A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE LEARNING

                                                                                                                                      

In brief, mobile solutions are valuable in easing up access retaining students, making learning more flexible and personalized, and providing collaborative (community) support for learning.

Collaborative or community support can also function as a bridge from more formal and institutionalized forms of education to informal, work-related and life-long learning. There is no reason to stop here but one could develop digital technology further in order to find ways for all citizens, but especially for people in danger of being marginalized, to participate in the civic society and democratic decision making. Therefore, learning is seen as an active (though also contemplative), productive and collaborative form of engagement with the world.

Popular business and technology literature defines m-learning as “e-learning through mobile computational devices” (Quinn, 2000; see also Trifonova and Ronchetti 2003), or as “the point at which mobile computing and e-learning intersect to produce an anytime, anywhere learning experience” (Harris, 2001). As argued by Pozzi (2007), the above definitions are highly technology oriented.

An alternative approach to defining m-learning is to start from two propositions. First, communication plays a major role in all human activity, including learning. Second, one cannot stop people from being mobile, and hence all learning is mobile. Technology allows us to interact socially, anytime and anywhere: communication has become strongly ubiquitous. This approach to m-learning is explicated in Nyíri (2002). Nyíri defines m-learning as learning taking place in the course of person-to-person ubiquitous or mobile communication. Tella (2003) also refers to mlearning as studying and communication in which different tools or mobile technologies are used. However, instead of seeing mobile technology and mobile learning as a means to learning irrespective of geographical location (Kopomaa, 2000; Dahlbom and Ljungberg, 1998), it should be seen as a means to situate learning; thus implying learning in a context in which the learning substance is to be put into use (Brown et al., 1989). Situated learning leads us to consider learning in real life contexts, outside the confines of a conventional classroom. Therefore mobile learning promises to put training and learning into a context of meaningful job activities in the real world.

Application areas of m-learning technology can be many since the learning context can change depending on place and time, the learner (young/adult), the subject matter to be learned, and the skills that need to be applied in the particular context/task at hand.

Usability issues in mobile learning

Using mobile technologies in mobile learning inevitably means that attention should be paid to usability issues. Kukulska-Hulme (2007) made an extensive literature review on the current state-of-the-art of mobile usability in education contexts. Her review indicates that, while many studies report findings on the usability issues in the use of mobile technologies in learning contexts, we are still lacking an understanding of the use of mobile technologies in learning and related usability issues. The following observations can be made:

• ·         While many studies report findings on tests and trials; usability studies should also be carried out over a long period of time in order to get a better understanding of how user experience evolves through the many phases of actual use.
• ·         It is (and will remain) difficult to predict how mobile devices and services/applications might be used over time. Users’ needs (or the way users fulfill their needs) might change in unpredictable ways.
• ·         Some devices have a short product life cycle (about 12 months), and many users face a steep learning curve. This means that in most cases users do not have the time to learn and exploit the functionality of their devices before getting a replacement.
• ·         A user-centred design approach to mobile learning should take into account not only the end-users (the learners), but also other actors, such as teachers, content producers, parents…
• ·         Design of mobile learning applications should take into account the complexity of the learning process. All too often user-centred design focuses on solving usability issues at the single task level.
• ·         Other criteria than traditional usability criteria (time, performance, number of errors…) are needed in the design and evaluation of mobile learning applications and services. Learning-specific criteria should be used (e.g. learner motivation, feedback, learner activity…).
• ·         Usability should also take into consideration the context in which learning is taking place. As mentioned earlier in this paper, knowledge co-construction and collaboration are key concepts in mobile learning, realized through interaction with peers, and surrounding – physical and virtual – objects and resources.
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