Learning on the Move

Catherine explores the move towards different pedagogies when using mobile devices in education...

Learning on the Move is an apt title of our blog given its implied double meaning. Not only does it refer to ubiquitous mobile devices such as iPods, iPads and Smart Phones, it highlights the requisite for change in education with regard to these tools. What is required is a paradigm shift, a move towards the practice that technology is both part of the learning system and an object of it. With this in mind, it is incumbent that pedagogy be changed.

Image from Learning2go.com

The JISC infoNet Mobile Technology Information Kit provides an excellent guide to implementing mobile technology in education. I was particularly drawn to its analysis of different pedagogical frameworks for teaching with mobile devices. The kit presents re-conceptions of learning in terms of:  

• Learning as knowledge transmission and construction
• Supported by ICT
• How to design and manage an effective learning environment

The contributors see mobile learning as:

• Learning as exploration and conversation across contexts
• Enabled by continual interaction with personal technologies
• How people creatively engage with their continually changing surroundings to create transiently stable and effective sites of learning

 The discussion begins with a quotation from John Dewey (1916) that is still highly relevant today:

“A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability.

Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive.”

John Dewey wrote this at a time when he could not have envisaged the plethora of mobile devices and apps that we have access to in the 21^st century. Ipods, ipads, kindles, MP3s, Smart Phones – all these devices enable students to move from a synchronous and immediate experience of a collective place (i.e., the classroom) towards asynchronous, individualised learning platforms. These new tools allow students to participate in countless projects of hyper-connected communication, collective knowledge and shared creativity. Yet, what remains the same is that educators must have the initiative to change and adapt.

What is Mobile Learning?

Image from www.moblearn.com

On a basic level, it is learning that occurs when students use devices such as iPads, MP3 players and Smart Phones. While these devices are important to learning, the actual process involves more than accessing and creating information and the hyper-connectivity with the collective. It is the mobility of learners that allows for the multiple contexts in which they find themselves. “Looking at mobile learning in

                                                                                                                     a wider context,we have to recognize that mobile, personal,and wireless devices are now radically transforming societal notions of discourse and knowledge, and are responsible for new forms of art, employment, language, commerce,deprivation, and crime, as well as learning.”(Traxler, 2007 cited in The JISC infoNet Mobile Technology Information Kit)

The contributors refer to Sharples,et. al. (2010), who argue that mobile learning initiatives provide an opportunity for staff to reflect upon their practices and re-ask the question:

How can technology best enable this particular learning outcome?

Further, they refer to Colley, et. al.’s four groups of attributes to consider when exploring learning:

 • Learning process

• Location and setting

• Learning purposes

• Learning content

The contributors advocate that it is more productive to conceptualise mobile learning as the comprising of the interrelationship of these four elements. However, it can be a challenge “to discover how to use mobile technologies to transform learning into a seamless part of daily life to the point where it is not recognised as learning at all.” (Futurelab, 2004, p.5)

The Futurelab overview from 2004 which outlines six broad theory-based categories of activity is worth re-examining if we are to change our pedagogy to incorporate mobile technology:

• Behaviourist - activities that promote learning as a change in learners' observable actions

• Constructivist - activities in which learners actively construct new ideas or concepts based on both their previous and current knowledge

• Situated - activities that promote learning within an authentic context and culture

• Collaborative - activities that promote learning through social interaction

• Informal and lifelong - activities that support learning outside a dedicated learning environment and formal curriculum

• Learning and teaching support - activities that assist in the coordination of learners and resources for learning activities

With these categories in mind, the writers scrutinize different pedagogoical frameworks for learning using mobile technology such as Laurillard (2002):

and Park (2011):

However, they favour the more holistic model by Koole (2009):

Mobile learning is therefore a combination of the interactions between learners, their devices, and other people. Koole also provides a helpful checklist for institutions looking to adopt mobile learning, including the following questions:

In a mobile learning system, have you considered: 1. how use of mobile devices might change the process of interaction between learners, communities, and systems? 2. how learners may most effectively use mobile access to other learners, systems, and devices to recognize and evaluate information and processes to achieve their goals? 3. how learners can become more independent in navigating through and filtering information? 4. how the roles of teachers and learners will change and how to prepare them for that ?

These questions enable the mobility of the learner rather than the device to be at the forefront of the mobile learning initiative.

Just as different disciplines lend themselves to different styles of teaching, so different mobile learning approaches will be necessary. I particularly liked the inclusion of the SAMR model by Ruben Puentedura which is like a taxonomy of types of learning activity:

The contributors to the kit believe that conceptualising  technology-enhanced learning activities with the helpof the SAMR model helps avoid shallow uses of mobile devices for learning. For example, using a word document on an iPad may count as mobile learning but,on Puentedura’s model, it constitutes ‘Substitution’, the lowest form of technology-enhanced learning. The SAMR model will be worth incorporating into my own teaching practice as I work towards the “Redefinition” stage.

The contributors to the kit contend that “mobile learning allowed the learning conversation to be focused on learners rather than teachers as the technologies were more personal and personalised.” It is the potential for mobile learning to "bridge pedagogically designed learning contexts, facilitate learner generated contexts, and content... while providing personalisation and ubiquitous social connectedness" that makes it different and "sets it apart" from more traditional learning environments.( The JISC infoNet Mobile Technology Information Kit , p.29) This context of having a device available for personal use at any time changes things significantly for learning and teaching.

In summary, the contributors suggest that a theory of mobile learning must be tested against the following criteria: 

• Is it significantly different from current theories of classroom, workplace or lifelong learning?

• Does it account for the mobility of learners? 

• Does it cover both formal and informal learning? 

• Does it theorise learning as a constructive and social process?

• Does it analyse learning as a personal and situated activity mediated by technology?

With these ideas in mind, it is paramount that we, as educators, re-examine our pedagogy when adopting mobile technology. There is a clear requisite for a move in both philosophy and practice. The contributors advise that “a teacher has no ontologically privileged position, but is simply another participant in the conversation of learning.”(p.31) Furthermore, they refer to Freire (1996) who coins the phrase “co-intentional learning”, where teacher and learner jointly develop understanding through dialogue.  “The teacher is no longer merely the one-who-knows, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.” (Freire, 1996, p. 61 as cited in The JISC infoNet Mobile Technology Information Kit, )

So, let us all join in the conversation of learning and move towards to new paradigm in teaching in the digital age.

References

The main resource used was The JISC infoNet Mobile Technology Information Kit . All diagrams above were taken from this site. However, I thought it worth noting the following sources cited in this kit for further reading:

• ·        Futurelab (2004) Mobile Technologies and Learning report
• ·  Koole, M.L. (2009) 'A Model for Framing Mobile Learning', in Ally, M. (ed.), Mobile Learning:Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, Edmonton, 2009, p.38)
• Park, Y. (2011) 'A Pedagogical Framework for Mobile Learning: Categorizing EducationalApplications of Mobile Technologies into Four Types' (The International Review of Research
• in Open and Distance Learning, 12(2), February 2011)
• ·   Sharples, M., et al. (2007) ‘Mobile Learning: Small devices, Big issues’ (in Sharples, M., etal. (eds.) Technology-Enhanced Learning, 2009, Part IV)
• ·     Traxler, J. (2007) 'Current State of Mobile Learning' (in Ally, M. (2010) Mobile Learning:Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, Edmonton: AU Press)