social constructivism, student generated content and context. 2 Editors’ Foreword Preconditions (when to use the theory) Content • Subject areas in which digital communication and collaboration skills are necessary for producing artifacts for eportfolios. • Learners create, curate, and share content. Learners • All students. Learning environments • Bridging formal and informal learning contexts. Instructional development constraints • Learners must have access to mobile devices and networks. • Teachers must develop an ecology of resources to support learning. Values (opinions about what is important) about ends (learning goals) • Developing communication and collaboration skills. • Developing multimedia production skills. about priorities (criteria for successful instruction) • Efficiency and appeal are highly valued, but effectiveness is also important. about means (instructional methods) • Mobile devices should be used to bridge classroom-based instruction and more situated authentic learning experiences. • Contextual sensors in mobile devices should be utilized to design learning 3 experiences that are responsive to location and environmental contexts. • Learners should generate their own contexts and content in the process of creating meaning. about power (to make decisions about the previous three) • Learners should have significant control over what, when, where, and how they learn. Universal Methods 1. Enable student-generated content. • Promote student use of built-in, mobile, multimedia production tools. • Promote student and teacher use of mobile social media for communication and collaboration. 2. Enable student-generated contexts. • Facilitate student-directed projects and negotiation of assessment activities. • Facilitate student creativity and reconceptualization of role from passive reproducer of knowledge to active participant in learning communities. • Promote use of built-in contextual sensors. • Promote use of eportfolio spaces to personalize and customize learning environments. 3. Enable authentic learning experiences. • Promote use of mobile social media for participation in professional global networks and communities. • Design an ecology of resources to support authentic learning, and design triggering events to enable student-generated content and contexts. 4 • Use social media to foster the development of teamwork skills in team-based projects. Situational Principles for enabling learner-generated content • Content creation: When a learning goal is for students to create a portfolio of their work, require them to use the content-generation and multimedia recording capabilities of their mobile devices to capture work in progress and capture moments of inspiration. • Content curation: When a learning goal is to capture an experience outside the classroom, such as a field trip or an interview, require students to use their mobile devices to upload these into a curated collection (e.g., a YouTube playlist or ScoopIt collection) for later critique and analysis. • Content sharing: When a learning goal is to facilitate student reflection and peer review on their work, require the use of mobile social media such as Twitter, Wordpress, and Google Plus comments to share these reflections. for enabling learner-generated contexts • When a learning goal is to foster communication and collaboration skills, require students to use social media on team-based projects. • When a learning goal is to foster communication and collaboration skills, require students to select and use collaborative mobile multimedia tools appropriate for their context. • When a learning goal is to share or situate an authentic experience located outside the classroom, leverage the geolocation, image recognition, and 5 augmented reality capabilities of mobile devices. • When a learning goal is to enable multimodal communication or for visual disability access, use the voice recognition capabilities of mobile devices. for enabling authentic learning experiences • When there is a need to establish communication and collaboration channels among learners, teachers, and the community in which the experience is located, provide an ecology of resources, such as a project hub, communication channels, hashtags for curating project content, and eportfolio platforms. • When introducing students to the appropriate choice of tools to use in a situation, provide triggering events, such as a series of short, quick production and sharing exercises using mobile social media. • When the expense (and safety) of real-world scenarios and environments is prohibitive, provide virtual reality experiences. Case Study • A Global Mobile Collaborative Project #moco360 6 I. Introduction In this section we introduce the key theoretical foundations of mobile learning that support learner-centered instruction. What is Mobile Learning? Sharples (2010) and Cook (2009) identify three distinct phases that have characterized the development of mobile learning research and practice: 1. A focus upon devices 2. A focus upon learning outside the classroom 3. A focus upon the mobility of the learner As the field of mobile learning research and practice has matured it has moved away from a techno-centric focus towards the mobility of the learner. Definition. Definitions of mobile learning tend to be very broad and inclusive. One of the most popular definitions is “the processes of coming to know through conversations across multiple contexts amongst people and personal interactive technologies” (Sharples, Milrad, Arnedillo- Sanchez, & Vavoula, 2009, p. 5). However, we believe that a definition of mobile learning should capture the unique affordances of mobile devices that enable new pedagogies. The following is our attempt at a definition of mobile learning that encapsulates the affordances of ubiquitous connectivity, collaboration, and serendipitous content sharing: It is the potential for mobile learning to bridge pedagogically designed learning contexts, facilitate learner generated contexts, and [learner generated] content (both personal and collaborative), while providing personalisation and ubiquitous social connectedness, that sets it apart from more traditional learning environments. 7 (Cochrane, 2010, p. 134) While much of the literature around mobile learning emphasizes the informal nature of mobile learning beyond instructionally designed learning environments, we believe the role of the teacher is fundamental in designing both formal and informal mobile learning experiences (Laurillard, 2007). Within the context of activity theory, mobile devices are the tools that mediate learner-centered activities and facilitate collaborative learning environments (Uden, 2007). Unique affordances of mobile learning. Many mobile learning projects attempt to replicate teacher-directed activities and practice on a small screen mobile device, focusing upon reformatted content delivery and substitution of prior pedagogical practice. We think this is a mistake that leads to the almost inevitable comparative research study that results in “no significant difference” (Reeves, 2005). Mobile learning provides a range of tools that can enhance learning and teaching via new contexts, communication, and collaboration, and allows a refocus on student-generated content and student-generated contexts (Cook, 2007, 2010; Pachler, Bachmair, & Cook, 2010). Bannan, Cook, and Pachler (2015) categorize a range of mobile device affordances, to which we offer some examples of current tools available: • collaborative and communicative potential; for example Twitter, Skype • interactivity and nonlinearity; for example Google Now, Virtual Reality • distributed knowledge construction; for example Google Plus, Google Docs • multimodal knowledge representation; for example YouTube, Jumpcam, Vyclone • authentic/contextualized/situated material, interaction, tasks and settings; for example Augmented Reality 8 • multi-functionality and convergence; for example voice recognition systems such as Siri • portability, ubiquity, and

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