Learning in a Mobile Age

published in first issue of International Journal of Mobile & Blended Learning

The launch of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning is one of several indicators that mobile learning globally is reaching a critical and sustainable momentum and identity. The past six or seven years have seen a host of pilots and initiatives across sectors and across countries and these have established firstly that mobile learning takes learning to individuals, communities and countries where access to learning was challenging or problematic and secondly that mobile learning enhances, enriches and extends how learning is understood. Environmental factors have meant that this development has been haphazard. The mobile learning community is now faced with broader challenges of scale, durability, equity, embedding and blending in addition to the earlier and more specific challenges of pedagogy and technology, but these developments take place in the context of societies where mobile devices, systems and technologies have a far wider impact than just mobile learning as it is currently conceived. This paper looks at the definition and evolution of mobile learning as the starting point for a discussion of this wider impact.

Mobile learning in ‘developing’ countries – not so different

written the Vodafone 'receiver' online publication

To start with 'mobile learning' is certainly not merely the conjunction of 'mobile' and 'learning'; it has always been taken to implicitly mean 'mobile e-learning' and its history has to be understood as a response to, reaction against and a development from the experiences of 'conventional' e-learning, its perceived inadequacies and its perceived limitations. Over about the last ten years 'conventional' e-learning has been exemplified technologically by the rise of virtual learning environments (VLEs), such as WebCT and Blackboard, and the demise of computer-assisted learning 'packages', by expectations of ever increasing multi-media interactivity, power, speed, capacity, functionality and bandwidth in networked PC platforms. Pedagogically, we have seen the rise of social constructivist models of learning over previous behaviourist ones. All this is however only really true for Europe, North America and East Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa the term 'mobile learning' is recognised but as something grafted onto a tradition of open and distance learning and onto different pedagogic traditions, ones that have concentrated on didactic approaches rather than discursive ones. Mobile learning in these parts of the world is a reaction to different challenges and different limitations – usually those of infrastructure, poverty, distance or sparsity.

Current State of Mobile Learning

chapter in "Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training" edited by Prof M. Ally

Since the start of the current millennium, experience and expertise in the development and delivery of mobile learning have blossomed and a community of practice has evolved that is distinct from the established communities of
“tethered” e-learning. This community is currently visible mainly through dedicated international conference series, of which MLEARN is the most prestigious, rather than through any dedicated journals. So far, these forms of development
and delivery have focused on short-term small-scale pilots and trials in the developed countries of Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim, and there is a taxonomy emerging from these pilots and trials that suggests tacit
and pragmatic conceptualisations of mobile learning. What has, however,developed less confidently within this community is any theoretical conceptualisation of mobile learning and with it any evaluation methodologies specifically
aligned to the unique attributes of mobile learning. Some advocates of mobile learning attempt to define and conceptualize it in terms of devices and technologies;
other advocates do so in terms of the mobility of learners and the mobility of learning, and in terms of the learners’ experience of learning with mobile devices.

Mobility, Modernity, Development

presented at first m4d Karlstadt, Sweden, December 2008

The idea of development has been crucial in focussing attention and targeting resources on excluded and marginal individuals and communities around the world. This paper argues however that this is a dangerously simplistic notion and has been born out of a modernist world-view imposed on societies now characterised by increasing mobility and postmodernity. Near-universal access to and ownership of a multitude of personal connected mobile devices, systems and technologies are gradually but unmistakably transforming our societies, transforming our ideas about identity, discourse, community, technology, knowledge, space and time. The paper introduces some of the ideas and issues.

Designed and user-generated activity in the mobile age

by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, John Traxler and John Pettit in Journal of Learning Design, Vol. 2 May 2007, Brisbane

The paper addresses the question of how to design for learning taking place on mobile and wireless devices. The authors argue that learning activity designers need to consider the characteristics of mobile learning; at the same time, it is vital to realise that learners are already creating mobile learning experiences for themselves. Profound changes in computer usage brought about by social networking and user-generated content are challenging the idea that educators are in charge of designing learning. The authors make a distinction between designed activity, carefully crafted in advance, and user-generated activity, arising from learners’ own spontaneous requirements. The paper illustrates what each approach has to offer and it draws out what they have in common, the opportunities and constraints they represent. The paper concludes that user-generated mobile activity will not replace designed activity but it will influence the ways in which designed activity develops.

Learners – Should We Leave Them to Their Own Devices?

published by Becta in the Emerging Technologies for Learning Series

In the last five or six years, mobile devices have been used again and again to enrich learning and to extend its reach. In general, however, we have not seen progress to large-scale and long-term deployment because of the resource implications. This piece explores a radical solution to this impasse.

Mobile devices include smart-phones, games consoles, media players, netbooks and handheld computers. Almost everyone owns one and uses one, often more than one; they also invest considerable time, effort and resource choosing them, buying them, customising them and exploiting them. These devices express part or much of their owners’ values, affiliations, identity and individuality. They are both pervasive and ubiquitous, both conspicuous and unobtrusive, both noteworthy and taken-for-granted in the lives of most of the people in this country

This is new and is completely different from older, static and less personal information technologies such as desktop computers and TVs. It is a quantitatively different phenomenon and the statistics are commonplace: mp3 downloads outnumber CD sales, camera-phones outnumber cameras, smart-phones outnumber laptops, mobile phone ownership is reaching saturation and the British send over a billion texts a week.

Mobile devices are however also a qualitatively different phenomenon. People no longer need to engage with information and discussion at the expense of 'real life'. They can do so as part of 'real life', as they move about the world, using their own devices to connect them to the people and ideas of their own choosing, perhaps using their own devices to generate and produce content and conversation as well as store and consume them. This is changing how people relate to technology. It is also changing how they relate to other people and to the content and conversation facilitated by the technology.

This article looks at these devices, in the hands of so many learners, and the challenges and opportunities that they represent for the support and provision of learning, and indeed for the meaning and nature of learning. We use the phrase ‘learner devices’ to signify not mobile devices in general nor their purely technological characteristics nor those mobile devices that might be especially suited to learning or already used in education. We use the phrase ‘learner devices’ emphatically to explore the educational implications of learners’ choices. Much of the discussion will seem to focus on mobile phones. This is understandable considering the massive dominance in people’s lives of mobile phones over other mobile technologies. The increasing functionality and power of the mobile phones that people buy  mean however that very few mobile technologies are not coming into the hands of most mobile phone owners and thus into the hands of most people. Of course, a much wider range of mobile devices is in circulation but we must remember the demographics of all these devices and acknowledge the primacy of the mobile phone amongst the less privileged. We should also recognise that to portray the demography of ICT access as simply ‘digital immigrants’ and ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001) is to over-simplify a situation where different technologies are adopted by different communities, cultures and sub-cultures in different ways at different rates.

The Evaluation of Next Generation Learning Technologies: the Case of Mobile Learning

by John Traxler & Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Research Proceedings ALT-C 2006

Mobile learning is at a leading edge of learning technologies and is at present characterised by pilots and trials that allow mobile technologies to be tested out in a variety of learning contexts. The sustained deployment of mobile learning will depend on these pilots and trials, especially their evaluation methodology and reporting. The paper examines a sample of current evaluation practice, based on evidence drawn from conference proceedings, published case studies, and other accounts from the literature and draws on the authors’ work in collecting case studies of mobile learning from a range of recent projects. The issues discussed include the apparent objectives of the documented pilots or trials, the nature of the evaluations, instruments and techniques used, and the analysis and presentation of findings. The paper reflects on the quality of evaluation in mobile learning pilots and trials, in the broader context of evolving practices in the evaluation of educational technologies.

Landscape Study on the use of Mobile and Wireless technologies for teaching and learning in the post-16 sector

funded and published by JISC in 2005 available for down-load

Final reports from this study are now available.

Summary report - Outlining the key findings from the study
Current Uses of Wireless and Mobile Learning -  Lead Author: Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, The Open University
Potential Uses of Wireless and Mobile Learning - Lead Author: Diane Evans, The Open University
Strategic Aspects of Wireless and Mobile Learning - Lead Author: John Traxler, University Of Wolverhampton

Design for Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Kukulska-Hulme, A. & Traxler, J., (2007) Design for Mobile and Wireless Technologies In H. Beetham & R. Sharpe (eds). Rethinking Pedagogy for the Digital Age London: Routledge

Education and the Impact of Mobiles and Mobility

In B. Bachmair, Medienbildung in neuen Kulturräumen  (trs. Media literacy in new cultural spaces), Weisbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, pp103 - 113

This chapter outlines the notion of mobility and the role of mobile devices, technologies and systems in changes in aspects of our societies, and looks at the impact and the implications of these changes for education and those that learn and teach, asking whether the education system, especially the institutions of formal learning, the schools, colleges and universities, need to make tactical, technical changes and reforms, asking whether ‘business-as-usual’ still possible? Or whether these changes suggest that the education system is somehow broken and no longer fit-for-purpose? Or whether there is some more complex and fragmented answer between these two extremes? The formal education system is not however monolithic and coherent; different stakeholders will see its role and purpose differently and its relations to society differently too, different parts of it will be informed by different politics and educational theories and philosophies. The changes being described are not monolithic and will wash over different parts of the system in different ways and at different speeds. Consequently this account is only a starting point.