Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Stop giving out mobile devices and beefup your wireless access

Below is a snippet from an article about George Fox University about how they are getting out of the business of giving out laptops to students and instead putting the money into their wireless infrastructure.

The proliferation of smart phones and other mobile devices has also lessened the need for a laptop on campus, said Smith. Already equipped with multiple WiFi-enabled devices, students don't really need another piece of equipment, particularly one that's partly or entirely controlled by their institution of higher education. 

So instead of focusing on equipment giveaways, Smith said, George Fox University is focusing its efforts on beefing up its WiFi network to accommodate all of those devices.

"That's where we'll be throwing most of our dollars (the money saved by not having to buy laptops) this year," said Smith, who pointed to coverage and density as the two biggest issues that the college will be addressing within its wireless network. "We've seen weaknesses within our network, and we'll be working to address them."

The full article can be read here.

Given the proliferation of ubiquitous mobile computing devices I think this is the proper strategy going forward for schools and universities. Spend your money beefing up your wireless infrastructure and allow students to use their own devices. The best mobile computing device is the one the student is most comfortable using.

What Makes Mobile Learning Ubiquitous?

The folks at Mobl21 recently posted an article titled "What makes mobile learning ubiquitous?" Listed below are the characteristics they feel are the key components to ubiquitous learning:

Features of Ubiquitous Learning
The main characteristics of ubiquitous learning are (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis et al., 2002):

Permanency: Learners can never lose their work unless it is purposefully deleted. In addition, all the learning processes are recorded continuously in everyday.

Accessibility: Learners have access to their documents, data, or videos from anywhere. That information is provided based on their requests. Therefore, the learning involved is self-directed.

Immediacy: Wherever learners are, they can get any information immediately. Therefore learners can solve problems quickly. Otherwise, the learner may record the questions and look for the answer later.

Interactivity: Learners can interact with experts, teachers, or peers in the form of synchronies or asynchronous communication. Hence, the experts are more reachable and the knowledge is more available.

Situating of instructional activities: The learning could be embedded in our daily life. The problems encountered as well as the knowledge required are all presented in the nature and authentic forms. It helps learners notice the features of problem situations that make particular actions relevant.

Adaptability: Learners can get the right information at the right place with the right way.

Follow the link above to read the full article.

Mobile Phone Learning - An Introduction

Below is the course syllabus for a semester course being offered at Columbia University. The course is taught by Nabeel Ahmad and Dominic Mentor.

Click here to download:
Mobile Technology.pdf (220 KB)
(download)

Abilene University Embraces Mobile Technology in a Big Way

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I have mentioned the iPhone initiative at Abilene University here and here, but it was in reference to something else and not the entire initiative the University has undertaken. In the Fall of 2008 Abilene University gave each of the incoming freshman an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The ACU website says the following:

Freshmen use their iPhones or iPod touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances. Applications from Apple's online App Store helped many teachers discover new ways of teaching their courses.

The University created a mobile portal called ACU Mobile. The portal allows students to connect to campus news and calendars, course documents, various forms of media, and serves as a pocket guide to local events, restaurants, and sporting events.

The University filed a report about it's findings during the 2008-2009 school year. The report mentions two students who began developing apps for the iPhone. It talks about professors who used podcasts to augment their classroom instruction. You can follow the link to read through the full report.

I like the approach ACU has taken. They standardized on a device and built a mobile portal to provide content that is optimized for the mobile device. I know there are pros and cons on device standardization but in my experience when you have the same device it removes a lot of barriers to wide scale adoption by your faculty and important stakeholders. As a teacher if I know all students can access my podcasts easily then I will invest the time in creating them. On the other hand if I have to spend my time helping kids access information via a number of different devices and entertain excuses as to why they could not get the information, then there is a chance I might not get involved in using the technology in the first place. Ease of use and access are key ingredients when undertaking a major technology initiative like ACU has.

Mobile Technology at the University of Washington - It is about the community

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The University of Washington has embraced the delivery of mobile content for it's faculty and students. The University serves over 65,000 students, faculty, and staff. The University noticed that around 90% of the 15,000 handheld devices connecting to its network were running the iPhone OS. This led the University to develop it's own app for the iPhone. Below are some quotes from a business profile on Apple's website

“Our students and staff are global, and we need to be connected wherever we are,” says David Morton, Director of Mobile Communication Strategies. “The community, because of its nature, is always on the go.”

“Whether a student is sitting at a desk, walking across campus, or halfway around the world, we make sure they are part of the university community,” Morton says.

"The community isn’t defined any longer by where we are,” says Grant Kollet, Director of First-Year Programs at the university. “It’s not about place; the community is about activity, and the activity depends on communication and interaction ... "

I like the quote from Grant Kollet above. I think he is right when he says the education community is not about where we are. He says it is about activity. I like to say it is about access. The internet and mobile technology is changing the nature of how we learn. It is no longer limited to professors in ivory towers. As online learning continues to expand where and how a student learns will become less important.The key is in educating students how to access the information and how to sift through all the data and determine what is relevant information and what is simply noise. I think that is the challenge for educators as we move forward. 

Modifying the Primary Mode of Instruction

Cynthia Powell is a Mobile-Learning Fellow at Abilene Christian University and an instructor of chemistry and biochemistry. Recently she conducted a controlled study investigating how modifying the primary mode of instruction in a laboratory course impacted that course.  

Her students are doing inquiry based experiments but don't have the necessary skills to design rigorous experiments on their own. Powell and her colleagues decided to prepare the students using a different modality. She writes:

"... this semester, we prepared podcasts that could be used as scaffolding tools or support tools for our students," she says. "This would allow students to access information on how to do a particular procedure, or to use a particular technique or type of equipment, and independently access the information they needed to plan their own experiment."

Powell and her teaching assistants monitored the students who accessed the podcasts and those who did not. The students who made use of the podcasts prior to entering class needed much less assistance from Powell or the teaching assistants than the students who did not access the podcasts.

One of the students commented:

 "I loved how we used the iPhone in class," says Erin Boyd, sophomore biology major. She adds that Powell's podcasts "described the lab's procedure in detail and showed you what to expect before ever walking in the door. This allowed me to quickly move from simple questions like 'What is this piece of equipment called?' to more advanced questions about what was actually taking place."

I have read elsewhere that using podcasts for instruction improves learning. One of the primary reasons is that students can learn at their own pace and replay the lecture multiple times or just portions of the lecture. They can also pause the podcast and reflect and write notes as they work their way through the lecture.