InfoTech

Volume 32, Number 1, October 2004

Laurel A. Clyde

M-Learning

We’ve had e-commerce (buying and selling via the Internet); now there is m-commerce (buying and selling via a mobile phone or handheld computer). We’ve had e-learning; now there is m-learning. Whether as a form of basic education delivery for students of all ages or as a form of professional development delivery for teachers, m-learning represents education “on the go” – “anywhere, anytime learning.” How many of your colleagues have a mobile (cellular) phone? How many of your students? These are the people who might be reached via m-learning opportunities.

Whenever I mention the concept of m-learning, someone always says, “But what about reading all that text on that tiny screen?” M-learning is about a lot more than text, of course, and maybe not that much about text at all. Consider what phones are really good for: voice communication and interactivity. These strengths can be captured in the service of m-learning. M-learning via mobile phone or handheld computer or personal digital assistant (PDA) opens up the possibility for delivery of audio material (not just voice but also music and other forms of sound), automated multiple-choice quizzes (“press one for ..., press two for ....”), one-on-one and group discussion in real time using voice or text messaging, e-mail interactions, the delivery of text and image files and computer files as attachments, as well as displaying text and small still and moving pictures. A Web-enabled mobile phone considerably increases these options.

Much of the work that has already been done on m-learning has been in relation to the use of handheld computers for m-learning. Two papers presented at the IEEE conference on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education in 2002 illustrate this. Curtis et al., in a paper titled “Handheld Use in K-12: A Descriptive Account,” reported on the ways in which handheld computers were being used at four different schools in Michigan. The handhelds were used by students as tools in research projects, as the basis of group collaboration activities and for other activities in the classroom. Roschelle, Patton and Pea, in a paper titled “To Unlock the Learning Value of Wireless Mobile Devices, Understand Coupling,” noted that “early evaluations suggest teachers and students respond to handhelds favorably,” but there were a number of pedagogical, curricular and technological issues that needed to be addressed if these pieces of equipment were to be truly effective as educational tools.

However, major projects based on the use of mobile phones for m-learning are starting to emerge. For example, a European research and development program called “m-learning” is designed to focus on young adults aged 16 to 24 who are at serious risk of social exclusion. These are young people who have not succeeded in the education system, who cannot read or write adequately and who have problems with calculations. At the time the project commenced, they were not involved in formal education or training activities. Most were unemployed or underemployed and some were homeless. However, these young people had something else in common – all had a mobile phone. These phones were most commonly used for chatting with friends, text messaging and playing computer games. The project is investigating how this mobile phone technology might be used to engage these young people in learning activities and change their attitudes to learning.

Another European project, “Mobile Learning,” supported by the Leonardo Da Vinci program of the European Commission, seeks to take advantage of the half-billion “data-enabled” mobiles in use worldwide at the end of 2003, to provide new methods for learning and training. The project is designed to harness readily available tools (mobile phones) and their underlying technologies in the service of education and training. It will develop course materials for mobile phones, test and evaluate those course materials with cohorts of students and disseminate the results of the evaluations through public reports. The project is concerned not just with using current mobile phone technologies, but also with the new “smart phones” soon to be released. The Swedish mobile phone company Ericsson, a partner in the project, proposes to explore the development of learning content that takes advantage of voice-, Internet- and multimedia-enabled mobile phones – both phones that are on the market now and those that are coming soon.

The Nordic countries have been at the forefront in the development of telephone-based m-learning, just as Nordic companies such as Ericsson (Sweden) and Nokia (Finland) have led the development of mobile phone technologies. At a conference in Hungary in 2002, a group of Finnish educators based at the University of Tampere (Ahonen, Syvanen & Turunen, 2002) reported on a pilot project that involved the use of mobile phones in elementary schools. The pilot aimed to “integrate the use of mobile devices and services with curriculum and daily tasks.” In this project, the mobile phone was not the only technology through which the students learned; rather, it was one tool amongst many, and used “as a supporting environment for contiguous and traditional learning.” The researchers were particularly interested in looking at the ways in which the phones could support meaningful learning. Inquiry learning, they found, was a particularly suitable model for pedagogies involving mobile devices in an elementary school context, a finding that should resonate with school library professionals. The report described mobile phones as a flexible and motivating medium for these children; in addition, “a mobile device ... earns its place in authentic learning situations” (Ahonen, Syvanen & Turunen, 2002).

North American educators have been a little slower to move from the perception of mobile phones as a disruptive technology (“the students’ phones are ALWAYS ringing in class”) to a perception of those phones as a possible tool for the delivery of curriculum content or as a basis for instructional strategies. However, a number of current projects (see, for example, Tatar et al., 2003) suggest ways forward, on the basis of the same constructivist learning/teaching ideas that inform much of the current information literacy work in school libraries.

Various reports from around the world suggest a range of educational applications and strategies for which mobile phones might be appropriate. The iPresentation Mobile Conference software (from Presenter.com) is a Web conferencing tool that enables users to deliver or attend slide presentations using a mobile phone (Daniel & Cox, 2002). Milrad (2002) indicates that mobile devices can support “exploratory activities” not bound to a special location; for example, on field trips, with the mobile phone being used to take notes, take photographs, download text or images and even record interviews. The material collected through a mobile phone could be posted to a project weblog if the phone were web-enabled. Geoff Ring has noted (as a result of the evaluation of an “eBusiness on the Move” course) that m-learning is well-suited to content areas such as language skills acquisition that depend on voice input (Daniel & Cox, 2002); it is also good for providing ready reference tools that are searchable by mobile phone, feedback to learners (by voice or text message or e-mail), reminders and updates for learners, links to Internet sites and administrative services such as facilities for course registration.

At this stage, we are just beginning to realize the potential of m-learning. It appears that in today’s mobile society, potential learners (particularly adults in search of continuing professional development) might want their learning opportunities while on the move. It seems that some young learners might also welcome m-learning opportunities, and mobile technologies might enable teachers to provide learning opportunities that would be difficult to provide in other ways. The challenge is to identify the forms of education and training for which m-learning is particularly appropriate, the potential students who most need it and the best strategies for delivering mobile education. New international annual conferences such as the “Online Learning” conferences, which present both research and successful projects, will help in this regard. Meanwhile, the constraints inherent in the technology (small screens, slow speeds, clumsy input devices) are gradually being overcome. Some problems remain, however, including the problem of lack of compatibility among mobile tools and the lack of standards.

Consult the following for bibliographies and webliographies of resources on the topic of m-learning. These will help interested readers to explore this developing field. In addition, the weblog m-learning provides links to current resources, conference reports, references to articles and papers and commentary on the topic.

Online resources

Laru, J. (2004). Mobile learning links. Retrieve April 1, 2004, from http://cc.oulu.fi/~jlaru/mlearning/

m-learning [weblog] http://colab.typepad.com/mlearning/

PJB Associates. (2004) M-learning forum: Interesting research. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.pjb.co.uk/m-learning/interesting_research.htm

PJB Associates. (2004). M-learning: Useful articles and papers. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.pjb.co.uk/m-learning/articles.htm

References

Ahonen, M., Syvanen, A., & Turunen, H. (2002, November). Supporting observation tasks in primary school with the help of mobile devices. Paper presented at the conference Communications in the 21st century: The Mobile Information Society, Budapest, Hungary. Abstract retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://21st.century.phil-inst.hu/m-learning_conference/Turunen/turunen_abst.htm

Curtis, M., Luchini, K., Bobrowsky, W., Quintana, C., & Soloway, E. (2002, August). Handhelduse in K-12: A descriptive account. Paper presented at the IEEE Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education, Växjö, Sweden. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=22273

Daniel, G., & Cox, K. (2002, June 10). Wireless learning/Mobile learning/M-learning. Web Tools Newsletter. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://webtools.cityu.edu.hk/news/newslett/wireless.htm

Ericsson Learning. (2004) Mobile learning: The next generation of learning. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://learning.ericsson.net/mlearning2/project.shtml

Milrad, M. (2002, November). Mobile learning: Challenges, perspectives and reality. Paper presented at the conference Communications in the 21st century: The Mobile Information Society, Budapest, Hungary. Abstract retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://21st.century.phil-inst.hu/m-learning_conference/Milrad/milrad_abst.htm

M-learning. (2003). M-learning: Learning in the palm of your hand. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.m-learning.org/

Roschelle, J., Patton, C., & Pea, R. (2002, August). To unlock the learning value of wireless mobile devices, understand coupling. Paper presented at the IEEE Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education, Växjö, Sweden. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isNumber=22273

Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Vahey, P., & Penuel, W.R. (2003), Handhelds go to school: Lessons learned. Computer, 36 (9). Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/co/2003/09/r9030abs.htm

Laurel A. Clyde is Professor in the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. She can be reached at anne@rhi.hi.is.