Presenter: Phil Rothwell Organisation: Liverpool John Moores University Description: Mobile is regarded as a truly disruptive technology and its application within teaching can still divide educators. That said its popularity, particularly with the so called ""Millennials"" is undoubtedly huge and continually growing, so it is important to identify how today's student is engaging with mobile technology and to try to draw some conclusions about what this might mean. At Liverpool John Moores University we've set about this by examining what students have been doing and where, within the constraints of ""Mobile Moments"" or brief windows in which the learner completes small tasks pertaining to their studies. This investigation formed part of a broader survey into device ownership and student Mobile learning.

1. Mobile Moments
How modern students make
learning their ownPhil Rothwell – Liverpool John Moores University

2. Who is this guy?
• LearningTechnology Developer at Liverpool John Moores
University
• Developing Mobile LearningTechnologies
• 9.1 Self hosted Blackboard environment
• 25,000 + Active student roles at present
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3. Outcomes
• Aspects of mobile learning
• LJMU Mobile device survey
• Survey design and implementation
• Results - Modern learners and Mobile Moments
• Obtain reflections from yourselves
• Thoughts
• The future
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4. Conceptualisation of Mobile learning
• ““mobile learning is not about ‘mobile’ or about ‘learning’ as
previously understood, but part of a new mobile conception of
society” (Traxler 2007)
• “mobility can be divided into three significant areas: mobility of
technology, mobility of learner and mobility of learning especially
in higher education landscape.” M. (El-Hussein, M, & Cronje, J
2010)
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5. Personal learning
• The Personal Learning Agenda, At odds with the conventional
Learning Management System. (Wheeler, S., 2013. Personal
Technologies in Education: Issues,Theories and Debates.)
Debates.)
• Students adopt, multiple, flexible technologies
• “Traditional” LMS conflicts with this concepts and lacks flexibility
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6. Mobile moments
“…during mobility, users have short periods of time (i.e., 4 seconds),
called mobile moments, for engaging in activities”
Hankins, R. and Lee, A., 2011. Crowd sourcing and prediction
markets.
Marketing term
Can this be meaningfully translated into teaching and Learning?
Why Moments?Why else?
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7. Survey Design
• Trying to look at LJMU app ecosystem and how it is used by
students
• Looking at IT infrastructure and provision
• Initial Idea – University of Northampton 2015 Mobile Survey - Link
• Partnership betweenTeaching and Learning Academy and IT
Services
• Aimed at Students. Difficult to negotiate staff participation
• Balance quantity quality and needs of stakeholders
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8. Implementation
• Blackboard Enterprise survey tool
• Target users by faculty role - in this case “student”
• Familiar UI and environment
• Simple if any authentication
• LJMU Client pop up to promote engagement
• Lifecycle Nov 2015 – Dec 2015 highest engagement.
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9. Response
• Very positive – 3608 students
• Staff participation would have been useful
comparison….but….
• There is still plenty of data to be working with
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10. Device ownership
• Students polled on which devices they owned/intended to
purchase within 12 months
• Identifying current requirements and seek to potentially predict
future need
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11. Device ownership
11
924
3326
3501
441
364
1849
142
138
41
23
366
351
2543
144
66
3144
2878
1408
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
PC
Laptop
Smartphone
Non-smart phone
Wearable
Tablet
DEVICE OWNERSHIP
Own intend to purchase Do not own

12. Device ownership
• Smartphone use is nearly ubiquitous only 66 “No” responses
• Laptops also rank very highly
• Intention to buy wearables and tablets is high – emerging trends?
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13. Use of devices
13
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
PC Laptop Smartphone Mobile Wearable Tablet
How many hours use per week?
9.1 : Under one hour 9.1 : 1-3 Hours 9.1 : 3-7 Hours 9.1 : 7-15 Hours 9.1 : 15+ Hours

14. Use of LJMU Technologies
14
471
1997
2656
3057
903
2045
2371
393
2201
215
442
320
308
249
325
607
169
253
231
373
236
163
302
306
339
216
261
1215
538
330
68
818
580
249
409
3641476
258
66 12
1336
352
42
2421
529
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
BB Mob Learn LJMU Mobile App Printer on
Printing App
QR Codes Mobile device
camera or video
Note taking
software
Response ware
and Mobile
classroom survey
Social media
Apps
LJMU Exchange
server/Active
sybch
TECHNOLOGY USAGE
Not at all Fewer than once per month Once per month or more Once per week or more Once per day or more

15. How and where are students completing assignments?
15
419
2898
107 87
2635
451
41 53
1471 694
71 176
1366
664
171
426
525
887
217
919
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
Desktop PC Laptop Tablet Device Mobile phone
WORK LOCATION AND STATION
Home LJMU Library Public Library Another LJMU Place Another Public Space
Traditional over mobile favoured in the completion of assessed work

16. Key Points
• Consistent with other ownership results, Smartphone and Laptop
score high in use
• Assessed work still completed largely using Desktop machines
and in Libraries
• Blackboard is by far the most widely used LJMU App
• Social media and device native media (cameras) also popular
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17. Student competency, digital tasks JISC
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• Reluctant to use “Digital Literacy”
• Asked students to assess
frequency of completion of certain
digital tasks
• This generated a score out of 40
for each participant
• Rudimentary, but scope for more
detailed examination

18. Digital tasks
18
0
50
100
150
200
250
0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Distribution of scores
σ = 6.84 mean = 16.89
median = 18
mode = 19

19. Where do our students live?
• Q “What is your term time Postcode”
• Measured distance from Redmond campus - Central Liverpool
• Furthest 420 Miles – Aberdeen
• Closest – 70 metres (or so)
• http://mapsdata.co.uk/mapsdataapp/?load_file=57583fcd1ed80a
81a3a1707b88a31f10
• Some distances could be due to misreading of the question
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20. Distance and correlation with activity
• Very weak positive correlation (0.013622409) between distance
and the digital competency measures
• Distance does not appear to be a contributing factor
• Additionally very weak Negative corealation between Ecosystem
engagement and distance (-0.06988 )
• Physical location to campus is difficult to identify as a factor in
engagement with mobile technologies
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21. Your mobile moments
• Think about a task you’ve undertaken recently
• Where?
• Which application/technology?
• What was the task?
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22. Student mobile moments
• "Mobile moments" describes a short window (30 seconds or so)
of phone use to achieve a small task. Please give a brief example (20
words or fewer) describing a way in which you have recently accessed
LJMU services using your mobile in this way. Include where you were,
what LJMU technology you accessed (Website, Blackboard etc) and
what task you accomplished.
• Where, with what and how
• 2489 descriptions provided
• Often they abandoned the convention requested. One or two words
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23. Examples of Moments
• “Using the blackboard app to get announcements on new
upcoming events on all modules. I have had announcements
while I have been on the bus.This is good as I am away from a
computer when they are put up. “
• “WHEN IWAS ABROAD DURING HOLIDAYS AND I COULD USE
BLACKBOARDTHERE”
• “Used blackboard to follow lectures “
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24. Word frequency distribution.
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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
Mobile moments word frequency

25. Moments
• Blackboard access is central to what these moments involve
• Location does not feature highly
– A variety of places? No where favoured?
– Lack of emphasis by students on location?Assumption of flexibility
• Actions imply low level activities “Checked” ,“Accessed”
• There are several mentions of transport.
– “Bus” 55, “Train” 74 thankfully only 4 mentioned “Car”
• Suggests mobile moments has “a” place, but what
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26. Thoughts on the results
• Can mobile Moments be a meaningful concept within teaching and Learning
• Difficult to draw firm conclusions.Text frequency analysis is a blunt measure. Plenty more
work to be done
• That said the response rate to “Mobile moments” Q suggests the term is perhaps not entirely
without meaning for students
• Students clearly desire flexibility from their hardware.This must be a consideration when
planning infrastructure – IT Laptop client
• LMS still central to flexible student requirements
• Mobile moments
Data considerations
Access to network
Time constraints
Student population increasingly distributed/distance
Batter life
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27. Thoughts on the results
• Bb Student/Mobile Learn – features matching the requirements
of students?
• Social media use and camera technology suggest more
opportunity for social constructivist/connectivist approaches
• Emergent technologies. What is the scope for wearables in
education for example?
• Issues surrounding BringYourOwn Spare Battery
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28. Future
• Continuation of the work
• Further examination of the data.There’s a lot!
• Longitudinal study – analytics and predictive models?
• Response to follow up question – 1597 students replied “Yes”
• Utilise mobile location data?
• Focus groups. Expand qualitative experiences beyond data
• Comparison with non students
• Notifications
• Inclusivity/Assistive technologies
• Reflect and improve upon provision institutionally
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29. My details
• Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to discuss mobile,TEL or any
other areas for development or research
• p.b.rothwell@ljmu.ac.uk
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