LIKT seminar on mobile learning

Mobile learning - learning anywhere, anytime(?)

Björn Hedin

Royal Institute of Technology

Dept. of Media Technology

Stockholm, Sweden

[email_address]

Today

Overview of mLearning (mobile learning) in general

Demonstrations and overview of some research I have done at KTH on mobile learning.

Ideas on how to use mLearning in your courses today.

The role of mLearning in the future?

What is mlearning?

Many different perspectives (from “Big issues…”)

Technocentric – Learning using mobile devices

Extension to eLearning – “Does not help in characterising the unique nature of mobile learning”

Augmenting formal education

Learner-centred – leading to the definition…

What is mlearning (2)?

"Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies" (O'Malley et al 2003, and Wikipedia)

Except for the word ”technology” a book would fit well into the definition.

More recent: “The focus of their work is on mobile learning as communication in context (Sharples, 2005)”.

A broader definition could also include support functions that makes life as a student easier.

Why learning with “portable technology”?

Some arguments

Study when you want - cf learning styles, mobile TV

Study where you want - can be used everywhere, doesn’t require a table, electricity, can be used in bed…

Ownership - “everyone” owns a mobile phone

Always ”on” - no startup time required

Discreet - socially acceptable to do things with mobile phone in public environments

Battery life - lasts for days

The above applies to books as well, but a few factors are unique to mobile phones

Ubiquity - everyone always carries their mobile phones

Features and convergence - increasingly more features: video and audio playback, high-speed internet connection, high resolution displays, positioning…

Content availability - don’t have to carry an entire library - all of the internet is available.

Searching capabilities

Communication

Still: mlearning will not be attractive to all, but some students

What should mobile (higher) educational activities focus on?

Providing content and activities for learning anywhere, anytime.

Not necessarily learning everything everywhere, but at least something meaningful when you want to.

Learning in context

To improve the “Learning infrastructure” using mobile technology.

Simple to use, and low cost for university, teachers and students.

Usable in all regular university courses = use mobile phones and possibly low-tech.

Examples of my day. A morning at the metro (1)

Organize my day

Read email, mark important letters

Look over my calendar and my to-do-list and possibly make preparations.

Get updated on what’s new

Twitter, mark important tweets

RSS feeds from blogs, mark important entries

Possibly “retweet” relevant information

Review my notes

Evernote

Google docs

Examples of my day. A morning at the metro (2)

Occasionally

See a TED Talks video

Watch/listen to a podcast

Practice Finnish vocables / Flashcards

Read an ebook

Context based

Look up the Finnish translation of something

Look up something in Wikipedia

Project 1: MUSIS

Push media files to mobile phones

Students subscribe to different channels

Each channel can be used to send text, audio and video messages.

Examples of channels:

Fun (mostly video)

Lunch menus (text)

Course channels (text, video)

One minute tech tip (audio)

Both scheduled messages and on-demand messages can be sent

Message scheduling

Instant message sending

Client interface

Messages downloaded in background, without user interaction.

Notification beep when message successfully downloaded.

Different icons for different channels (not for different media formats)

Click on message to display or play it in phone’s external applications

Video messages

500KB limit

3GPP/MPEG4

Sample video messages

Funny video clips (fun channel)

Course information (course channel)

Students felt a bit embarrassed when watching video in public environments

Not popular, but content used were of low quality.

Audio messages

Sample audio channels

Music

Daily idiom (education)

One minute tech tip (education)

Difficult to hear in noisy environments

Headset required.

Only appreciated when audio gave added value, like language courses

Text messages

Sample text messages

Lecture introductions

Reminders and notifications

Lecture summaries

Lecture preparations like literature to read, assignments to do, problems to consider

Instant feedback forms included

Classroom response system

Average level of interest in course related (text) messages

Services suggested by students (42 suggestions, 6 education related) Service Average grade Message when some information is available, like exam results 5.0 Updated course schedules after changes 5.0 Examples of exam questions with answers 4.9 Tomorrow’s schedule 4.9 Tomorrow’s activities in a course 4.8 Project deadlines 4.8 Average grade for course related services 4.92 Average grade for for other services 2.95

Main results, first phase

Push messages to phones better than email due to instant notification. No delay and no computer needed.

Low cost important.

Persistent storage of messages on a web portal wanted.

Text preferred by 92% over audio and video. Good for skimming information.

Maximum 1000 - 2000 character long text messages.

Audio and video difficult to hear in noisy environments, not high enough quality, embarrassing in public environments, headsets required and no extra added value for education.

Simple user interface. 1-click preferred.

Project 2: SMS + XHTML Mobile

Make a similar system usable in all courses today.

Only text messages.

Works on “all phones”

Most appreciated media format according to results from phase one

Only use simple standard technology (php, apache, sms, blogs)

Learning goals for phase two

Students should be able to prepare for lectures using “Advance organizers”

“ Introductions” to lectures

Gives a basic cognitive framework with which to relate the learning content of the lecture.

Ought to be ideal to read on the way to the university

Revise material - important for learning

Available anywhere, anytime

Spaced repetition important for learning.

Review questions/sample exam questions - activates students

“ Lecture packages” to fulfill these goals

Lecture package - message and index

Message with clickable link sent when new material is

Leads to Index page for all messages sent in a course.

Also available for viewing with a desktop browser via a blog.

Lecture package - message and index

Message with clickable link sent when new material is

Leads to Index page for all messages sent in a course.

Also available for viewing with a desktop browser via a blog.

Lecture package - one complete package Summary (advance organizer) Keywords References Sample exam questions

Results

Appreciated and used, but mainly from desktop computers (90%)

Summaries/introductions of lectures was most popular

Project 3: Providing text based content on mobile phones

Background on text based content

Easy to produce. Much content already available.

Low bandwidth requirements (around 150 KB for a compressed 300 page book).

Random access to any part of the material.

Browsing/skimming/searching is easy.

Preferred over audio and/or video by 91% of the students in an earlier mLearning study.

BUT - difficult to read longer texts on small screens.

Solution: RSVP

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

Display one word at a time in a rapid sequence.

Can increase reading speed dramatically for trained users, with high level of comprehension.

Demo

http://www.hedin.mobi/dsonline-demo/

Prototype: Feedo RSVP

Only requires phone with Java MIDP 1.0 -> usable on almost all new phones.

Can read RSS feeds -> easy for teachers to produce and publish content.

Perceived level of comfort for using the different methods (scale 1-7: Higher number->more comfortable)

Percentage of correct answers using the different methods

Positive aspects of RSVP

Very fast, up to 3 times faster for some users.

User must be focused.

No negative consequences for the limited display size on a phone -> good for mobile phones.

Good for skimming texts.

Negative aspects of RSVP

No spatial memory possible (“I read this far up on the right of a page”).

Less “random access” than with spatially presented text. Difficult to navigate in the text.

Difficult to handle pictures, formulas, tables etc.

Difficult to highlight, make notes etc. in the text.

Users not used to the technique (compared to 15+ years of experience with reading spatially presented text daily)

High cognitive load.

Teacher perspective: Publishing content

Publishing content by any kind of Content Management System (or blog) capable of generating RSS-feeds.

Parallel publishing (web, mobile web, RSS-reader, RSS-RSVP-reader)

Any text-based content.

Notify students of new content by SMS

Project 4: Lecture casting with enhanced podcasts

Enhanced podcasts - podcasts with graphics, audio and synchronized chapters.

Easily produced from a PowerPoint presentation (with suitable software)

Used in two courses with a total of 75 students to pre-record lectures (and then again this year in three courses).

Desktop view with iTunes - Demo

Online on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/bjornh/slideshows

3gp on mobile - small

3gp on mobile - full screen

Selected results - mobility

I would be very interested in watching lecture podcasts on an iPod/mobile phone on 'waste time', like when waiting for a commuter train, traveling on a train or bus etc (given that I owned suitable equipment)

Selected results - usefulness

I believe the podcasts were very useful.

Selected results - compared to lectures

As a whole I prefer enhanced podcasts over regular lectures.

Selected results - review lecture content

To be able to go back to parts of the lectures you didn’t understand is very important.

Selected results - navigation

To be able to go back and forth and ”jump” between chapters in a podcast is very important.

Selected results - time- and place shifting

The possibility to access a lecture podcast without having to be at a specific place at a specifict time (like a lecture) is very important.

A quote on podcasts in general

"Podcasts have big advantages when you work in parallel in several projects, and therefore have to skip some lectures. Podcasts covers something I believe is missing in several other courses; to be able to go back and review lecture content afterwards. Often you are not quite ready to absorb all the knowledge at a lecture with unknown content, therefore it is great that you can watch the content twice. Furthermore you can pause and complement with literature for a deeper understanding, everything in the peace and quiet of home, with a cup of coffee at hand, which is very rewarding for a student under pressure."

podcasts in iPods

5 students owned suitable iPods

3 stronglyagreed" with the statement "I believe it was very useful to see podcasts in my iPod", and 2 agreed to the same statement.

Of these five users, all used the podcast on waste time, like when travelling by bus or train.

Three students also used them at home, two of which watched them in bed before going to sleep.

On the question about what advantages they saw with watching podcasts on an iPod instead of a desktop computer, the mobility was as expected considered very important. One student said it "… could be quite tiring concentrating by a computer without doing other things at the same time" and one believed it was less tiring watching an podcast on an iPod for a long time, than watching the same podcast on a desktop computer.

Podcasting summary

Students appreciate the increased freedom.

Good to be able to review lectures later.

Mobility aspects are appreciated.

Navigation within lecture important.

BUT

Not suitable to all kinds of teaching styles

Decreased interaction

IMPLICATIONS

Usable in many/most courses with little extra effort.

Good tool for Open Educational Resources (OER)

Allows universities to share content and courses.

Recent projects

Spaced Repetition

Good for memorizing (like language learning, terms, anatomy, flora/fauna etc)

Current desktop implementations. Extend to mobile and web domains.

Location-based learning reminders

Application where students can ”tag” locations (KTH, Home, Metro, Odenplan …) and register reminders to study when arriving/departing to such places.

Inluced application to study chemistry on mobile phones

Low drain on battery (since non-GPS-based positioning)

Not very accurate

Appreciated by students, especially to find new opportunities to study on ”waste time”

Issues to discuss from ”Big Issues..”

To be “innovative” mLearning applications “Should be transformative in nature, i.e. allow learners to achieve things they couldn’t have achieved before.”

Learning in developing countries. http://www.nokia.co.in/A41427317

“ Technology can provide us with so much assistance that we forget how to do things ourselves”.

“ We have to be careful to design learning experiences with technology that enhance learning, rather than simply making it easier for people to do something”.

“ A key issue [in an application] is that its use is optional – it is possible to undertake the same learning objectives without it – and it is ideal if students desire it, rather than it being forced on them”

Motivating/affecting factors

Control over goals

Ownership/appropriation

“ She defines appropriation as the integration of a new technology into the user’s activities.

Her analysis revealed a two way process in which the user adapts the tools they use according to their every day practice, prior expectations and preferences in order to carry out their activities and how, in turn the tools also change the user’s activities.

Fun

Communication

Learning-in-context

Continuity between contexts

When to relax? Increasing bad conscience for not studying?

How to handle conficts between personal informal learning and traditional classroom education

“ Children in general do not want school to intrude on their personal life. There is a danger that the enthusiasm of schools, and some parents to extend school by, for example, parent access to school intranets, bite-sized teaching and revision via SMS, and new technologies such as location-based tracking, may be seen by children as schools attempting to colonise and control their social world”

“ One of the main assumptions we considered … was the fact that in the coming 10 years, whether educators want it or not, more and more students will bring computing devices (with wireless communication) into the classrooms”.

“ On the pedagogical level, the idea of mobile learning is often associated with informal learning settings which could be triggered by situational affordances or could just take place whenever and wherever the learners want to. It is an issue as to whether this kind of learning yields the necessary degree of systematisation and coherence (or maybe these factors are over-estimated, based on existing justifications of institutionalised learning?).

“ Do we have a problem with fragmented experience and fragmented learning activities in technology enhanced learning? If yes, is the fragmentation problem a particular challenge for mobile learning scenarios? Do we have pedagogical strategies for de-fragmentation which could be supported by adequate technologies?”

Discussion?