Mobile learning: Moving past the myths and embracing the opportunities

Abstract

Mobile learning (mLearning) in the open and distance learning landscape, holds promise and provides exciting new opportunities. In order to understand and embrace these opportunities within various contexts and circumstances it is imperative to understand the essence of the phenomenon. In this regard, we first need to understand the core fundamentals of mLearning and gain insight in what mLearning entails.<br /><br />Using critical reflection, this paper clarifies what mLearning is by invalidating myths and misperceptions related to mLearning. Acknowledging the lessons learnt through past experience, the authors then explore the opportunities that mLearning provides. mLearning challenges and risks are discussed to assist those who are keen to embrace these opportunities, in avoiding unnecessary risks and pitfalls. The paper concludes by sharing a few thoughts on the future of mLearning.<br /><br />These perspectives on mLearning seek to provide an overview of what mobile learning entails, recognise the achievements of mobile learning to date, and stimulate an appetite to embrace the opportunities in open and distance learning, while minimising the potential negative effects of technological, social and pedagogical change.

The role of mobile learning on the learning environment shifting at high school in Indonesia

“…Aspects that should be taken into account are: (1) aspects of the device that refer to the physical characteristics, technical, and functional from mobile devices (Lee et al, 2015;Looi et al, 2015); (2) aspects of learners including the individual cognitive abilities, memory, knowledge, emotions, and perhaps motivation. This aspect explains how students use what they already know and how they encode, store, and transfer information (Kent et al, 2016;Hasyim et al, 2015); and (3) the social aspect associated with and explain the process of social interaction and cooperation (Sung et al, 2015;Alfarani, 2015;Brown and Mbati, 2015): while someone joining a new community, he must share the customs and culture of their own and learned people of the new community.…”

“…The new pedagogical models are needed to guide the development of learning systems (Aresta et al, 2015;Bhardwaj and Jain, 2015;Grimus and Ebner, 2015). Information technology and mobile communication is essential to enable the formation of a new social structure in learning (Zagami, 2015;Brown and Mbati, 2015). By using this new model, it can be developed a variety of mobile learning strategies and approaches that can drive the success of learning (Anders, 2015;Jansen et al, 2015;Furió et al, 2015).…”

Facilitating Knowledge Visualisation as Communication and Knowledge Transfer Mechanism in Postgraduate Learning

“…The papers are organised chronologically to depict developments over time. For example, connectivity was identified as a constraint in 2002 (Sharples et al 2002) this is mentioned by Brown and Mbati (2015) as an issue in the developing country context and hence it is retained as a constraint (Fig. 6).…”

“…Brown (2005) emphasises the role of communication and interaction as critical success factors in the learning process. During this phase the visualisation can be shared with peers to obtain feedback so as to improve the visualisation.…”

Mobile Learning Usage and Preferences of Vocational Secondary School Students: The cases of Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany

“…Cheon, Lee, Crooks, and Song (2012) argued that the emerging technologies could resolve the technical limitations of mobile devices, such as lower resolution, network speed, and platform comparability, and much improvement has been made in this area over the last few years. Mobile technologies have started to make significant contributions to mobile teaching and mobile learning by providing personalized and customized contextual learning experiences (Brown & Mbati, 2015). With broader implementation on different levels, technology will most likely continue to prove its usefulness in engaging students and empowering education, thereby becoming an invaluable improvement to the classroom experience (McQuiggan, McQuiggan, Sabourin & Kosturko, 2015).…”