Mobile Learning: Impact of Mobile Learning in Education

• Introduction

In education, the development of mobile applications and the progress of wireless technologies have been remarkable (Khaddage, Muller & Flintoff, 2016). In recent times, for a number of educationalists, mobile technology in the domain of teaching and learning has turned out to be one of the salient topics of research (Ally & Prieto-Blázquez, 2014). These days, for lots of organizations, mobile learning (M-learning) is a strategic theme associated with education (Ally & Prieto-Blázquez, 2014). Following four research papers will accentuate the influence of this educational technology on education.

• Research Study No. 01: Impact of Mobile Technology on Student Attitudes, Engagement, and Learning (Heflin, Shewmaker and Nguyen, 2017) 

• Central Theme, Scope, and Intended Audience

In this quantitative research study, the researchers analyzed the influence of mobile technology on the attitudes, commitment, and learning of students. With the aim of evaluating attitudes, commitment, and critical thinking of students with regard to collaborative learning, this study involves the assessment of student learning in three diverse learning surroundings, both including as well as excluding mobile technology. Further, the chief intended audience of this research are educationalist, researchers, students and parents. 

• Description of the Study

The main rationale of this research study is to assess the usefulness of mobile technology employed in collaborative learning surroundings with respect to attitudes and commitment of students along with their critical thinking.

To examine the usefulness of employing mobile technology, the researchers used a quasi-experimental research design within a collaborative learning surroundings to assist critical thinking and engagement of students. A number of data sources were used by means of a multi-method model to scrutinize efficiency; the data sources encompassed questionnaires, classroom behavioral reflection, and a finalized written product.

The total number of students who participated in this study were 159; out of which 102 were females and 57 were males. These participants were first year university students who belonged to the six integral courses of a four-year inclusive university program. Over the period of approximately 90 days, these students participated in the randomized structured trial. In this research, intentional practice, common practice and HeadsUp are the considered kinds of collaborative learning surroundings and every single unit of students was arbitrarily allocated to one of these kinds. 

For analysis, the researchers focused on three kinds of data including, (i) a typed or written response from every single group defining the grounds for their verdict, (ii) video footage of every single student small-group collaboration, and (iii) questionnaire concerning insights and understandings of students conduced at the end-of-class.    

The results showed that positive insights of collaborative learning of students are linked with mobile technology, however, with the raised disengagement all through the class. Moreover, the rank of critical thinking of students was more directly linked with the tools employed to structure written responses as compared to the collaborative learning environment approach. 

As compared to those students who jotted down paragraph responses by hand or made use of a computer keyboard, students who constructed responses on a mobile device have proved to be considerably less critical thinkers. In a collaborative learning surroundings, students validated their engagement by means of discourse, eye contact, gesticulating and posture. On the other hand, disengaged students were mostly those who were focusing on mobile devices and not making eye contacts.