Exploring mobile affordances in the digital classroom

David Parsons, Herbert Thomas, Jocelyn Wishart

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Contribution (Conference Proceeding)

15 Citations (Scopus)
243 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article reports on a survey of teachers undertaking a postgraduate applied practice certificate in digital and collaborative learning. The survey was intended to capture how mobile learning was currently being used by the teachers both on the course and in their own classrooms. The objective was to investigate to what extent mobile learning was being used by our teachers, and which particular mobile learning activities were, or were not, being integrated into teaching and learning in their own classrooms. We also wanted to explore how interested the teachers might be in seeing new mobile learning activities embedded within the course. Our results suggested that teachers and their students are frequently engaged in activities that utilize mobile learning affordances, but that these activities focus on simple, supplementary activities such as taking photographs and making videos. However, our results also indicate that there was significant interest among our teachers to explore more sophisticated mobile learning activities such as outdoor discovery activities. One conclusion we might draw from this study is that, despite many years of research into mobile learning and how it can be used both inside and outside the classroom, teachers need to be explicitly guided and supported to adopt these approaches in their schools. The feedback from this survey will be used to help to develop the course curriculum to integrate new elements of mobile learning.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2016
EditorsInmacculada Arnedillo-Sanchez, Pedro Isias
PublisherIADIS Press
Pages43-50
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9789898533494
Publication statusPublished - 11 Apr 2016

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