A New Research Agenda for Mobile Learning
by D. Christopher Brooks
No longer are the hallmarks of an academically engaged student or scholar a hefty backpack overflowing with books, a desk littered with journal articles, or a remote research carrel hidden in the darkened recesses of the stacks. Instead, the visible markers of the learner are manifest in increasingly smaller portable devices that have the capacity to store, retrieve, send, search, download, compose, edit, capture, and publish whatever materials may be necessary to accomplish a given learning goal. The very portability of learning content coupled with the communicative power of these mobile devices should make us rethink the transformative power behind all those tiny little speakers in our students' ears.
While mobile learning technologies are garnering increased attention throughout the academy, there is a lacuna in our understanding of how, if at all, the evolution of students into digitally nomadic learners impacts teaching and learning. This does not appear to be, however, the product of a lack of theoretical and empirical research questions, so much as paralysis stemming from the overwhelming number of questions to be asked and answered.
Kurubacak (2007) attempts to help us overcome that paralysis by defining the agenda of research programs related to mobile learning technologies for the next ten years. Employing a Delphi methodology, Kurubacak draws upon expertise of seventy-two distance education specialists from around the world to identify and rank the major research issues and challenges, research categories, research priorities, and research needs on which scholars should focus.
While the research categories presented by Kurubacak are not delineated clearly or discretely (e.g., the difference between a research priority and research need) and the statistical rankings render nearly every item under consideration either very important or quite important, a considerable number of the mobile technology issues identified are receiving institutional, pedagogical, and scholarly attention already at the University of Minnesota.
At the institutional level, Kurubacak maintains that understanding the dialectical relationships between personal technology and everyday learning are paramount, especially when attempting to provide mobile learners with the knowledge-base and skill sets necessary to flourish over the course of a lifetime. One opportunity to make explicit these connections between the University's Student Learning and Development Outcomes and Kurubacak's recommendations will be the Spring 2009 Mobile Learning Initiative spearheaded by the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
On the pedagogical dimension, Kurubacak's study identifies the most pressing priorities for mobile learning technologies as curricular (e.g., designing activities based on real life, providing interactive course materials), technical (e.g., diagnosing potential communicative problems, enhancing capabilities for rich social interactions, adopting suitable applications for the digital world), and legal (e.g., guaranteeing privacy and security for distance learners, considerations of mobile technology use for administrative tasks). The five faculty members participating in the 2008-09 OIT Digital Media Center's (DMC) Faculty Fellowship Program are addressing collectively and individually these and other issues related to the emerging learning environments that make the life of the digitally nomadic student possible. Their perspectives on these and other issues related to digital learning are available on their blog, Conversations about Emerging Learning Environments (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/dmc/dmcoitfacultyfellows0809).
In service to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the Research and Evaluation team of the Digital Media Center is committed to investigating the impact of mobile technology on the manner in which students learn and faculty teach. Employing both qualitative and quantitative research protocols (e.g., ethnographic, survey, quasiexperimental), DMC researchers have been engaged in several projects identified by Kurubacak's Delphi panel. In anticipation of the iTunes U launch in November, researchers collaborated with Professor Laura Gurak and the UNITE Distributed Learning program to gather data to provide learners and instructors with information regarding the best practices of podcast creation, dissemination, and use. With support from a Bush Grant, the DMC also has been exploring the impact of non-curricular issues such as the impact of formal informal learning spaces on how faculty teach and students learn, especially with the use of technology in support of group learning. And, in Spring 2009, the DMC plans to explore the democratization of power in institutions of higher education with the advent and spread of personal and mobile technologies.
We already know that students have a growing capacity to engage in mobile learning. Approximately 97 percent of students either own orould like to own a laptop computer. At the same time, another 92.3 and 68.6 percent of students report owning cell phones and iPods or other type of MP3 player, respectively. While only 5.8 percent report actually owning a "smart phone" in 2007, the market competition resulting from the introduction of the iPhone and other wi-fi portable devices should make these devices even more accessible and desirable (Walker & Jorn, 2007). In fact, according to the 2007 national Speak Up Project, 20-30 percent of students who will matriculate in the next one to six years are reporting that they already have access to "smart phones" and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Kurubacak's study is timely and will have a significant impact on shaping the direction of scholarship, research, and institutional decisions regarding how the spread and use of these mobile technologies might be parlayed effectively into the service of higher education. More important, his work serves as a useful framework with which we can understand and contextualize better our responses to the increasing importance of mobile technology that are already under way at the University.
References
Kurubacak, G. (2007). Identifying research priorities and needs in mobile learning technologies for distance education: A delphi study. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 19(3), 216-227.
Walker, J.D. & Jorn, L. (2007). Net generation students at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities: Twin Cities student educational technology survey. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Office of Information Technology's Digital Media Center.
Speak Up. (2008). Selected national findings: 21st century students deserve a 21st century education. Project Tomorrow. Available at http://www.tomorrow.org/docs/National%20Findings%20Speak%20Up%202007.pdf.
D. Christopher Brooks is a research fellow at the Office of Information Technology's Digital Media Center.
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