Smartphone Learning: Designing for the Emerging Mobile Learning Environment

Editor's Notes

• #2: “Smartphone Learning” replaces “Mobile Learning” as the Smartphone has emerged as the dominate mobile device. Present with speaker view and Audience Q&A (drag presentation to 2nd monitor)
• #3: Mobile learning has been an emerging educational technology for several years. It is important to understand why it has yet to be fully embraced by learners and educators - the challenges and affordances, as well as how the technology has evolved to this day when it makes more sense than ever. mLearning 1.0 = PDAs, Blackberrys, Feature Phones w/ cameras, Tablets, Laptops, e-readers... mLearning 2.0 = Smartphone Learning
• #4: This number is up 5% over a two-year period, during which time there has been a decrease in the number of homes with broadband Internet service.
• #6: It is important to understand that your students who have limited resources may be in this demographic.
• #7: General population in US top uses of smartphones.
• #8: Top undergraduate uses of smartphones… The average undergrad uses their smartphone in ways that are dissimilar to the average american but may in fact, be relevant to use in an academic context. Distinction between social networking and social media - social networks are the people (our network of friends / contacts) we interact with using social media.
• #9: ECAR 2016 Study of Undergraduate Students & Information Technology If this trend continues along the same path we may see as much as 98% smartphone ownership in 2017 and 99% in 2018.
• #10: Student value the laptop for instruction and although they are using the smartphones for learning, they don’t find them the most valuable for this purpose
• #11: In Rey Junco’s Twitter and Student Engagement research projects, he has a mandatory orientation to the app and how it is used in his class before students begin the assignments. Junco, R., Elavsky, C. M., & Heiberger, G. (2013). Putting twitter to the test: Assessing outcomes for student collaboration, engagement and success. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(2), 273-287. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01284.x http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01284.x/epdf
• #12: The mobility of the smartphone, having a browser along with both cellular and wifi connectivity are among the most powerful features as well as the camera and ability to share. Photo credits: Andrew Currie “Skype/Qik Test” CC-BY on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewcurrie/2682227633
• #13: Note: the top three listed here are also the three main types of interactions: Student to Content, Student to Student, and Student to Instructor Interaction. Why don’t students use the smartphone more for learning? Top reason given was lack of technical support - stating “instructors typically provided limited support” (Chet et al 2015). Need for support (EDUCAUSE).
• #14: Terry Anderson
• #15: These are some of the ways students use technology to support student - content interaction.
• #16: Content (media) may be inherently interactive, or have interactivity added to it through social media or using such tools as Google Docs comments with groups. T. Bates…
• #17: Smarthistory is one of the Khan Academy Channels. This particular channel includes 680 videos. Other channels include Math, Computing, Medicine, Organic Chemistry, Statistics… These videos are accessible using closed captioning. Average length of these videos is a little over 10 minutes each. In addition to being able to embed these videos in most LMSs and Websites, users can share them using social media such as Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and Stumble Upon,
• #18: Archive.org is a collection of millions of free to use digital materials, including archived websites, video, texts, audio, television and radio programming, software, images, concerts, etc. Most materials are available for streaming or download. Users can also create and contribute their own media to the archive. This is useful when instructors need a service to stream their own media and are willing to share within an open repository. If sharing content to Tumblr from Internet Archive, use the browser share option as opposed to the share button on Archive.org - which can be problematic. MOOCs such as Saylor.org offer open content and even quizzing.
• #19: I won’t play this short tutorial on converting PDF files and JPGs to Google Docs during the presentation but there are several reasons for doing so: 1) the file becomes user-friendly for the smartphone screen (one of the challenges of smartphone learning is reading text on a smaller screen) 2) Google Documents do not count against your drive space in Google Drive; so it makes sense to convert and then to delete the original, and 3) using Google Docs can improve accessibility as images and some PDF files are not accessible to screen readers. Responsive design
• #20: Zoom.us can be used not only fr web-conferencing but can record directly to your desktop in file formats that can be uploaded to YouTube and Archive.org for streaming, or to Google Drive for download and play offline.
• #22: Asynchronous and Synchronous
• #23: Just-in-Time Communication Cross-device / Cross-platform Intuitive / User Experience Design UX User-driven Participatory User managed profile (privacy)
• #25: Use as an example, Skype audio & video
• #26: https://coi.athabascau.ca/ Begin with the social presence to create a sense of community between the learners and one another as well as the learners and instructor, Teaching presence guides the learners in discourse and reflection.
• #27: Students prefer to have both synchronous and asynchronous communication with their instructor. By sharing images, as well as asynchronous audio and video instructor immediacy is increased and student feel more connected to the course. “...students and instructors reported that feedback tended to be more conversational, supportive, and fully developed when communication was by video than would be possible or practical with text. These perceptions were supported by content analysis of feedback comments. We found that video comments had significantly (P \ .01) higher word counts than text comments. Video feedback also contained more praise, support, and relationship building comments than text feedback” (Borup et al 2015). Borup, J., West, R. E., & Thomas, R. (2015). The impact of text versus video communication on instructor feedback in blended courses. Educational Technology Research and Development, 63(2), 161-184. Skype, Zoom, and Google Hangouts are great tools for text, audio, and video messaging - as well as conferencing.
• #28: Blogging is an activity that supports deep and meaning learning in multiple ways. Learners capture and share media along with their own reflections. Others may comment, like, share, etc. Discussions can become much more substantive than with short messaging or threaded discussion.
• #29: Small group and class discussions around Google Documents can be captured using the commenting feature. This can alert members as others participate in the discussion and offer a means for the instructor to capture student contributions / participation.
• #30: Comments / questions?