mLearning - Mobile Technology in Education

New generations of students universally ditch desktop and laptop computers in favor of cell phones, as less restrictive. It is imperative for educators to understand new students’ technology usage preferences and tap into a vast potential of mlearning – mobile technology in education. The mobility and easy access to information, from anywhere, anytime, make mobile devices perfectly matched for education. By connecting to the Internet and learner networks, students can tap into a rich pool of resources, enhancing their skills and knowledge. Smart phones carry hundreds of thousands applications, generally known as ‘apps’, which have great benefits in learning.

Mobile Phone Features

Today’s smart phones and tablets provide many functions that make them valuable learning aids. Some of these constantly evolving functions are

Audio phone
Text messaging
Camera phone
Computing
Mobile broadband connectivity
Web browser
Graphic displays
Digital camera
Video camera
Storage
High resolution multi-touch screen
Global positioning system

Use of Mobile Phones in Education

Mobile devices can be applied for various education purposes, as for example

Virtual classroom - university and schools can broadcast live lectures to students watching them on mobile devices
Podcast downloading and listening – educational institutions post pre-recorded lectures on the web, which students can download via mobile devices
Creation of learning material
Student collaboration on projects
Assessment of student work
Student support
Creation of video or audio libraries of lectures, presentations and seminars
Note taking

Benefits of m-Learning

The results of Qualcomm supported Project K-Nect, showed that high school students, who received additional algebra problem sets via smartphones consistently achieved significantly higher performance in their final exams compared to a traditional class.

The better performance is attributed to

Multi-media teaching material which is more engaging and fun than traditional teaching
Personalized content where students cannot compare numerical answers but solutions instead
Collaborative learning environment with students recording their solutions on a shared blog and forming a learning community
Shy students tend to be more active in a virtual than in a traditional classroom

Another research report showed that university students who listen to podcast lectures achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the classroom lectures, providing that they take notes.

The main challenge in m-learning is small size of mobile devices, making it difficult to show big amounts of text. This is typically compensated by replacing text with multimedia presentations.

mLearning Technology

mLearning technology refers to various handheld devices, software tools, platforms and networks used for learning. Examples of portable m-learning devices are

Mobile phones
Smart phones
Tablet PCs such as iPads
Personal digital assistants (PDAs)
Media players such as iPods and MP3s
Handheld game consoles

There are numerous smartphone applications and mobile phone software, suitable for education purposes, including

Smartphone applications stores, as for example Apple’s AppStore or Google’s Android Market have many education applications, such as iMobile Care app, showing how to deliver aid in accidents and critical situations.
Flickr – Web 2.0 for uploading photographs from mobile phones
Mobile LMS, such as Moodle for Mobiles and Meridian Anywhere Mobile LMS
Tools for blogging from mobile phones, such as Blogger.com or Microsoft Live Spaces

Mobile devices are connected to the web via wireless networks, including 3G, WiFi, GPRS, WiMAX and emerging LTE techology.

mLearning Case Studies

mLearning has applications at universities, workplace and schools.

For example, mobile phones have been used as a flash card tool to help students learn organic chemistry at Georgia Gwinnett College.

In a Merrill Lynch m-learning initiative, three mandated courses were offered to a class of investment bankers both via MLU (Merrill Lynch University) and via the BlackBerry over a seven week period. The outcome showed that higher scores are obtained in half the time with mobile learning.

In collaboration with Apple, Duke University is distributing lectures via iTunes and iPods.

My Sports Pulse is a program set up to develop student proficiency and interest in science and math by using sports themes and celebrity athlete participation. In a joint initiative of the University of Central Florida and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the program is delivered to middle and high school students via mobile phones.

An example of applying mobiles in teaching is Pool Anywhere, which turns mobile into a personal response system, enabling teachers to quiz students and assess their learning.

University of Phoenix offers its students an iPhone app for participating in the online classroom, completing assignments and sending grades.