Transforming Technologies: Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

Session 9:Mobile learning and BYOD

Learning outcomes• To evaluate the benefits and issues of mobile

learning and ‘bring your own device’.• To evaluate the educational uses of mobile

devices.• To explore a range of apps and their potential

for teaching and learning.

Horizon Report 2012

• The NMC (New Media Consortium) is an international community of experts in educational technology – they produce the ‘Horizon Report’ predicting the technologies which will be ‘the next big thing’ in HE.

• 2012 report noted that mobile apps and tablet computing would be key within two years of the report.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2012-horizon-report-HE.pdf

‘Ubiquitous computing’• Also known as ‘ubicomp’ or ‘pervasive

computing’, this is concept has origins in software engineering- that computing appears everywhere, including household appliances etc.

• “A vision of small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to distinctly common-place ends.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing(Accessed on 30/11/15)

• Robert O’Toole (Warwick University: Pedagogy of the iPad)

http://www.ltu.se/cms_fs/1.36196!/graphic1.jpg Accessed on 30/11/15: 20:30

Recent projects• The MoLeNET initiative funded and supported 104 projects involving approximately

40,000 learners and over 7,000 staff, in the 3 years 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10. Lead by the Learning and Skills Network (now Skills Funding Agency), MoLeNET worked in the skills sector and with schools.

http://www.molenet.org.uk/

• JISC Mobile learning projects:http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20140614113521/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/mobilelearning.aspx?page=1&filter=Projects

Mobile learning: pedagogical matches• Flipped classroom approach – learning before the

‘lecture’• Crowdsourcing – searching for information ‘in the

moment’• Backchannel – dialogue ‘in the moment’• Personalisation – access to all relevant

information through one log in.• Remote learning– immersive engagement in real

time environment, using GPS

https://expertbeacon.com/sites/default/files/Blooms%20Taxonomy.jpg (Accessed on 30/11/15: 20:30)

Other affordances• ‘Just in time learning’• Access for students with physical and learning

difficulties and disabilities.• Community-based learning approaches which can

be local and global.• Recording, saving and sharing and transporting

instantly and in a variety of ways.• One ‘place’ for educational, social, work-based

and other important life resources.

Mobile pedagogy

Before even considering paid/additional apps, what in-built features and programmes do mobile phones have which have pedagogical affordances?

Mobile literacies?

“The future our students will inherit is one that will be mediated and stitched together by the mobile web, and I think that ethically we are called on as teachers to teach them how to use these technologies effectively?”

(David Parry, University of Texas, in Brock (2013) Best practices for teaching with emerging technologies, Routledge)

Institutional issues re. BYOD• Institutional systems can be opened up to personal device

use – bringing opportunities and issues.“Not opening the system to mobile access may actually increase the likelihood of unauthorised device use” (JISC)• Students increasing expect mobile access to institutional tools, and

liability now extends to mobile use.• Data protection – risk of unlawful processing of personal data• Copyright – cost/intellectual property rights to materials• Inappropriate material – malware and liability• Internet safety – location information, safeguarding, cyberbullying.

JISC: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/your-students-mobile-devices-law-and-liability

The phenomenon of apps• Apps radically reduced the cost of specialist software

– from user licences to one-off downloads and ‘disposable’, low cost solutions.

• Resources that ‘fit in the palm of your hand’.• Interoperability, sharing, multiple device ownership

and, in many cases, cloud-based actions.• Works well with the notion of ubiquitous

learning/computing – ‘an app for everything’.

Tablet computing• Portable, lightweight and (crucially) keyboard free – a

design choice which proved key for the way people interacted with the device.

• iPad: “lean back” experience versus “lean forward” – the design encourages exploration (e.g. pinching, tapping, swiping).

• Screen technology very advanced – multimedia and ‘textbook’ capabilities.

• Heritage in the smart phone, not in the PC.

The Padagogy wheel

Critical questions

• Do the benefits of BYOD outway the issues, in education?

• How can mobile learning enable students to reach the highest of educational objectives?