Designing Technology for Content-Independent Collaborative Mobile Learning

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a technology platform for supporting content-independent collaborative mobile learning in the classroom. The technical architecture provides mechanisms for assigning different content or materials to students and then guiding them to form groups with other students in which the combination and integration of their content satisfies some pre-assigned critera or goal. The uniqueness of this lies in the dynamic forming of collaborative groups rather than having fixed or preassigned groupings of students for doing collaborative work. We present the theoretical underpinnings of our approach, the initial design of the software and the iterative cycles of a Design-based Research (DBR) approach that tries out the continuously being-refined design with primary school students. Feedback and data collected from observing students' actual learning behaviors and motivations in the cycles were used to propose a new cycle of the system and user-interface redesign. Such school-based trials provided demonstrations of the platform in supporting two content-specific learning applications, namely in mathematics and Chinese language learning activities in a primary school setting. They show the enactment of collaborative scaffolding comprising peer, technological and teacher scaffolding in supporting the students' formation of groups, and their collaboration and learning.

Chao: a framework for the development of orchestration technologies for technology-enhanced learning activities using tablets in classrooms

“…We focused our approach on situations in classrooms where students use tablets and designed the framework accordingly. This approach can leverage the previous works related to the use of such devices in classrooms (see for examples, Boticki et al, 2013;Dillenbourg and Evans, 2011;Jahnke et al, 2015;Looi et al, 2011;Roschelle et al, 2010;Zurita and Nussbaum, 2004).…”

Improving the design of a mCSCL Chinese character forming game with a distributed scaffolding design framework

“…Building on prior mCSCL work by Zurita and Nussbaum (2004) and our previous explorational study of a fraction addition mobile game (Boticki et al 2011; Boticki et al 2013), we designed the Chinese-PP character forming activity to run on 1:1 TEL setting. In Zurita and Nussbaum’s work, students were assigned to fixed small groups of three before the beginning of the classroom activities.…”

A Tailorable Infrastructure to Enhance Mobile Seamless Learning

“…Boticki et al [38], [39] present an extensible framework providing generic collaboration features as foundation for domain specific modules. Among the others, the authors present two applicative modules: the FAO application, supporting fractions teaching, and the Chinese-PP application, supporting the Chinese language teaching.…”