Mobile Learning

Iron Stairs / Mobile LearningI will hold my hands up and say I want an experience of ‘good’ mobile learning.

I know there are (or rather should be, we’ve been talking about it for long enough now) examples out there, but I haven’t ‘seen’ them. I have tried using mobile devices and a browser, I’ve tried Institutional VLEs and downloadable ‘courses’ through iTunes and iTunesU. I’ve tried different Apps (some linked to VLEs and some not) yet none were particularly any good and certainly not good enough to stop me going back to a desktop or laptop PC. I look forward to seeing how FutureLearn works as it is supposed to be developed with the mobile learning at the fore, but do not necessarily want to limit myself to MOOCs, or indeed MOOCs from one provider.

If, as we say, students are using and indeed spending so much time online and ‘mobile’, shouldn’t we be better at delivering content to them by now?

Is it so difficult to consider our mobile audience when developing a course? This is rhetoric question, so please don’t flame me in the comments (but comments and discussion is always welcomed) but surely if it is ingrained in to the process of developing and writing a course (even better if from scratch) then we should all be doing it, yes?

“Mobile learning is becoming one of the most prevalent forms of learning in the western industrialised society, due to a number of trends including cheaper more affordable devices, ubiquitous (more or less) universal connectivity, an increasingly itinerant work force, and the desire to connect with communities on a global as well as local basis. The rise is also due to people’s desire to develop their learning informally. There are formal contexts for mobile learning, but it is in the leisure time/travelling/down time that mobile learning still comes to the fore.” (Wheeler, 2013).

Reference:
Wheeler, S. 2013. Mobile learning and personal metrics. Learning with ‘e’s, [blog] 10th October, Available at: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/mobile-learning-and-personal-metrics.html [Accessed: 11 Oct 2013].

Image source: Iron Stairs by Chris Perriman (CC BY-SA 2.0)