Applying Mobile Trends in Education A Mobile Learning Guideline
Ilker Yengin A*STAR, Institute of High Performance Computing Singapore
[email protected]
Abstract— There are many technologies available to education enabling fast and easy access to knowledge. Technologies change rapidly so the opportunities and the challenges they bring. Changing nature of some technologies may have a great impact in education. The next big technology change in education is expected to be in mobile learning platform. The next coming years are expected to offer wide range of opportunities for mobile applications. As the mobile technology grows, there will be more practices of mobile learning in formal education. In order to be ready for the change, one should understand the context. In this paper, we provided a future projection to the mobile markets and the mobile applications and their implications in education. First, we analyzed the mobile trends in the market. Then, we provided an analysis of the latest status of related practices in education. Finally, we provided a guideline, which addresses the issue from a technological and pedagogical point of view, for directing future research and applications. Regarding to our guideline we also presented a list of recommendations. Keywords— Mobile trends; mobile learning; m-learning; mobile learning guideline introduction
I.
INTRODUCTION
Looking through the results in the latest reports in mobile markets, it is very possible that the mobile technology will evolve rapidly and will be adapted by more users. Parallel to this evaluation, it is easy to predict that the next big change in education is expected to be in mobile learning platform. Investigating the trends and providing some predictions and a guideline as a road map which may be derived based on the trends may be beneficial to educational technology practitioners to be ready and prepared for that new coming change. More than a decade, higher education institutions are trying to apply their own solution to benefit from rapid growing mobile industry [23] but these solutions are not aimed to support learning from the mobile devices. Rather, those applications are designed for a support of management of learning resources. Despite the students in higher education are more ready to adopt the use of mobile devices for learning the faculty seems concerned about the use of mobile devices (see detailed discussion below) [22]. The actors in education except the students and the policy makers for education are still in the category of “late majority”, a term defined by Rogers [23]. They are approaching the mobile evaluation with
a high degree of skepticism and they seem to adopt technology much more late after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Limited research has been conducted on students’ use of new generation mobile devices (e.g. tablets) and mobile apps [24]. It is important to address the need of research on the lack of practical information about implementing mobile devices in education. In order to be ready for the change in education, the use of new generation mobile devices and applications should be investigated in details. To have a ground for a gap analysis, it is important to first understand the future trends in mobile markets and the latest status of related practices in education. To address the emerging needs, in this paper, we provided a future projection to the mobile markets and the mobile applications and their implications in education. First, we analyzed latest mobile trends. Then, we provided an analysis of the latest status of related practices in education. Finally, we provided a guideline, which addresses the issue from a technological and pedagogical point of view, for directing future research and applications of changing mobile trends in education. Regarding to our guideline we also presented a list of recommendations to get ready for the applications of the next generation mobile trends. This paper would be beneficial to audiences who like to inform themselves to be ready for the next coming change in education that may have a great impact in education. This paper aims especially educational technology designers developers, decision makers in education and teachers. II.
THE NEXT PARADIGM OF MOBILE TRENDS AND EVALUATIONS
Latest trends shows that mobile phones and tablet use are growing rapidly, according to latest IDC report [21], nearly 941 million smart phone/smart tablets will be manufactured in Asia between 2012 -2014; and over $203 billion will be spent on voice and mobile data services; and there will be over 550 million mobile internet users and over 2.8 billion mobile subscribers. According to a latest prediction, the number of smart phone users worldwide is predicted to exceed 1 billion by 2014 [6]. It is expected that 3G enabled smart phone device ownership will grow in near future and Smartphone will
completely supersede non-Smartphone within the next couple of years in countries planning to switch to next generation of mobile evaluation [1]. Similar to Smartphone, tablet pc ownership is growing fast. Tablet ownership rates among online U.S. consumers reached 29 percent as of June 2012, according to CEA’s Consumer Outlook on Tablets: Q3 2012 report [2]. As long as there will be more mobile devices connected to the networks there will also be a great amount of data traffic. It is expected that the mobile data traffic will be 35 times greater than the amount of data traffic in 2009 [25]. Development of mobile applications (mobile apps) have become a key factor driving mobile business [3]. According to ABI reports, mobile apps income was 8.5 billion dollars in mid 2011 [8]. This number is expected to increase to 46 billion dollars in 2016 [8]. Mobile advertising forms the biggest potion of revenue in the mobile app market [7], [9]. The app download or subscription income mainly comes from the business apps which are not directly sold to regular consumers. According to ABI research, 18 billion apps had been downloaded in the Apple marketplace by October 2011[10]. III.
STATUS OF HIGHER EDUCATION SETTING
Teaching – learning with mobile applications (e.g. tablet pc and smart phones) are the latest trends according to the latest reports in USA (e.g. National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) and National Educational Technology Plan titles) [4], [5]. Generation X and Generation Y are the target population who will be the early adapters. Generation X (gen X), which is a term generated by Douglass [17] , is the generation born in the early 1960s to the early 1980s [18], [19] . Generation Y has a birth date between late 1980 to 2000s [26]. Gen X and gen Y like electronic media through mobile devices; and they are easy to integrate mobile devices into their daily life; and they are eager to adopt new apps as well as to replace and/or update existing apps [16]. Latest reports suggest that [20] in Europe 31-40 percentage; in United States and Australia 49-50 percentage and in India nearly %51 percent of the population is considered to be Gen X or Gen Y. Parallel to latest growth in mobile applications, higher education sector started to provide their own solutions. For example, Ohio State University provides mobile apps providing services for class scheduling, grade tracking, bus locating, campus maps, library search etc [11]; Vanderbilt University provides apps for campus map, news, athletics, multimedia, alumni services etc [12]. Also some Universities’ Engineering Faculties encourages their students to generate educational mobile apps by opening apps development contests [13]. Tablet PC usage is also growing in higher education. However, the higher education institutions are just beginning
to investigate the benefits and potential of tablets. Even though, recent reports [14], [15] indicates that tablet integration shows positive results to increase student engagement and enhanced learning experiences, tablets’ effects on education still needs to be studied. IV.
APPLYING THE NEXT PARADIGM OF MOBILE TRENDS IN LEARNING AND EDUCATION
Mobile learning applications creates a learning ecosystem where the “digitally-facilitated site-specific learning experience that is important for access, personalization, engagement and inclusion, control over learning, ownership, and the ability to demand things, i.e. meeting the rights of the learner” [26]. As the previous section indicates the next coming years are expected to offer wide range of opportunities for mobile applications. As the mobile technology grows, there will be more practices of mobile learning in formal education. Researchers and education practitioners should decide a route map to determine the emerging needs of education related to upcoming trends in mobile technology in education. A guideline can be served as such a route map for easily communicating the ideas in decision making process in creating a mobile enabled learning environment. Thus, we introduce a proposed guideline (Figure 1), which addresses the issue from a technological and pedagogical point of view, for directing future research and applications of next paradigm of mobile trends in learning and education. The guideline summarize some of the findings of mobile application trends and research results which are considering especially investigating the effects of latest mobile devices [31 - 34]. This guideline is not a scientific model or a research framework. Rather, this guideline includes set of suggestions which may be useful during the implementation of the mobile learning technology in education practices. The guideline’s main aim is to give an overall view about the implementation of the essential practices of mobile applications in education and give some ideas to make this application more efficient. Ideas provided in the guideline are not ‘must do’ or they are not rules. On the other hand, these ideas are based on research findings. Thus, the research based ideas in the guideline may be useful for the everyday educational technology practitioners who have intentions to implement mobile learning but have no idea where to and how to start. Moreover the guideline may serve as a road map for teachers, instructional designers, policy makers and other education practitioners. Because the guideline considers the whole ecosystem of education focusing on pedagogic implementation especially, it provides a better perspective rather than other business oriented guidelines for the use of mobile technology.
It is very possible to use the guideline as a first step during a development of scientific model or research framework. Future research may test the ideas and their relationships to each other. Also future research may direct a step hierarchy (e.g. starting teacher adaptation before designing apps) and timing.
As mentioned before, the factors represented in the boxes are well explained in within academic research papers. The summary of the ideas and practices directed by the previous research has been collated and reflected in the boxes of the guideline. Each box and their implementations is explained in the following sections. A. Teacher Preparation and Adaptation Application of new technologies into learning requires teachers to devote a significant amount of time for learning the new technology to adapt it to their daily teaching practices. Teachers also may need to change their current lessons plans and teaching methodologies. They may need extra support in the preparation process. Adequate time and training may enable teachers to use the new applications in the learning environment. One should be aware of this issue and should not wait a sudden transformation in the application the next paradigm of mobile trends.
Figure. 1. The Proposed Guideline for Mobile Learning
The boxes in the proposed guideline (Figure 1) represent the factors that may be affecting the pedagogy and student outcomes. The student out comes and pedagogy is considered as a measurement factors which may be in terms of efficiency, effectiveness in learning process, motivation, ease of learn and performance time. These factors should be well categorized within future research studies. The connection lines in Figure 1 represent a possible relationship between the boxes, which are the factors effecting the pedagogy and students outcomes. The relationships in the boxes are hypothetical and have to be tested in future controlled experiments. The direction of the connection arrow also show the way of the relationships. Only in the “teacher preparation and adaptation” and “lesson planning” boxes are suggested as having a mutual relationships. The directions are also hypothetical and have to be verified with controlled experiments. Although the guideline has been designed as a hypothetical one, the experimental data may validate it. Thus, one should not forget that the guideline is a preliminary step of future research afford and should not treat the guideline as a complete must to do plan.
B. Lesson Planning, Apps. and Contents The development of learning content and apps will be a very important part of mobile learning application in future. Teachers may need to find suitable content and apps to integrate into their lesson plans. Teachers may need to have time for evaluate existing apps and contents available for mobile learning. Current apps and content libraries such as iTunes App Store [27] may be searched for apps and content. Also, teachers may construct their own lists of apps to share with others. Teachers may adapt these contents into their lessons plans. Teachers may need more task specific tools such as cognitive artifacts [28], production apps and content creation – authoring apps. There are many games available in apps store but a little of number of them may be served as cognitive artifacts apps that may enable students to think. The range of productivity tools are also available on the market however they are not designed for teaching – learning specific tasks. According to our latest knowledge, the number of content creation and authoring apps are also very little in the market. On the other hand, web based tools such as wiki, blogs and other web 2.0 enabled tools can be used to deliver content but one should not forget that many of these tools are not designed specifically to match the requirements of mobile practices. For example, an interactive web 2.0 page may not be suitable for viewing in a mobile device or the mobile device may not have the capability to enable some content (e.g. Flash based content may not work on all devices). C. Pedagogy and Student Outcomes Mobile learning environments may enhance students’ motivation, personalization and collaboration which also may affect positive learning outcomes. Future research should consider pedagogical aspects and students outcomes of next paradigm of mobile trends in learning and education.
Researchers may focus on design and investigation of the new pedagogic methods with upcoming mobile devices. Mobile devices’ improving abilities may lead design of such pedagogic methods. For example, new mobile devices have possibility to connect to internet at any time which enables gathering and sharing digital resources independently from being in a specific location. This kind of a possibility creates a new model of active learning and collaboration in learning in and out of the class. Also new mobile devices enable digital knowledge creation and delivery in picture, video and audio format in addition to text, which was the considerably old practice for mobile applications. Using different formats of knowledge representations enables true multimedia supported teaching- learning. D. Mobile Devices and Peripherals Mobile devices functionalities and abilities may affect the delivery and representation of the lesson materials. For example screen sizes, availability of internal camera, touch screen functions, availability of apps etc. may be a determining factor for lessons [29]. Therefore it is necessary to identify device capabilities and functionalities before creating a mobile enabled learning environment. The classroom interactions and pedagogic methods may greatly change according to availability of the mobile devices and peripherals. It is always important to consider the abilities of mobile devices and their expandable capabilities – functionalities with the help of different peripherals devices. For example, the mobile devices may need to be connected to external monitors, projectors, interactive white boards, external speakers and/or head phones, microphones, external keyboards, stylus, tripods etc. Also in a classroom environment, there may be need of some peripherals and tools for the protection and the maintenance of the mobile devices such as charging stations, docking stations and protective covers etc. E. Infrastructure and Connectivity The infrastructure and connectivity support is another factor to be considered. Mobile devices can be communicated with different technologies (e.g. GPRS, Blootoh, WiFi etc.,) [30]. Institutions should be ready to support the upcoming functionalities of the devices ,especially in terms of multimedia communications. Also, logistics such as, device storage and maintenance, classroom WiFi connections, apps installations ID and account managements etc., should be considered for creating a mobile enabled learning environment.
V.
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Correspondingly to the latest trends in mobile applications and proposed guideline, the following items are suggested for a successful transformation of new mobile applications in higher education settings. • Teacher Preparations and Certifications programs (or Faculty of Education) may include workshops and/or lessons about teaching with smart phones and tablets to engage students in the learning process. This will ease the adaptation process of current teachers and academic staff who intend to use smart phones and tablets in their future classes. • A university educational mobile app. development team may be formed. This team may develop apps. like interactive e-books, educational games and simulations, small tools and calculators etc. • Software Engineering Departments may include mobile apps. development into the curriculum. • Department of Communication may include to the curriculum topics related to advertising and social networking via mobile apps. • A platform (e.g. wiki) for the lesson planning, lesson sharing and discussions on different pedagogical topics related to mobile learning may be provided. • A digital resource sharing repository specific to teaching -learning apps and contents may be provided for teachers. This platform may be used to evaluate and rank different apps and content s which makes teaches lessons preparations easier. • Pilot project applications and evaluations may be started to investigate issues related to creating a mobile enabled learning environment within next paradigm of mobile trends. VI.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we provided a future projection to the mobile markets and the mobile applications and their implications in education. First, we analyzed the next mobile trends. Then, we provided an analysis of the latest status of related practices in education. Finally, we provided a guideline, which addresses the issue from a technological and pedagogical point of view, for directing future research and applications of next mobile trends in learning and education. Our guideline can be served as a route map for easily communicating the ideas in decision making process for teachers, instructional designers, policy makers and other education practitioners. Regarding to our guideline we also presented a list of recommendations to get ready for the applications of the next generation mobile evaluation in education. Future work includes engaging studies on the study on application of the
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