Mobile and emerging learning technologies: are we ready?

ABSTRACT

Several learning technologies have been explored in higher education around the world. Learning has become more mobile, massive, open, flexible, blended, informal, audio-visual based, highly collaborative, and activity driven. While the traditional classroom still exists, it is being challenged. Increasingly checking emails in front of a PC or making phone calls are being replaced by students using their mobile phones to post on blogs, conduct Facebook chats, manage Instagram photos, submit assignments and directly access to learning resources. Teachers require more advanced skills or competencies to use mobile and digital forms of representation in order to make the content and activity more engaging, accessible, convenient and customised. Teachers need skills in developing technological and pedagogical content knowledge and activities. This paper explores how mobile and emerging learning technologies have been used in the face-to-face classroom through examining the three distinct trends, namely, engaged learning, convenient learning, and customised and personalised learning. It explores the different trends in well-designed and equipped classrooms in a private tertiary college. The specific examples and cases were drawn from a study focussed on “Representational Fluency”, specifically designed to make conceptual connections between representations and how learners change their communication behaviour while using various mobile apps and emerging tools.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching technologies
• mobile learning
• engaged learning
• convenient learning
• customised and personalised learning
• conceptual connections

Acknowledgments

We would like to express special thanks to Felicity Orme (Academic Director) as well as Heather Tinsley (Campus Principal) who provided the opportunity to do this study on using mobile and emerging learning technologies in regular classrooms. Secondly we would also like to thank Lucy Blakemore and Yindta Whittington who shared their survey results with us. The study could not be completed without those important data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Level Zero “Non-use”: A teacher takes no action in relation to the program or practice; Level One “Orientation”: A teacher seeks information about the program or practice; Level Two “Preparation”: A teacher decides to adopt the new practice and prepares to implement it (Nichols et al., 2016, p. 518).