“…pedagogy rather than technology; perspective in which the pedagogy is central and the technology is under investigation only for what may be distinctive about the learning afforded by that technology.” (Kearney, p2)
Technology is changing at such a fast rate that it is difficult to find one type that will be the “magic answer” to our educational problems. In doing research in this field, it is important to look at how the technology is impacting the way students learn, as compared to the intricacies of the technology itself. It is hard to have one set of rules to evaluate m-learning, as the goals and objectives for each type might be different. Kearney et al. put together an interesting rating scale to look at what they classified as the three main components my which these types of activities can be measured: personalization, authenticity, and collaboration. I can imagine cases where you want all of these parameters to be measured “high”, but also where some might be better served as “low”. Collaboration is a great thing – but while we want students to learn this crucial skill, we also want students to be able to try their new skills out by themselves to see how well they, as individuals not a group, understand the material.
As Looi et al. stated on page 162, there is no “off-the-shelf” methodology available for doing research with mobile technology. As this is still a relatively new and fast changing field, there is no gold standard yet by which research in this field should be performed. There are also so many ways that this technology can be used (informal, formal, not-formal), that studies in each setting present its own set of challenges. Within my own classroom, I can think of ways to use mobile technology in all of these types of settings. The two parts that most stood out to me are looking at ways to unobtrusively monitor behavior (p 162) and to collaborate with others to perform the study (p166). I think about trying to perform studies with my own group of students and realize the sample size would be too small to have significant data. It would be a better study to work with students at different schools, whether that be locally, regionally, or internationally. I would also want a way to be able to monitor what students are doing without interrupting the activity itself. If looking at various apps, can student inputs be recorded and viewed by the teacher at a later point? If the study involves time not involved in the classroom, how can the information about what occurs can be recorded?
As Park showed in his paper, there is a wide range of ways that these mobile learning programs can be classified. Are they used as a supplement to a standard class environment, or are they used in distance education? There are so many possible uses, that again, it’s hard to create a single model in which to judge these programs by. Ultimately, in all three of these papers, there are a few themes that come through. Terms need to be defined, as there are often several varying definitions for some common terms. Also, the main pedagogical goals need to be established before the study begins.
The final paper I chose to look at investigated the use of digital augmentation and scaffolds to improve learning in a science museum (Yoon, 2012) Right off the bat the researchers realized there are difficulties at studying the effects of mobile devices in museums. Museum visitors are there for a wide variety of reasons and the amount of time and focus spent on various exhibits greatly varies. For this reason, the authors chose to use a school group as their target group, since students in these groups often have a more academic approach to their learning while in the museum. This group discovered that adding digital augmentation (overhead camera/projection system) to an exhibit caused the greatest increase in knowledge, but the addition of scaffolding (posted instructions, questions, and bank of peer ideas along with a clipboard with student response form) had the greatest increase to their cognitive theorizing ability. This was mostly thought to come from the ability of this group of students to work in groups (each of the other test groups did individual work). As discovered during interviews, there was some confusion from the students as to the purpose of some of the posted information and students in this group did not often follow the posted directions. This study did look at the increase in learning skills, rather than focus on the technology portion. I find it curious that the addition of the scaffolding decreased the student’s scores on a knowledge based quiz, but I wonder if that is because there were other activities that were distracting from the straight knowledge. It gives an interesting thought that as a teacher trying out new activities, some might increase knowledge but not cognition, and some might do the opposite. Ultimately, we’d all love to improve both equally, but we have to ask ourselves what is our objective and if we have to choose, which is more important?
These studies are not easy to design or implement. What is so important, however, is to have a good idea of what goal does one ultimately hope to accomplish by the addition of these technologies into the given activities, and how can we design a study to reflect the true learning goals.
Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., & Aubusson, P. (2012). Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective. Research In Learning Technology, 20:1, 1-17
Looi, C.-K., Seow, P., Zhang, B., So, H.-J., Chen, W., & Wong, L.-H. (2010). Leveraging mobile technology for sustainable seamless learning: A research agenda. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(2), 154-169
Park, Y. (2011). A pedagogical framework for mobile learning: Categorizing educational applications of mobile technologies into four types. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(2).
Yoon, S. a., Elinich, K., Wang, J., Steinmeier, C., & Tucker, S. (2012). Using augmented reality and knowledge-building scaffolds to improve learning in a science museum. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
I agree with your thoughts on collaboration. I know that it can be a great tool and in an “ideal” world it becomes very effective. I believe that it is probably more easily incorporated in the younger ages as those students are more mold able and motivated to learn and impress the teacher. I find that by the time that I get them, high school, they are less motivated and always looking for a shortcut. This becomes a problem when I use collaboration strategies because many items they are just going through the motions while collaborating and not really getting much out of it. They become side tracked easily. Do you have nay suggestions of how to implement collaboration efficiently at the high school level?
I agree that we want students to be able to understand and use information as an individual and not just as a group, but I think collaboration is a very effective way to reach that point, especially when integrating mobile technology. In my classroom, I have students working towards a common goal in collaborative groups, but they are working independently first before they collaborate with their group. This has been effective because everyone can support their own opinions with information on their mobile device, an iPad in my classroom. Without the mobile device, the students may have an opinion about a topic but have no way to verify their opinion is correct. By using this technique, both the individual and the group grow academically. It also allows the individual student to create or mold their own personal identities within the group and the entire classroom.
Hi, I found your blog post intriguing! Just out of curiosity, how many students do you have total? I have around 100 every year, and I think I can make a good sample group out of them. But I do agree, the type of technology certainly depends on the situation. If students are using it at home, they should use something like blackboard or googledocs, but that wouldn’t’ make much sense to use in the classroom. When I was an undergrad we used a hybrid: in class we used traditional Microsoft Office, but homework had to be turned in via blackboard (Rider University). I felt almost as if I was being smothered by technology! Sometimes I feel the same way for post-grad, but that’s the nature of distance education. Do you agree that sometimes it might be a good idea to go back to “old fashioned” ways of learning (physical activities, pen and paper, etc.) so students don’t feel overwhelmed by keeping up with digital due dates and computer monitors?