mLearning

Mobile phones have rapidly been absorbed into the fabric of our day-to-day lives. They are now a key consumer item, a symbol of social capital and they connect their users to a mobile web with multiple applications. Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. Kearney (2012) presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalization, embedded in the unique timespace contexts of mobile learning. A pedagogical framework was developed and tested through activities in two mobile learning projects located in teacher education communities: "Mobagogy", a project in which faculty staff in an Australian university developed understanding of mobile learning; and "The Bird in the Hand Project", which explored the use of smartphones by student teachers and their mentors in the United Kingdom. The framework is used to critique the pedagogy in a selection of reported mobile learning scenarios, enabling an assessment of mobile activities and pedagogical approaches, and consideration of their contributions to learning from a socio-cultural perspective. Cognizant of the research gap in the theorization of mobile learning, Sha et. al., (2012) in their paper conceptually explores how the theories and methodology of self-regulated learning (SRL), an active area in contemporary educational psychology, are inherently suited to address the issues originating from the defining characteristics of mobile learning: enabling student-centred, personal, and ubiquitous learning. These characteristics provide some of the conditions for learners to learn anywhere and anytime, and thus, entail learners to be motivated and to be able to self-regulate their own learning. They propose an analytic SRL model of mobile learning as a conceptual framework for understanding mobile learning, in which the notion of self-regulation as agency is at the core. The dominant view that mobiles have no place in the classroom has recently been contested by educators, such as Parry, who suggest that mobile learning, and the literacies involved, should play an important role in education (Merchant, 2012). He argues for a more nuanced view of mobile technology, one that focuses on everyday social practices as a way of understanding the relationship between mobiles and learning. Using practice theory as a starting point, he suggests a way of mapping everyday mobile practices on to educational activity to illustrate potential areas for innovation and evaluation. A common issue among students' responses toward this type of learning concerns the pitfalls of mobile devices, including small screen, limited input options, and low computational power. As a result, mobile devices are not always perceived by students as beneficial tools for their learning. Such perception undermines the use of mobile devices in learning and dampens teachers' interest in adopting mobile learning.  (Ting, 2012). Ting provides a different view of mobile devices' pitfalls in learning and suggests that, relying unappropriate design, these pitfalls can be overcome to embrace a broader spectrum of mobile learning practice designs. Extra: Merchant, G. (2012). Mobile Practices in Everyday Life: Popular Digital Technologies and Schooling Revisited. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(5),770-782. Sha, L., Looi, C.-K., Chen, W., Zhang, B. H. (2012). Understanding Mobile Learning from the Perspective of Self-Regulated Learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(4) p366-378. Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., Aubusson, P. (2012). Viewing Mobile Learning from a Pedagogical Perspective. Research in Learning Technology, 20(1). Ting,Y.(2012) The Pitfalls of Mobile Devices in Learning: A Different View and Implications for Pedagogical Design. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 46(2), 119-134. .