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Mobile devices, mobile learners and Web 2.0
Fig 1. At World of Learning, 2012 – Video Arts offer video vignettes for mobile learning in the Tech Area
From materials and commentary prepared by John Pettit (2008)
Of course it is learning if it is on a mobile phone or any other device. Do we mean informal or formal learning? Vicarious learning or didactic? Stumbling across knowledge, or reading formerly to pass an exam? Does it matter? These devices blur the distinction between a means of educating that may eventually look dated and specific to an era.
Do we need campus based universities?
Kids can have their kicks in Ibiza then study online while holding down their first job.
Give the campus over to the retired and unemployed.
Do we need schools?
And if so, instead of being at the centre of a child’s education, perhaps they become as tangential as a visit to the leisure centre of supermarket because you are better linkedin to the educators and the content when you’re away from the place and all its distractions.
When do you ever not learn even if you don’t know it?
It depends entirely on what the device is being used for. Apps have shown how versatile we are at throwing activities and qualities at these devices. People want this stuff.
Is a laptop mobile? What about the old Apple Classic? I used to take it out into the garden on an extension cable and view it inside a cardboard box while sunbathing. Was that mobile? I can read in the bath on a Kindle and click through RSS feeds on the iPad while the Kettle boils. Might it simply feel as if all these people are following me around?
There are degress of mobility. Working in TV we carried around with us monitors to watch content back during a shoot. The thing was no more portable than a hod stacked with bricks.
When I read formal and informal learning I wonder if this equates to whether the learning is hard or easy. I have acquired knowledge in a formal setting and had a laugh, equally in an informal context without the self-motivation and will I have found informal learning very hard to do.
It is sometimes claimed that handheld digital devices allow students to learn at anytime, anywhere. A more nuanced position argues that the devices have the potential for ‘any time anywhere’ learning but that many other factors come into play.
For example, some devices may be easy to handle but have small screens that don’t allow easy reading.
Far from being hard to read the small screen is better suited to the narrow field of close vision that we have. So what if it is like looking through a letter box. If you want to concentrate why look at more?
A device can become too small. Too portable. As a video producer I have seen kit shrink so much that a device the size of a child’s shoe will generate a HD image and for $75 a day you could hire a camera that delivers 35mm quality. Making a film though with a device so small creates instability, you need some weight on your shoulder if you want to keep the image steady.
The portability and size of screen is less relevant than the affordances of the device, the fact that an iPad doesn’t support Flash, or Android is having problems with Google Apps, that is, if you are using learning materials that require specific functionality that isn’t working.
As for screen size, people may watch a blockbuster movie on a giant screen at the Odeon Leicester Square or on a Smartphone or palm-sized gaming device that is no bigger than a spectacle case; here what matters as with any movie, is the quality of the narrative, not the size of the screen.
Where a device’s portability comes into its own, as the person who recently made a phone call from the top of Everest, is the portability. Another extreme might be a cave diver with a device the plots the route for a cave system, or a glaciologists relaying pictures of a feature in a Greenland ice-sheet to colleagues thousands of miles away that informs the research.
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
Is an apt way to express a new term being used in the Open University Business School to describe applied or practice-based learning that gets away from the ‘distance’ tag, that is to call it ‘nearness’ learning. (Fleck, 2011). I also like the idea of ‘intense but provisional,’ people’s attitudes are brand specific, with the Mac vs. PC split of computing now a split between Windows, Mac and Android (and others).
People chose brands to simplify the choices that have to be made between a plethora of devices, between Sony, Nokia, Goole and Windows, as well as between network suppliers, be that O2, Vodafone or others.
There is another way of looking at it though, if you come to see that all these devices offer the same sets of services and tools, from QWERTY keyboards, to a camera, from messaging to phone calls, to the hundreds of thousands of Apps, and in the case of the latest Windows phone … Windows software from Outlook to Docs, PPT to Excel.
Is size such an issue?
People have managed needlepoint for centuries and once painted miniatures. There is an appeal for the tiny sometimes, just as there is for the massive. In this respect the device becomes a reflection of the person’s personality, as well as the depth of their pockets, the availability of others services, from a signal to 3G (or not), even to the power to charge batteries.
Personal choice, celebration of variety, offering a smorgasbord rather than the continental breakfast.
‘That well-known random-access device consisting of ink on bound sheets of paper may still have plenty of life in it yet!’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) expressed in 2007 is how in 2011 writers in the e-magazine Reconstruction 6.4 describe the ‘long-tail’ of the blog, that definitions have become meaningless, suggesting that the varieties of ways to do or have what we have continued to call a ‘blog’ is as varied as the ways we have over many centuries come to use paper.
Drawing on a paper written in 2007 on research presumably undertaken a couple of years previously, it strikes me that ‘the world has moved on’, to say the least – though not enough. This exercise is looking at the extraordinary capabilities and uses for a device that in 2011 can offer somewhat more than was possible four years ago. This doesn’t mean to say we have the things.
From my own perspective I came into the MAODE (this time round) with an eight year old iBook that had trouble with some software, things as simple as PDFs and the latest versions of Flash as I was unable to upgrade the operating system. Working from a smallish screen I found myself printing off too. For the second module I had access to a better laptop and plugged it into a good-sized screen that allowed me to see a page of A4 at a time or to swivel the screen and have two windows open side by side. During the course of my third module (this one) I found myself without a particular device, but with access to a desktop, a laptop, even an iPad (and have used a Kindle to read some 16 books). Here I found myself putting everything online, into a blog and e-portfolio so I could access whatever I wanted wherever I was (or whichever device was available), as well as having the cataloguing, aggregating, sharing affordances that this has given. Any device, however mobile, and whatever size, can tap into this content.
The problem now, isn’t simply, for me at least, is the overwhelming volume of content I have put online, which despite adopting various approaches to keep track of it, has split into a number of blogs (OU, Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr), a number of cloud galleries/warehouses in the sky (Flick, Dropbox, Kodak and Picasa Galleries, My Stuff, Pebblepad).
It is apt that I blog under the name ‘my mind bursts’, because it has, and is.
Like having a thought, or recalling some event or fact seemingly on a whim, I find I stumble across these ‘mind bursts’ quite by accident, forgetting the number of blogs, for example, that I for a period started only to abandon so that ‘serendipity’ has a role to play through the myriad of links I’ve also made. None of this has helped by finding myself with three Facebook accounts and unsure how to delete the ‘right’ one.
The attitude can only be to ride this like the web surfer of a decade ago – to run with it, rather than try and control it. You meet friends coming off a training a Liverpool Station, you do not need to know who else is on the concourse, the timetables for every train that day, week or year. To cope with the overwhelming quantity of stuff tools to filter out what matters to you at that moment is coming to matter most.
Currently I find myself repeatedly drawn to the activities of Hugo Dixon, a former Economist and FT journalist, who set up a business he called ‘Breaking Views’ to counter what he already by then perceived as a deluge of online information and the old print-based expression ‘Breaking News’; we would come to need as some pundits predicted fifteen years ago, ‘information managers’ or ‘information management systems’.
I wish I could reference the expression properly but ‘Freedom is lack of choice’ is one of my favourites; sometimes filters and parameters have their place. I enjoy using a Kindle as much for its limitations; it is something I can take to bed knowing that it’ll send me to sleep, while an iPad keeps me up all night.
REFERENCES
Fleck, J (2011) Association of MBAs Conference Video 2011
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Anderson on meeting student needs
5 Aug 2011
Getting the Mix Right Again: An updated and theoretical rationale for Interaction. How to be effective and efficient in meeting diverse student needs. Terry Anderson (2003)
Wagner’s (1994) “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions. Interactions occur when these objects and events mutually influence one another” (p. 8).
A comment left on a blog is therefore a reciprocal interaction, like an asynchronous discussion in a forum, as there are two people (subjects) with in respective cases two objects (the blog and the comment) and two actions (the writing of the blog, the composition of a response in the form of a comment).
This does not, as Anderson suggests, negate Daniel and Marquis’s (1998) definition of interaction needing to refer “in a restrictive manner to cover only those activities where the student is in two-way contact with another person (or persons)” (Daniel and Marquis, 1988, p. 339). In 1989 they could not have known how texting would develop into meaningful interaction between two or more people, or the way in which asynchronous discussion could occur online.
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Sims (1999) argues that interactivity allows for learner control, adaptation of the learner program, various forms of participation and communication, and as aiding the development of meaningful learning.
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Lipman (1991) and Wenger (2001) say that interactivity is fundamental to the creation of the learning communities.
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Jonassen (1991) says that another person’s perspective is a key learning component in constructivist learning theories.
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Langer (1989) says that interaction develops mindfulness in learners.
There is a history of interaction as a theory in education
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Dewey (1916) from inert information from another to your own understanding and interpretation in your head.
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Holmberg (1989) between tutor and student, whether postal or on the phone.
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Laurilard (1997) interaction between tutor, content and students.
The difference between formal and informal learning.
One, Anderson argues, is purposively designed to have a learning outcome. Though I do wonder, based on a recent Elluminate session in which we considered a formal and informal learning design for teaching The Green Cross Code if the informal miss has greater impact, the shock of the unexpected when you are nearly hit … Or as a driver or passenger you nearly hit (or even do hit) another?
Since both formal and informal learning can result from interaction between and amongst students alone, or as result of interaction between student and content, the participation of a teacher cannot be a defining feature of an educational interaction. (Anderson, 2003)
Anderson, 2003 suggested that due to the increasing computational power and storage capacity of computers (Moore’s Law), their increase in functionality when networked (Metcalfe’s Law), and related geometric increases in a host of technical developments (Kurzweil, 1999) created opportunity to transform student-teacher and student-student interaction into enhanced forms of student-content interaction.
In a way the interaction with the content of various kinds in mixed ways that goes on in the head Dewey (1916) has been the goal of the developers of interactive learning all along, in the training context this has occurred as facilitator-led learning was gradually transcended by workbooks in the 1980s, video-led and interactive (on laser-disc then Interactive DVD before) in the 1990s before efforts occurred to migrate content and interactivity to the web from the 1990s.
The multiple interplay of Anderson and Garrison’s (1998) Fig. 1 rings true, though how content without a student or teacher interloper baffles me and in 2011 teacher in the broadest sense should take in all educators and ancillary stakeholders.
There is no single medium that supports the educational experience in a manner that is superior in all ways to that supported via other media.
Clark’s (1994), Kozma’s (1994) Russell (2000) and many others show that there is ’a complicated interaction between content, student preference and need, institutional capacity and preference, and teaching and learning approaches to learning’.
There is also evidence that many students deliberately choose learning programs that allow them to minimize the amount of student-teacher and student-student interaction required (May, 2003; Kramarae, 2003).
While Anderson (2003) concludes that there is ’a wide range of need and preference for different combinations of paced and un-paced, synchronous and asynchronous activity, and also a strong desire for variety and exposure to different modes and modularities of educational provision and activity.’
From these observations and from the literature debate, Anderson developed an equivalency theorem as follows:
Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction is at a high level:
• Student–teacher
• Student-student
• Student-content
The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.
High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience.
This theorem implies that an instructional designer can substitute one type of interaction for one of the others (at the same level) with little loss in educational effectiveness – thus the label of an equivalency theory.
Student-teacher interaction currently has the highest perceived value amongst students, and thus commands highest scores.
There is some evidence to suggest value in “vicarious interaction,” in which non-active participants gain from observing and empathizing with active participants (Sutton, 2001; Fulford and Zhang, 1993).
Also Cox (2006) with a nod to John Seely- (2007) (both from week 2)
For planning or development purposes, designers are encouraged to build into their programs strategic amounts of each type of interaction, and to develop activities that will encourage this amount of interaction.
This interests me because I wonder if we could take the call-centre principal and apply it to social media, a collective engagement of substance.
At Athabasca University, Anderson writes, students had access (7 days a week, 12 hours a day) to call centre staff. They were equipped with FAQ databases, course syllabi, and a limited amount of content knowledge to answer a wide variety of student inquiries.
Would this help with retention?
It would contribute to engagement. It did contribute to deeper learning. Are we now saying that this interaction must come from fellow students? Or alumni groups in social networks?
I know that in the corporate sector Epic offer clients a ‘call-centre’ like service as they have realised that online interactive learning naturally throws up situations where students want to talk to an informed and sympathetic person. No one wants to be passed from pillow to post. I say this as an informed online learner who has not just had to sleep on a problem, but the nature of responses either send you to sleep or leave you wanting to bang your head against a post.
I loathe this kind of academic language.
This is where academics address each other, a PhD student to their sponsor perhaps. It puts students and the inquisitive mind at arm’s length.
This will change in the Web 2.0 world as this content gets an airing well-beyond its original place in a printed journal and with a few tags and comments gets spread rapidly across thousands rather than a handful of readers.
‘The equivalency theorem proposed in this paper is not as complicated nor as technically detailed as other theories relevant to distance education (e.g., Jaspers, 1991; Saba and Shearer, 1994). However, its simplicity allows it to function as an accessible heuristic for distance education delivery design’. Anderson (2003)
My highlights.
The choice of words then this massive compound-noun says to me this person is trying to sound clever, elitist and worthy of the academic status they aspire to. It is poor communication. Even the chunk of referencing sticks in the gullet. We should in theory reference every word we utter, as none are our own, all could be tagged back to someone, somewhere.
Clarity counts.
By quoting Wilson here Anderson reveals his motives. Sometimes academics what to coin a phrase or word: e-tivity (Salmon, 2002), sometimes a phrase: digital natives (Prensky, 2001, 2003, but read Jones to put this terms where they belong), sometimes a theorem, this one being ‘The Equivalency Theorem’.
Wilson (1997), Anderson tells us, described three functions that a good educational theory performs.
I’ll let you read the conclusion in the paper for these.
My interest is not in developing a theorem, my quest is for understanding that I may then apply.
An important paper, dense, chronological, logical, a great intellect chew.
Anderson (2003) ends with this:
‘I am convinced that many of these alternatives should be focused on creating the most cost effective and accessible alternatives that can scale to meet the burgeoning global demand for effective and affordable life-long learning opportunities. In most cases, these models will drastically reduce the amount of teacher-student interaction, and substitute it with increased student-student and student-content interaction. For many, this scenario is a frightening one, but one that is in keeping with our tradition of expanding educational access and opportunity, and thus not one we should abhor’.
Eight years on I feel like sounding him out.
Was he prescient? Where is he now?
The fact Anderson has missed is the greater desire for increased personalisation, learning tailor to the individual and increased interaction through social networks, with the knowledgeable as well as the ignorant (whether or not they are the person’s tutor or faculty academics).
Actually, the group I find silent are the tutors and academics.
They are too busy with their heads in their professional thoughts unable to offer up a piece of their minds without attaching a price or allocated time to it. Is this the difference between a professional musician and a busker?
REFERENCE
Anderson, T., and Garrison, D.R. (1998). Learning in a networked world: New roles and responsibilities. In C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance Learners in Higher Education. (p. 97-112). Madison, WI.: Atwood Publishing.
Anderson, T. (2003). Modes of interaction in distance education: Recent developments and research questions. In M. Moore (Ed.) Handbook of Distance Education. (p. 129-144). Mahwah, NJ.: Erlbaum.
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Fulford, C. P., and Zhang, S. (1993). Perceptions of Interaction: The critical predictor in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 7(3), 8– 21.
John Seely-Brown October 2007 webcast: http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=1063&s=31 +My notes on this: http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=60469+The transcript of that session: http://learn.open.ac.uk/file.php/7325/block1/H800_B1_Week2a_JSBrown_Transcript.rtf
Jaspers, F. (1991). Interactivity or Instruction? A reaction to Merrill. Educational Technology, 31(3), 21 – 24.
Jonassen, D. (1991). Evaluating constructivistic learning. Educational Technology, 31(10), 28 – 33.
Jones, C (2010) A new generation of learners? The Net Generation and Digital Natives
Kurzweil, R. (1999). The age of spiritual machines. New York: Penguin Group.
Langer, E. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley.
Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in Education. Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press.
Saba, F., and Shearer, R. (1994). Verifying key theoretical concepts in a dynamic model of distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 8(1), 36 – 59.
Salmon, G. (2002) E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning, London, RoutledgeFalmer.
Sims, R. (1999). Interactivity on stage: Strategies for learner-designer communication. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 15(3), 257 – 272. Retrieved May 25, 2002 from: http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/ajet/ajet15/sims.html
Sutton, L. (2001). The principles of vicarious interaction in computer-mediated communications. Journal of Interactive Educational Communications, 7(3), 223 –242. Retrieved July 15, 2003 from: http://www.eas.asu.edu/elearn/research/suttonnew.pdf
Wagner, E.D. (1994). In support of a functional definition of interaction. American Journal of Distance Education, 8(2), 6 – 26.
Wenger, E. (2001). Supporting communities of practice: A survey of community-orientated technologies. (1.3 Ed.) Shareware. Retrieved Mar 12, 2003 from: http://www.ewenger.com/tech/
Wilson, B. (1997). Thoughts on theory in educational technology. Educational Technology, 37(1), 22 – 26.
MAODE H800 A moment of enlightenment
28 July 2011
I would like to be studying an applied MAODE.
This should be a joint collaboration between the Institute of Educational Technology and the Open University Business and Law School.
applied is the operative word.
Not a Masters in Open and Distance Education, but an aMAODE.
18 months ago I signed up to the MAODE (I might have done an MA in Fine Art … for which I was qualified. Where would I be now?)
Never mind
My mother, tutored by Quentin Bell at Durham University in the 1950s, had me teaching fine art somewhere. (Our family for the last four generations seem not to generate progeny until they are at least in their third decade)
Maybe, e-Art?
I may pick this up next and become a e-learning verions of David McAndless.
Information is beautiful
Go Google.
24 months ago several friends signed up to an e-learning course with Sussex University. They are now constructing e-learning, I am not.
Why?
The difference, dare I suggest, is did I want to be a mechanic, or the engineer?
- Can The OU be less precious and offer more of both?
- My first ECA was an entirely practicle, commercial piece of e-learning that was shot down …
- for being blended
- and ‘of this world.’
- It is all ‘of this world’.
It is only learning, not e-learning, but o-learning.
Only Learning.
P.S. It ain’t rocket science. As Martin Weller shows in his VLE book.
What we as potential practioners of online learnning is a dip in the training pool. As a Swimming Coach, and former competitive swimmer, what strikes me is that I am yet to stick my toes in the water.
Frankly, my concern, is that if I come up with another commercial e-learning project for an ECA it will like the other one be rubbished because the markers are looking for an academic paper, not a viable e-learning project.
This is where the tectonic plates of theory and practice meet. Is anyone on the MAODE doing it to become an academic?
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| From Drop Box |
(Note to self a month later … it is applied. In every module, particularly H807 ‘Innovations in E-Learning’ we are constantly pressed to put e-learning in an applied context with which we are familiar)
The Digital Scholar : Martin Weller (Notes)
11 Sep 11
COVER TO COVER
I developed a craving a year ago to read a book from cover to cover, rather than reading papers or bits of papers. Initially I got the book in the post, then to a Kindle. And now on an iPad and iPhone too. So the last three days I’ve read Martin Weller’s new book ‘The Digital Scholar.’ Read on, or read to me on the Kindle while I took notes on the iPad.
Notes run to several pages, all rather cryptic at the moment.
If you’e doing the MAODE the other books I would recommend are:
- Diffusion of Innovations. (5th Ed 2005) Rogers.
- Educationl Psychology. (1926) Vygotsky
- Rethinking Pedagogy in a Digital Age. (2007) Beetham & Sharpe (eds)
This is one of fifty+ points I’ve noted from the book
‘This is a period of transition for scholarship, as significant as any other in its history, from the founding of universities to the establishment of peer review and the scientific method. It is also a period that holds tension and even some paradoxes: it is both business as usual and yet a time for considerable change; individual scholars are being highly innovative and yet the overall picture is one of reluctance; technology is creating new opportunities while simultaneously generating new concerns and problems’.
Weller (2011)
Use of mobile devices in e-learning
The Kukulska-Hulme et al 2011 report ‘Mature Students using mobile devices in life and learning’ may be a recent publication (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning Jan-march 2001) but draws its conclusions on research undertaken in between May 2008 and April 2009.
Technologically and in relation to the potential for e-learning a great deal has happened since then.
In industry would we not expert a report, say from Nielsen or Monitor, to have been done in the last six months?
In the technology sector old news is redundant.
By 2009 PDAs were virtually extinct and we were about to experience the launch of the iPad. Since 2009 smart phones have graduated – they’re bright in many ways.
Like their users?
Bright people with the means quickly find ways to put these tools to work, extending their reach to their online course, for materials, forums and assessment alerts, to organise their study time around their diary.
FROM THE ABSTRACT
‘In today;s global marketplace, educators must know the technology habits and expectations of their students, including those from other countries.’ (Kukulska-Hulme et al, 2001:18) FROM THE INTRODUCTION “Learners can be active makers and shapers of their own learning. They should be supported in using technologies of their own choice where appropriate”. (JISC, 2009, p.51) Mobile (as they were) will not necessarily be readily adapted for learning. Ergonomic, pedagogical, psychological and environmental facts and the issue of cost (Stockwell, 2008) More widespread adoption by students and teachers is likely to follow. (ibid 2011:19) A convenient and powerful tool for learning. In an age when “communities are jumping across technologies” as needs and trends evolve (Wenger, 2010), educators and researchers also have to stay informed about how learners use personal technologies as members of communities that may be social, work-related or educational’. Decreasing institutional control Jones, Ramanau, Cross and Healing (2010) have critiqued the ‘new generation’ arguments, concluding that “overall there is growing theoretical and empirical evidence that casts doubt on the idea that there is a defined new generation of young people with common characteristics related to their exposure to digital technologies through-out their life (p.6) Notable minorities- Internet to download or upload materials
- Contribute to blogs and wiki and engage with virtual worlds (ibid p.21)
- Learning
- Social Interaction
- Entertainment
- Work
- About yourself
- use of mobile devices
- Being part of groups and communities
- Specific uses for mobile devices
- Mobile devices for learning
- There are receptive, productive and communicative uses
- Respondents are using mobile devices to capture ideas and experiences
- Mobile devices have a useful function as tools that remind he user about what she/he has to do.
- Respondents make use of a range of applications for informal learning.
- One function of games is to fill gaps ion the day.
- Some respondents appear to be drawing boundaries around disparate uses
- The mobile phone features as an alternative means of communications and to support physical mobility, e.g. as an alternative to having a land line or when work involves travelling.
RE: LEARNING
- Contact with others
- Access to information and answers
- Reading e-Books
- Listening to Podcasts
- Scheduling
RE: MORE UNUSUAL USES:
- Recording one’s voice
- Replay on iPod
- Taking photos
- Contacting experts in other fields
- Uploading notes to blog
- Windows Live Messenger
- MSN
- Sky[e
- Language learning
- Finding information
- Headphones to shut out distractions
- Productive activities
- Permanency of taking notes: paper is easily lost
- Multipurpose; yo can take your work/entertainment with you
- Can combine work with a run with listening to a podcast
- Podcasts give access to unique historical/scientific content
- Suits auditory learners
- Closer relationship between students and teacher
- Multimedia in one small device is a timesaver for teachers
- Instant documentation of whiteboard notes
- Taking photos of overhead slides
- Help with learning disabilities
- Alternative news source/breaking news/immediate first hand reports
- Helps maintain a public diary with a community dimension
- Quick way to learn
- Gets you outdoors
- Field trips become more fruitful and challenging
- Using apps on the phone including Facebook and MSN
- Using GPS to find places
- Watching movies, TV, shows, vodcasts
- Listening to audio book,s podcasts
- Being part of micro-blogging communities e.g. Twitter
- Browsing websites
- Using location-based services, e.g. to find nearby taxis, banks, restaurants, etc.
- No longer having a land line.
Mobile device use is a fast-changing field that reflects rapid social changes as well as the increasing availability and smarter marketing of new devices. (ibid, 2011:32)
Micro-blog – are becoming more widespread, and we wold expect these uses to figure more prominently in the future. (2011:32)
Slate devices Apple iPad.
Several universities now offer ‘apps’ for smartphones using platforms such as Campus M.
Our findings indicate that institutions planning to offer mobile apps should build on the existing preferences of students for social communication. listening to audio, watching video and reading short texts if the apps are successfully to enhance the learning experience. (2011:32)
When students are offered appropriate mobile resources then they will use them. (2011:32)
We agree with Kennedy et al (2008) that ‘an evidence-based understanding of students’ technological experiences is vital in informing higher education policy and practice.’ (p. 109)
Pressures of study and assignment deadlines lead them to seek effective solutions to immediate needs on the go. (2011:33)
Avoid a ‘proadoption bias’
Futhermore, since the use of a mobile device represents a new technological means of reading books, articles and news, this might have an impact on how, and how much, students read, however further research would be needed. (2011:33)
The landscape of mobile devices has changed since our survey with some devices (standalone PDAs) becoming almost extinct and others (handheld GPS) endangered. (2011:33)
In favour of smart mobile phones and tablet devices.
REFERENCE
Bruns, A. (2005) ‘Anyone can edit’: understanding the produser. Retrieved from http;//snurb.info/index. php?q=node/s86 Conole, G (2007) Describing learning activities: Tools and resources to guide practice. In Beetham, H, & Sharpe, R (eds.), Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and delivering e-learning (pp.81-91) London, UK: RoutledgeKukulska-Hulme, Agnes, John Pettit, Linda Bradley, Ana A. Carvalho, Anthony Herrington, David M. Kennedy, and Aisha Walker. “Mature Students Using Mobile Devices in Life and Learning.” IJMBL 3.1 (2011): 18-52. accessed (May 22, 2011)
JISC. (2009). Effetive Pratice in a Digital Age: A guide to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivedigital-age.aspx
Rogers, E.M. (2005) Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.) New York, NY: Free Press
Jones, C.R., Ramanau,R., Cross, S., & Healing, G. (2010) Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university? Computers & Education, 54(3), 722-732. doi. 10.1016/j.compendu.2009.09.022
Stockwell, g (2008) Investigation learner preparedness for and usage patterns of mobile learning. ReCALL, 20(3), 253-270. doi.10.1017/S058344008000232.
Trinder,k., Guiller,j., Margaryan,A., Littlejohn,A., & Nicol,D. (2008). Learning from digital natives: bridging formal and informal learning. Retrieved from http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents?LDN%20FINAL%eport.pdf
Wenger, E (2010). SIKM community presentation online. Theme: REthinking Ourselves (KM People) as Technology Stewards. Retrieved from http://technologyforcommunities.com
Related articles
- Mobile devices, mobile learners and Web 2.0 (mymindbursts.com)
- Here’s how to improve retention in e-learning – scaffolding, mentors, interaction and community (mymindbursts.com)
- Edutopia: A Guide to Mobile Devices for Learning (wired.com)
Making sense of the complexities of e-learning
And is visualised in many ways, Engestrom (2007) <img src=" mce_href=" mce_src="http://learn.open.ac.uk/ mce_href="Mycorrhizae thinks in term of fungi.
My own take is a lichen:
The language you use carries with it connotations and hidden assumptions. You need to make things as clear and as explicit as possible to develop shared meaning and understanding to avoid confusion. Conole (2011:404) Indeed. Conole in one sentence manages several metaphors:
· Different lenses
· Digital landscape
· Navigate through this space
So we’ve go camera lenses/how the eye sees, we have a landscape that has a physical presence, where a digital one does not and then we have an image of a Tall Ship on an ocean passing through this landscape (or at least I do). You might see a GPS device, a map and compass on a the Yorkshire Fells. Language creates images in our minds eye. The danger of a metaphor is when it creates parameters or absolutes.
I find it problematic that descpite the tools around us we are obliged to communicate with words. We could use images, we can use live audio, but we are yet to construct and respond to these activites with a piece to webcam.
Conole and Oliver mention four levels of description:
1. Flat vocabulary
2. More complex vocabulary
3. Classification schemas or models
4. Metaphors
Which is the most persuasive? The most effective and memorable?
This set of words is used to describe cloudworks. Only the last stands out as pertinent to Web 2.0 and the kinds of apt terms for e-learning 2011.
-
Practice
-
Design
-
Case study
-
Resource
-
Design template
-
Link to site
-
Request for advice
-
Evolving dialogue
Metaphors are indeed ‘powerful ways of meaning making’. (Conole. 2011.406)
Ref: Metaphors we live by. Lakoff and Johnson (1980)
Over the last 18 months I have returned repeatedly to the importance and value of metaphors, drawing on neuroscience and literature. There are 28 entries in which metaphor is discussed. This is perhaps the most insightful as it draws on an article in the New Scientist.
Morgan’s Metaphors discussed by Conole, White and Oliver (2007)
1. Machines
2. Brains
3. Organisms
4. Cultures
5. Political systems
Whatever works for you, but importantly, what you can use that is comprehended by others.
Presenting on Social Media over the last few weeks I have repeatedly used images of the Solar System to develop ideas of gravity and magnitude, spheres of influence and impacts. It is one way to try and make sense of it. The other one I use is the water-cycle, but as that can turn into an A’ Level geography class.
Some futher thoughts from Conole
‘These and other tools are beginning to enable us to embed more meaning in the objects and connections within the digital space. The tools can also be used to navigate through the digital space, providing particular narrative paths of meaning to address different goals or interests.’ (Conole, 2011:409)
‘The approach needs to shift to harnessing the networked aspects of new technologies, so that individuals foster their own set of meaningful connections to support their practice, whether this be teachers and seeking connections to support them in developing and delivering their teaching, or learners in search of connections to support and evidence of their learning. (Conole. 2011:410)
‘Those not engaging with technologies or without access are getting left further and further behind. We need to be mindful that the egalitarian, liberal view of new technologies is a myth; power and dynamics remain, niches develop and evolve. Applications of metaphorical notions of ecology, culture and politics can help us better understand and deal with these complexities. (Conole. 2011:410)
How do we describe and make sense of digital environments?
It is complex and multifaceted
Does mobile learning change everything?
Mobile Learning
Discussing this with Ian Singleton of icanplayit.com two weeks ago, I was Linked In to the author from JISC Doug Belshaw a few days later.
This conversation could soon link to a myriad of people cited and listed in the JISC report on Mobile and Wireless Technologies. This smorgasbord of a review will take a few weeks to consume; I’ll want the recipe and I’ll be back for more, repeatedly. It is a module in its own right.
It requires the early morning to take a three hour stab at this. Kukulska-Hulme (2010) says “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
As a student of e-learning the value of Doug Belshaw’s JISC review is broad. Whilst mobile learning is the main theme, there is a suitable warming up to the topic via the development of e-learning and a broad acknowledgement of the key thinkers of pedagogy which touches on innovations in learning and the debunking of Prensky and his idea of digital natives.
It makes a good read for anyone studying Open and Distance Education with the Open University.
The theme that the author may not have seen that is pervasive throughout, is the idea of the e-learning entrepreneur; this seems inevitable with a device and technology that puts learning into the pocket of the learner.
Laptops and smartphones become a learn as I please, when and where I want, device. I wonder too, when cameras will become phones?
Reflecting on the devices that got unwrapped this Christmas some of us might prefer the Canon or Sony camera that uploads directly to Facebook, Kodak or Picasa without the interface of phone and laptop, or even a memory card.
If ou can think of it, it has been done.
This is one of those documents that will takes weeks of consideration as I wish to read all the references too, not that I doubt the author, but because often I find thinking such as this is like a digital conversation caught in the wind and there are a dozen other voices speaking at the same time. I’ve not come across Traxler before, for example. He’s cited 12 times in this review.
Though, just because someone else has already done it, does not mean that I might not do it better?
JISC Spotlight The presentation. “Students no longer need to engage with information and discussion at the expense of real life but can do so as part of real life as they move about the world, using their own devices to connect them to people and ideas, ideas and information of their own choosing, perhaps using their own devices to generate and produce content and conversation as well as store and consume them.” (Traxler, 2009, p.70)
Why therefore bother with a traditional university education at all?
Better to go straight to work and learn on the job, not simply as a trainee or apprentice, but by tapping into institutional and corporate learning. This is important The wider mobility of society has led to ‘approx-meetings’ and ‘socially negotiated time’ (2009:73) which, although mobile devices have not been designed specifically for educational purposes, has a knock-on effect upon formal education.
This disruptive effect has both a strong and a weak element, argues Traxler.
The ‘weak’ element of the disruption due to mobile devices in formal education is at the level of nuisance – such as ‘cheating’ during examinations, inappropriate photographs, devices beeping during class time. The ‘strong’ element of disruption, on the other hand, “challenge[s] the authority of the curriculum and the institutions of formal learning” (2009, p.77); students can effectively become gatekeepers and organisers of learning for other students in a way institutions have only been able to do previously.
Given the fragmented nature of the current mobile learning environment, there are multiple definitions of mobile learning; however, most of these definitions recognise the importance of
• context,
• access
• and conversation.
“[Mobile learning involves the] exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to facilitate, support enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning”
(www.molenet.org.uk/about)
Due to funding arrangements, which sector is involved, and country-specific contexts, mobile learning means different things to different communities.
• On the go
• Every day
• Between classes and home (and work)
• Conflicts of complements formal learning
• More interactive
Woodill (2010:53) identifies seven main affordances of mobile learning:
1. Mobility
2. Ubiquity
3. Accessibility
4. Connectivity
5. Context sensitivity
6. Individuality
7. Creativity
REFERENCE
Belshaw (201) Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review 2010 Doug Belshaw, JISC infoNet
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Learning in a Mobile Age’ (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1), 1-12, January-March 2009)
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Students and mobile devices: choosing which dream’ (in ALT-C 2009 “In dreams begins responsibility” – choice, evidence and change, Traxler, John (Professor of Mobile Learning, University of Wolverhampton)
Technology Enhanced as taught by the Open University Masters in Open & Distance Education (MAODE)
End-of-module assessment question (EMA)
Length: 6,000 words. Cut-off date 26 September 2011
- consolidate and reflect on your experience this year
- pursue your interests within a specified framework.
EMA, Part A. Digital technologies: experience and evidence (about 2,500 words)
Choose two digital technologies that you have used this year as a learner.
If you have doubts about whether your choice of technologies is appropriate, please consult your tutor.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For each technology that you choose, explain how it has been used for teaching and learning, and what you judge to be the strengths and weaknesses of such use(s) in one or more contexts that you specify.
- FORUMS
- MOBILE
Support your arguments by providing evidence from all of the following four sources:
- Your own experience of the technology within and/or outside H800 and, if possible, the personal experience of other learners – for example, H800 students, or others outside H800. Include examples and, where appropriate, brief quotations to illustrate your own and others’ experiences.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials – the web pages on the website and/or materials (readings, blogs, YouTube, webcasts and so on) linked from the site.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research that you find outside the H800 website – through your own searching and/or through sharing with other learners inside and/or outside H800.
- Brief numerical evidence – for example, of the kind that is explored in the first paper in TMA04 – from within or from outside H800. Use it to back up your arguments about one or both of your technologies.
INTRODUCTION
‘The first decade of the 21st century is already on the wane and we stand at an interesting point as regards the use of technology to support and enhance learning and teaching. The fact that we still refer to much of this enhancement as e.learning (and still disagree about what the term actually means) signals that the relationship between technology and learning is not as yet an entirely comfortable one.’ (REFERENCE JISC 2007 (Introduction)
- High-performance computing and advanced networking are ubiquitous
- Internet has matured
- Becoming a viable educational platform
- Have cell phones
Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008
FORUMS online may be synchronous or asynchronous, that is experienced in real time or not. They may, particularly when synchronous, be voice-led whilst asynchronicity lends itself to text. Increased speeds, experience, improving, competing and complementary technologies has produced and is producing a plethora of choices regarding the affordances and popularity of particular forums and even puts into question the way a virtual learning environment competes and complements a personal learning environment.
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
MOBILE online learning differentiates between static systems such as a desktop computers, whether at home, the workplace or educational institution, and devices, through increasing miniturisation have become more and more portable, from laptops, to increasingly ‘smart’ mobile phones and most recently tablets, touchscreen computers of A5 size or less. To be mobile implies away from a desk, unhindered by cables, with a device that is portable, even pocket portable rather than in a brief-case or shoulder carrier.
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
ONE
FORUMS online became possible as the technology, connections and broadening availability and use of computers allowed institutions to attempt to recreate what would occur face-to-face in terms of formal tutorials or peer-group gatherings. There has always been a dichotomy between institutional offerings and what students did themselves, on the one hand building on old practices in the new world of what was still called ‘new media’ a decade ago whilst developing innovative and new ways of doing things. At the forefront of developing computer-based learning the OU through the Institute of Educational Technology and Knowledge Media Institute began to offer ways for students and educators to meet and share online in the late 1990s, signed up for H801, the original Masters in Open and Distance Learning, I have first hand experience of the ListServe forum that in essence aggregated short messages in a feed that was ostensibly asynchronous unless people happened to be online at the same time (in which case we’d debunk to Microsoft messaging). A decade later the advance of computing, the increasingly seamless interaction online, the development of intuitive, playful, reliable tools with broadband speeds and robust devices has seen increasing successful recreation of the affordances of live, face-to-face tutorials, seminars, lectures and conferences from the intimate to the arena in scale, while also new ways of doing things are constantly being developed, trialed, used, improved, drop in or out of favour and funding. Crucially, longitutdinal research has been vital to understand and track the trends, but also we have moved from a decade in the 1990s where ‘change’ was becoming a corporate way of life, to an online experience today that is fluid and not just invasive but part of many people’s everyday lives – all day, wherever they maybe.
- Personal experiences of others in H800
Week 12 Activity 1. Interpretting John Naughton. In which Joanne Pratt tries again after reading Amanda’s blog, then offers examples of a lexigraphic explanation of the minutiea of John Naughton’s persuasive writing style. (2 May, 21:12 (accessed 7 May 2011) Identified, shared with further notes in my blog (Ecphonesis! Lots of work to do here – fun times ahead. 7 May, 06:45 In response to a fellow students H800 Week 12 blog entry)
I comment ‘This is why these conversations are so vital; it brings the exercise alive and takes you in directions the learning designers could never have imagined. My head hurts, yet there is no less a desire to understand the terms used to describe rhetoric as there is a desire to revisit quantitative and qualitative analysis, the various correlation techniques and interpretations used, in order to be able, eventually, to draw my own conclusions from Richardson’s research’. Having had
TO JANET AND JOANNE (12 May 2011)
<<For me, this is a key point relating to learner choices, ownership and boundaries. Should a learner be required to ‘open up’ their personal networks to include tutors/education institutions?>>
The idea of and value of ‘exposure’ has been debated since the early days of blogging. I could call up entries from 2001/2002. The feeling, amongst those of us who felt like blogging pioneers, was that by opening up we shared our common humanity and in many respects become less lonely souls as a result (not that I didn’t need additional companionship being happily married to my soul mate with two small children at the time!). This kind of blog is a genre in its own right amongst the thousands of genres on 120 million + blogs.
A formal forum discussion that engaged, running from the 8th to the 20th May, 67 entries, student initiate, 9 participants, over 12,000 words. (Wk 13: Activity 1c: The Learner Experience 9 May 2011, 17:48 Janet Gray Post 14 in reply to 8 ) http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=470597
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials
The world of work is increasingly collaborate driven by increasingly the global and cooperative nature of business. Horizon 2011
‘Consider this medium as like talking with your fingers – half-way between spoken conversation and written discourse.’ (Hawkridge, Morgan and Jeffs, 1997, quotes in Salmon 2005) REFERENCE Salmon, G (2005) E-moderating. The Key to teaching and learning online.
What matters is engagement.
Someone may need to act as the ‘eyes & ears’ for the group until it is established. Introductions have to be made, conversations started and moved along … if anyone is rude, they should be quietly put in their place; if anyone is being like a door-mouse, they need support.
‘The essential role of the e-moderator is promoting human interaction and communication through the modelling, conveying and building of knowledge and skills’. (Salmon, 2005:4)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings outside the H800 materials
Discussion is the key. The tutor DOES NOT need to be a subject matter expert. See my interview with Oxford Senior Lecturer Dr Zbigniew
Pelczynski.H800 51 Wk11 Why this is like talking with your fingers
FROM MY BLOG (25 April 2011)
Why I participate in some forums and not others.
- Start the ball rolling
- to get through the week’s work
- no one else has made a start.
- I may fret about covering all bases
It can be like chosing a restaurant
- You want to go where there’s some buzz already, though not so much that you feel you will never be able to join in the conversation.
- This is an asynchronous beast. If I come in late I may read every post with care before I respond, which can result in a long response.
- People should feel just as comfortable simply answering the question, ignoring others at first .. or just reading the last couple of posts and responding to them.
- I might quote them in my own group. There have been times when lifting the thread of catalyst that got them going in another group will do the same in your own.
- It is tempting to respond to someone in a DIFFERENT tutor group
- At Harvard they use as system called ‘Rotisserie’ in some asynchronous threads/forums which, like playing pass the parcel (or pass the microphone) require people to take it in turns to say something.
- It matters that activities have been designed that get people engaged without the need for a tutor all the time.
‘Structured, paced and carefully constructed e-tivities reduce the amount of e-moderator time, and impact directly on satisfactory learning outcomes, adding value to the investment in learning technologies’.(Salmon, 2002a)
(Blog 19 January 2011) My interpreation, visualised, of what life-long means from H807.
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28)
(Blog 25 September 2010) Why do the Plenck 2010 forums work?
Many themes. It is your choice to join. Updates are sent to your email. You read and add, return to the parent, and comment.
They are seasoned e-educators and lucid. It is more jamming around a piano.
You have three hours in which to return to your post and edit, add or delete.
People don’t question the set up, they just get on with it. Do we write about what it is to put words onto a sheet of paper with a pen? Or do we say something?
(Blog 9 September 2010) A tutorial works best one-to-one (like therapy), face-to-face, or in a small group, say six at most, discussing in an synchronous environment.
(James Turner, Policy Director at the Sutton Trust suggested supplementary tutoring of school students one-to-one was most common, two-to-one worked even better because of the collaboratory experience. BBC Radio 4 10.00 Tuesday 7th September 2010, Accessed again 16.00 Saturday 12th September 2010)
- Numerical evidence
MOBILE
“[Mobile learning involves the] exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to facilitate, support enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning”
(www.molenet.org.uk/about)
The increasingly portable nature of computing hardware and technologies has progressed for three decades or more as the earliest efforts of mobile wordprocessing – the Microwriter, the popularisation of computing with the BBC micro-computer, then on to laptops that become ligher, smaller, faster and more robust, to palm devices such as the Psion and hand-sized PDAs, and the gradual merging of all manner of peronsonal, portable devices that carried music, organisers, phone technology and more, with MP3 players popularised by ipods, then the spread of mobile phones, in particular inexpensive communicating through text that brings us to 2011 and light, very powerful two-part keyboard and screen laptops, single part touch-screen tablets of various sizes that are becoming indistinguisable from smartphones. Uptake and support for various devices has been made possible as networks spread, the technology became faster, less expensive and widespread, and importantly a combination of content and communication made the devices increasingy appealing, powerful and personal.
- Personal experiences of others in H800:
Fig 2.1. Types and functionality of mobile devices. Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler (2005:07)
REF: Kukulska-Hulme, A. and Traxler, J (2005) Mobile Learning. A handbook for educators and trainers.
The mobile promise – “that individuals will engage in learning at times when formerly they would have been doing something else; that they will be motivated to learn partly because the devices are attractive; that the devices enable communication from places where formerly it wasn’t possible; that formal learning can mesh with existing patterns of self publishing and online participation; and that mobile devices are particularly suited to multitasking, said to be one of the strengths of the ‘millennial generation’ (McMahon & Pospisil, 2005).”
REF: MacMahon, M., Pospisil, R. (2005 pp421-431) Laptops for digital lifestyle: Millenial students and wireless mobile technologies.
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/49_McMahon%20&%20Pospisil.pdf
Attendance at Learning Technologies 2011 and subsequent use of a Sony Flip for itnerviews and surverys.
Armed with a Kindle with the Swim Drills book loaded I was poolside teaching and coaching swimmers for three hours.
For the last year I have run programmes based on drills in ‘The Swim Drills Book’ and have relied on lesson plans and sometimes laminated print outs.
Today I took the Kindle
From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:04) ‘Standing Streamline Ruben Guzman.
Never before have I found the swimmers so attentive, coming close to the side of the pool to look at the pictures.
Here is a great drill to develop streamlining
From The Swimming Drill Book (2006:06) ‘Streamline Float’ Ruben Guzman.
They start in what we call ‘Dead Swimmer’ then straighten up, arms first, then legs into the ‘streamline position.’ They then kick off, add a few strokes and continue up the pool.
They got, far quicker than my efforts to demonstrate and talk them through.
- Simple.
- The pictures say it all.
- Is this mobile learning?
- Whatever it is, this works.
- Producers
‘Our findings indicate that institutions planning to offer mobile apps should build on the existing preferences of students for social communication. Listening to audio, watching video and reading short texts if the apps are successfully to enhance the learning experience’. (Kukulska-HUlme 2011:32
Personalisation
“Learners can be active makers and shapers of their own learning. They should be supported in using technologies of their own choice where appropriate”. (JISC, 2009, p.51)
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings in the H800 materials
Mobile computing not just with laptop computers but also with cellular phones, internet-telephony, videoconferencing, screen sharing, remote collaboration technologies, and immersive graphical environments make distributed collaboration and interaction much richer and more realistic. Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008 (REFERENCE wk21-22)
‘Patterns of usage differ widely, and the fit between people’s lives and the devices they use can be very close.’ (Pettit and Kukulska-Hulme, 2007, p.28) REFERENCE Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
- Relevant ideas, arguments and research findings outside the H800 materials
Many Open University students combine work and study; consequently learning in a number of places, or on the move, becomes a habit.
Informal learning and social interactions are also increasingly recognised as important components of a person’s ‘learning life’. Academic and support staff are part of this revolution.
Mobile learning is very flexible: it can be the sole mode of delivery, a significant learning activity, or just a small part of a print-based or online course.
The key points (largely from an IET Agnes Kukulska-Hulme Report Kukulska-Hulme, 2010:10)
Mobile learning is:
- Very flexible
- Appropriate/supportive
- New
- Convenient
- Contemporary
- Practical
- Beneficial
- Has its own unique affordances/advantages
- Personal/personalised
- Spontaneous
- Immediate
- Extends access to materials not replacement technology)
- Locational
- Universal (ish)
- Leap-frog technology in Africa
- Engaging
- Expected
REFERENCE LEARNING AND TEACHING GUIDES FROM IET. MOBILE LEARNING. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, with case studies by Anna Page.
Kukulska-Hulme (2010) says “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
‘E’ is a fact of learning life, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme (2010) is quoted thus in the JISC Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review, “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years’ time it may no longer be distinguishable from ‘just learning’.”
A distance learner’s mobile device (at the Open University) can be used as a way to:
- carry around study materials
- aces new or additional content
- build up a series of personal notes
- help make or maintain communications between different contexts
Supported by VLE 2.0 and Moodle 2.0
- organised personal learning schedules
- give feedback, opinions or answers
- get quick information or support
- communicate with other learners or tutors
The initial aim of the group is to develop applications around four key areas:
- Enhancing Open University brand and awareness
- Attracting students to new courses
- Making existing course material accessible for mobile study
- Prototyping innovative learning concepts
Woodill (2010:53) identifies seven main affordances of mobile learning:
1. Mobility
2. Ubiquity
3. Accessibility
4. Connectivity
5. Context sensitivity
6. Individuality
7. Creativity
Personalisation. user generated content. Bruns (2005) Produsers
- Numerical evidence
We agree with Kennedy et al (2008) that ‘an evidence-based understanding of students’ technological experiences is vital in informing higher education policy and practice.’ (p. 109)
(93% UK penetration by 2008, presumably more in 2011). More from Mobisite
More in Cloudworks
2% of OU students (4,000 or so) use tablets (not just iPads). 11% use SmartPhones (not just iPhones).
Smartphone Survey (http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey/)
Smartphone Stats, The Digital News Test Kitchen, August 2011
http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey
Martin Weller implies that a VLE constrains because ‘There are so many fantastic tools out there that are free and robust and easy to use.’ (WK21-22 Activity 2d VLE vs. PLE who wins? REFERENCE)
It is the combination of physically being ‘free’ to roam with a robust mobile device, as OU MBA students Lt. Col. Sean Brady put it, a ‘university in your pocket’ (REFERENCE) and a playful, personalisation and desired ‘freedom’ to do things your way at a time and place that suits you, that enables learning to take place away from the learning institution, library or desk, unfettered by a bag of books and files. Mobility and immediacy, exposure to new, or similar products and tools, fashion, peer group, nature of the subject they are studying, their ambitions, who they are, how much time they have, their kit, connection and inclinations, let alone the context of where they are going online and most importantly the means to communicate this instantly through microblogging, blogging, social networks, email and text facilitates and fuels further development, the millions of people online making development commercially viable.
Taking advantage of participation (Seely-Brown), learning on the periphery (Seely-Brown), vicarious learning (Cox) and if you can get your tongue around it ‘serendipitous learning.’ (me I think). (WK21 Activity 1c Web 2.0 Tools for learning REFERENCE) Conole (2011) invites us to use ‘metaphors for meaning making’.
- traffic light
- nurture
- swimming
- hub
- serendipity
- water-cycle
Expressed in various forms in charts from Dion Hinchcliffe.
Accessibility: Regarding the failure to turn a 4 day face-to-face course into a blended course of one day face-to-face, then online with four additional option. ‘Most of these problems seem to be rooted in bad connectivity which made communication difficult and audio discussions impossible’.
University of Derby, Online delivery of MSc Strategic management in Africa (Rachel Stern’s blog 5 March 2010)
(http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/derby/index_html1)
One in three of com 2011
10 % of all UK web traffic
100,000 in Indonesia learning English through SMS messages.
INEQUALITY
300 million fewer than male worldwide (women and mobile: a global opportunity
See issues of accessibility from H807 and H810.
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Inaugural Lecture, August 2011
‘Furthermore, since the use of a mobile device represents a new technological means of reading books, articles and news, this might have an impact on how, and how much, students read, however further research would be needed’. (2011:33)
This cover 20 benefits of mobile learning though.
‘We consider that learners who use handheld mobile devices (e.g., their phones and mp3-players) to support their learning constitute a minority at the present time. We agree that their age seems less important than their position as early adopters and instigators of change through their influence among their peers and through their networks’. (2011:19)
PART A CONCLUSION
Both Forums and Mobile
In an age when “communities are jumping across technologies” as needs and trends evolve (Wenger, 2010), educators and researchers also have to stay informed about how learners use personal technologies as members of communities that may be social, work-related or educational’.
REFERENCE
Belshaw (201) Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review 2010 Doug Belshaw, JISC infoNet
Brady, S. http://blogs.ft.com/mba-blog/2011/06/22/distance-learning-or-nearness-learning/#axzz1WbbnlExG
Bruns, A. (2005) ‘Anyone can edit’: understanding the produser. Retrieved from http;//snurb.info/index. php?q=node/s86
Guzman, R (2007) The Swim Drills Book
JISC. (2009). Effective Practice in a Digital Age: A guide to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. Retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivedigital-age.aspx
Pettit, John and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes (2007). Going with the grain: mobile devices in practice. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(1), pp. 17–33.
Kerfoot, B.P., Armstrong,E.G., O’Sullivan,P.N., (XXXXX) Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination:A Randomized Controlled Trial
Rogers, E.M. (2005) Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.) New York, NY: Free Press
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Learning in a Mobile Age’ (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1), 1-12, January-March 2009)
Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Students and mobile devices: choosing which dream’ (in ALT-C 2009 “In dreams begins responsibility” – choice, evidence and change, Traxler, John (Professor of Mobile Learning, University of Wolverhampton)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMA, Part B. Digital technologies: your recommendations (about 1,250 words)
For each of the two technologies you have chosen, set out your key recommendations for other practitioners in terms of how they might use each one, making sure that you specify the context(s) you are referring to. Include some brief numerical evidence (as with Part A) to support one or more of your recommendations in Part B.
For each recommendation, indicate how confident you can be (‘high’, ‘medium’ or ‘low’) in the light of the evidence you have used in Part A, explaining your reasons. Conflicting evidence, for example, is likely to lead to a ‘low’ or ‘medium’ rating.
For each technology, state the areas where you consider additional research is needed into the ways in which that technology can be used.
EMA, Part C. Digital technologies: your design or specification (about 1,250 words)
For one of the technologies that you wrote about in Parts A and B:
- Design a learning activity, or create a specification for a module or training package, that uses this technology.
- Explain: the characteristics of the learners; their previous knowledge (as far as you can tell) both of the technology and of any subject matter; the context(s) in which they will be learning; and how (if at all) others will support these learners. The context does not have to be the one(s) you wrote about in Parts A or B.
- Explain any potential barriers your learners may face – including cost, accessibility for students with disabilities, issues of cultural diversity and convenience. Explain how your design or specification takes these into account.
- Set out the learning outcomes that you expect the learners to have achieved by the end of the module/package. (If you’d like guidance on what constitutes a learning outcome, please see H800’s outcomes and/or search the web.)
- Explain your reasons for your design or specification, drawing on the bullet points above and on your thinking in Parts A and B.
- Do not submit the learning material itself; instead, tell your reader what the activity consists of: you may provide a written description, sample text, screenshots, etc. You may use one of the tools introduced in Weeks 8 and 9, or another tool of your choice, to clarify your design. (If you take this route, you may insert the diagram in your main text or – cross-referenced – in the Appendix.) But you can also use text, provided that this will enable the markers to understand what you intend.
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‘The psychological conclusion demands a distribution of repetitions such that some of them should be produced at a later time, separated from the first repetition by a pause’. (Vygotsky, 1926:Location 2686)
OBJECTIVES:
The objective of the study is to investigate the efficacy and acceptability of a novel online educational methodology termed ‘interactive spaced education’ (ISE) as a method to teach the physical examination.
DESIGN:
Randomized control trial.
PARTICIPANTS:
170 second year medical students.
MEASUREMENTS:
- Spaced-education items (questions and explanations)
- Validated by two experts
- Piloted and 36 items selected for inclusion
- 6 spaced-education e-mails each week for a 6 week cycle.
- Students submitted answers to the questions online and received immediate feedback
- An online end-of program survey was administered.
Students do the training, but may still have poor recall a year later. Spacing works.
The spacing effect is the psychological finding that educational encounters that are spaced and repeated over time (spaced distribution) result in more efficient learning and improved learning retention, compared to massed distribution of the educational encounters (bolus education). (P973)
As Vygotsky expressed it 80 years previously:
‘It should also be emphasized that every person has his own customary rate of response, and that any change in this rate, either speeding it up or slowing it down, weakens the force of recall’. (Vygotsky, 1926:Location 2686)
Micro-learning is favoured over more substantial time being given to this. I can imagine many applications.
Mobile over web.
This finding is in stark contrast to the strong resistance we encountered when conducting a recent trial of web-based teaching modules among 693 medical residents and students. In this trial focusing on systems based practice competency education, trainees were expected to spend 20 minutes per week over 9 weeks completing web-based teaching modules (interactive web-pages and online narrated slide presentations). (p977)
And a finaly word from Lev Vygotsky.
‘Rhythm plays a decisive role in the learning process, unifying some of the material, conferring on it a sequential symmetry, and, finally, organizing the various elements into a unified whole’. (Vygotsky, 1926)
REFERENCE
Kerfoot, B, P (2006) SPACED EDUCATION. Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination: A randomized Controlled Trial.
Vygotsky, L (1926) Educational Psychology
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EMA, Part D. Digital technologies: individual and collaborative learning (about 1,000 words)
As your conclusion to your EMA and to your work on H800, think back across your experience of H800 and give your answer to the following:
- To what extent do you find the concepts of ‘individual’ and ‘collaborative’ learning useful in understanding your experience of learning this year – whether on H800 or elsewhere?
Give brief examples to illustrate your experience, and draw on some of the debates and theories in H800 to explain your position (for example, the work of Sfard, Brown, Engeström, Wenger, Säljö). If possible, indicate how your ideas have changed since you wrote TMA01.
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Week 20: TMA03 (1000 words) Jonathan Vernon (T7400886)
Part A. Digital technologies: experience and evidence
Which two technologies do you currently expect to choose, and why?
1. Forums
2. Tablets
Forums as asynchronous and near-synchronous places to listen, comment and contribute have become the online equivalent of the one-to-one, face-to-face tutorial, the face-to-face tutor group, small class, even those moments of serendipity when you meet someone in a corridor, Junior Common Room or by the water-cooler.
Mobility is just one facet of the affordances a tablet offers to the learner; the fascination is to understand how the devices are used, rather than what they were designed to do. From research, blogs and forums the experience of the ‘tablet enabled’ learner suggests that unlike almost defunct hand and palm-held devices, this format will endure.
2. Which of the two technologies (if any) have you used on H800, and which (if any) have you used outside H800?
Forums
Since their development and my being active online since 1999 and starting the MAODL in 2001.
Tablets
Through their proposed exploitation with the new OU MBA and so having a tablet for the last month to explores its educational and other values to learners and the Faculty.
3. Briefly: how has each of these two technologies been used for teaching and learning?
My experience is both as an OU student, primarily for the last 18 months, but including a valuable dip into this environment for seven months in 2001 and now as a member of staff with the OU Faculty of Business and Law.
Regarding the use of tablets for learning, not only using one to do the MAODE it also holds OU MBA course content and incidentally it greatly facilitates the engagement in forums through RSS feeds, email alerts, near instant uploading to forums and the qualities of the tablets themselves in relation to screen size, speed reading, ease of response and so on.
4. For which context(s) will you be discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each technology?
The value to postgraduates working in international organisations on the OU Business School part-time MBA.
5. Briefly: what material will you provide in relation to your own experience of each technology?
Regarding Forums I have both the written record (research, papers, blog entries from 2001) to compare to 2011, as well as the experience of working in both the formal institutional setting, and as a student, embracing and engaging in external forums – all for teaching and learning purposes and blogging about this throughout.
Regarding tablets I have one device and can speak to others using different devices about their experiences with them. Some of this qualified by my blog and forum entries of others regarding their learning experiences with them.
6. Briefly: what material, if any, can you draw from the experience of other learners?
There are fellow students on the MAODE whose permission can be requested regarding their blogging on the use of tablets, indeed these postings informed my request to have such a device. There is research published in 2011 that provides a sound basis for discussion, though the rapidity of change requires something current this can in part be informed, with permissions, by asking specialists in the field of versioning content for Tablets for e-learning in Higher Education.
Where permissions are possible and confidentially isn’t compromised questions can be put to Faculty members regarding the way in which the use of forums for learning online has been conceived.
7. Which H800 materials do you expect to draw on? And which numerical evidence will you draw on, either from within or from outside H800?
Reports can be referred to as they are published. The desire is to draw upon evidential research, both qualitative and quantitative reports, particularly those from the OU Institute of Technology. Resources offered in H800 will be reviewed and the most recent publications identified.
8. If you have already found materials from four sources outside H800: which materials do you expect to draw on, and – in a sentence or two – what is their significance to your EMA? If you have not yet found (all of) them yet, where do you expect to look for them?
Forums
Linkedin Forums on e-learning and social media. Various publications on use of Forums in education including reports from JISC. Research of OU Library current papers.
Tablets
Reports and discussions in various forums, such as NMK (Westminster Metropolitan University) and eLP (Linkedin, moderated by Epic), as well as new publications.
Part B. Digital technologies: your recommendations
9. Briefly: which area(s) of additional research do you think are needed?
The interplay between the Tablet (part Smartphone, part Laptop) and therefore the ease with which it can be used as a communications device enabling live and as-live (synchronous and asynchronous) participation in Forum discussions.
Longitudinal studies of a cohort with these devices coming from undergraduate and postgraduate study.
Niche research on the use of forums and devices in business, particularly collaboration in multi-nationals.
Part C. Digital technologies: your design or specification
10. What type of learning activity or specification do you currently envisage, for which learners and in which context? What do you intend the learners to have learned when they have carried out the activity?
A useful resource would be a specific learning activity related to the management of projects carried out across different cultures with differing management systems.
11. How, in outline, will your design or specification deal with any potential barriers that your learners might face (including cost, accessibility for people with disabilities, cultural diversity and convenience)?
‘Device Agnosticism’ as The OU puts it is as important as other issues regarding access; neither affordability nor disability should be insurmountable barriers.
Part D. Digital technologies: individual and collaborative learning
12. What is your current response (possibly very tentative at this stage) to the question: ‘To what extent do you find the concepts of “individual” and “collaborative” learning useful in understanding your experience of learning this year – whether on H800 or elsewhere?’
Engestrom via Vygotsky.
E-learning is just like a chicken Tika Masala
The idea of thinking of e-learning as a chicken tikka is sound, though I’d perhaps prefer pizza or a Chinese takeaway.
Whether it’s e – learning or m- learning, it must be ME learning.
Chapter 12
Rosemary Luckin, Diane Brewster, Pearce, du Boulay, Siddons – Corbay.
From Mobile Learning:a hand book for educators and trainers. John Traxler and Agnes Kukulksha-Hulme (2005)
I read this on vacation in a couple of days in between learning to surf on the north Cornwall beach of Mawgan Porth. I have barely managed a day without dwelling on either e-learning or social media, dreaming of them even when a signal is difficult to come by (on the knoll above the farmhouse where we are staying).
Written in 2005 and so based on research of the previous five years I have to wonder at my haste to download it (e-book). It takes me back to my own first forays into online learning in 2001 when amongst others FT Knowledge was my account.
The problem with the content is that is is woefully out of date. All the research being done at the time was on the useless PDAs of the time; I stuck with a PSION that served me well as a pocket word-processor.
‘Whichever mode of delivery I choose, the meal I eat will still be Chicken Tikka’. Luckin et al (2005:122)
The only idea of lasting significance that I have taken from the entire book is this one, that and fig.1 which I’m a mind map indicates the many devices that provide mobility, ALL of which now reside in an iPad or iPhone with all problems long ago resolved by commercial organisations rather than any institution who without fail take far too long to commit to anything and invariably design by committee trying to please everyone so put everything in, and rarely consider the commercial feasibility of their actions.
On reflection, ‘take-away’ says it all for e-learning as convenience is everything.
REFERENCE
Luckin,R., Brewster,D., du Boulay, P., Corbay, S. (2005) in Mobile Learning. A handbook for educators and trainers. Edited by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and John Traxler.
What’s the Web 2.0 role of the educator ?
Read Haythornthwaite (2008), ‘Ubiquitous Transformations’: Proceedings of the Networked Learning Conference, Halkidiki, 2008.
QQ1 What evidence is there of this shift towards taking responsibility for learning by the learners themselves?
There will be those who come to learning online who are used to being in control online, so they won’t feel like a pupil entering a classroom, a student in a lecture hall or tutorial, a stranger in a strange land. Rather they will feel it is their domain, at best a shared domain, more like a visit to the leisure centre than to an elitist institution where those in it have progressed as a result of proving their elite status.
‘Internet-based trends that emphasize contribution, conversation, participation, and community exercise a significant impact on learning.’ Haythornthwaite 2008:598
‘Participatory action has now spread to many aspects of daily life, often brought together under the label Web 2.0’. (O’Reilly, 2005). In (Haythornthwaite 2008:598)
It still matters for credibility of the qualification, evidence that you’ve done the work, evidence that you’ve picked the brains of and had your brain picked over by subject matter experts of a reputable established. It matters for the sake of guidance, perhaps the metaphor of railway tracks less appropriate given the freedoms afforded by the mobile internet, but even a kite-surfer has had to take instruction, purchase the right kit, maintain it, then seek and take advice from those wiser and more experienced.
I like the idea of the Learner Leader and picking up on the thinking of Cox on ‘participator learning’ and from John Seely-Brown learning ‘learning from the periphery’.
Where appropriate, participants come to shared definition of meanings through collaborative, conversational interaction.
Such emergent learning practices reinforce ideas from:
·collaborative learning theories (Bruffee, 1993; Koschmann, 1996; Miyake, 2007; Haythornthwaite, Bruce, Andrews, Kazmer, Montague, Preston, 2007),
·model what others have described as the learning behaviour of experts (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996).
In (Haythornthwaite 2008:601)
QQ2 Is Haythornthwaite’s account an idealised version of learner behaviour in your view?
‘These new media lay the foundation for radical transformations in who learns from whom, where, under what circumstances, and for what and whose purpose. In short, they indicate a transformation to ubiquitous learning – a continuous anytime, anywhere, anyone contribution and retrieval of learning materials on and through the Internet and its technologies, communities, niches and social spaces’. (Haythornthwaite 2008:598)
The reality is that we human beings have far more important, pressing and natural urges and desires that incline us towards those around us, and from communities with whom we find we have the greatest affinities. As young adults our intentions and outlooks may shift, but this would occur anyway, the internet offering, to use as 60s view of television, a ‘window on the world’.
This statement denies that learning takes place outside the classroom or away from formal texts. It has always been the case that substantially more learning goes on in the home, at play, from family and friends. All we’ve discovered, like the devices that many of us now carry around, is that we are always turned on.
‘E-learning’ signifies a transformation in learning rather than a transition from off- to on-line (Andrews & Haythornthwaite, 2007).
As Haythornthwaite indicates here, the technologies are not exclusive.
And as Wellman (2002) suggests the contexts in which transformation occurs are diverse, with each one having a different stance. Transformations that do not fit easily with utopian visions accompany distributed practices, including outsourcing, offshoring, disintermediation, and networked individualism (Wellman, 2001), each of which entails a general redistribution of processes and responsibilities to individuals.
The Pew Internet project (Horrigan, 2006) reports that 71% of the adult population surveyed turn to the Internet for science information because of its convenience, and only 13% because they feel it is more accurate.
Where’re not talking about the adult population, we’re talking about specific cohorts of students who could just as well be in primary, secondary, tertiary or postgraduate education. Whilst in the adult population who go online 1% actively blog, in the undergraduate student population this rises to 34%.
The dominance of Google is waning; increasingly people using mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) use Apps to aggregate content. The choices are becoming more personalised and informed.
But as with many other utopian predictions about how the open nature of the Net will create arenas that transcend foibles of the physical world; our faults have followed us to cyberspace. (Levy, 2004, np). In (Haythornthwaite 2008:601)
QQ3 In the light of your own responses and experience, does this ‘new paradigm’ indicate the redundancy of the practitioner?
Or, on the contrary, does it indicate the need for a practitioner with in-depth knowledge of how new technologies can be harnessed and with the time to provide facilitation and support to students as they take on these new responsibilities?
Making the time to interact with students online (and off) and having this planned into the curriculum is important. More tutors are needed, not fewer as expectations rise about the degree of engagement with others. Tutors or teaching assistant, event students (not just PhD), ought to be paid to be online as a hollow forum, or tutor group that isn’t active delivers the poorer experience. My analogy is to think of it as opening a chain or restaurants; why do some work and other’s fail? The ingredients and the menu is the same, but the context (location and personalities) differ. Getting the mix right and having the flexibility and fluidity and will to alter things as it evolves is vital, but often lacking. Certainly the idea that students would pay a handsome fee and then self-educate has largely been dispelled. The shift is livelier and less formal, more akin to a summer school, or camp, with everyone potentially present. There are academics, particularly in higher education, who seem to lack any desire to teach, preferring to inform at arm’s length from the product of their research. Perhaps it is more than this, it is like meeting in Liverpool Street Station amidst the cacophony of everyone else’s online lives, then taking a group to a museum then a show while the individuals in the group try to work, try to enjoy a holiday, have their kids, dog and mother along for the trip, and are engrossed in a novel, game or TV show. The potential is to be distracted, or engaged, or to juggle between the two.
The answer is in the hubbub of the tutorial, or seminar, the forced taking of sides in a debate, or informed discussions in a forum. The arguments and scholarship is still there, it is simply lose of the shackles of print and that technologies 500 year dominance of education, which is fast ending. Haythornthwaite suggests something has changed; it has, we’re returning to a model that is pre-print, vibrant, engaged, and live and that plays to broader human attributes and skills.
As Haythornthwaite (2008:599) goes on to say, ‘New social skills, or perhaps older ones now transformed online, become essential for a workable online future’.
Such knowledge bases resemble more the already familiar communities of practice (Wenger, 1988) and educational disciplines that an open encyclopaedia.
REFERENCE
Brown, J.S. (2002) The Social Life of Information
Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).
Haythornthwaite, C., Bruce, B. C., Andrews, R., Kazmer, M. M., Montague, R. & Preston, C. (2007). New theories and models of and for online learning. First Monday, 12(8). http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/haythorn/index.html
Horrigan, J. B. (2006). The Internet as a resource for news and information about science. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved July 5, 2007 from: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Exploratorium_Science.pdf.
Levy, S. (Oct. 4, 2004). Memo to bloggers: Heal thyselves. Newsweek. Retrieved May 17, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6098633/site/newsweek.
Wellman, B. (2001). The rise of networked individualism, In. L. Keeble (Ed.), Community Networks Online (pp. 17-42). London: Taylor & Francis.
Mind Bursts 