By the completion of the workshop participants will be able to;
Conference participants who are interested in getting involved in mobile learning research and development projects. No prior experience is required though enthusiasm for mlearning research is helpful to maximise your workshop outcomes.
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney.
PO Box 123 BROADWAY NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA Email: ajl@it.uts.edu.au Phone +61 2 9514 4501
Andrew is coordinator of the IT Education Research Group in the Faculty of Information Technology at UTS and is responsible for supporting and improving the teaching and learning of award programs. His academic experience also includes lectureships in Media Communications and Educational Technology. He has extensive professional experience as a media producer, and in the planning, design and management of innovative small and large-scale educational projects. Andrew produced numerous award-winning video and mixed-media projects in the 1980-90s including four Australian Government funded Projects of National Significance. He established Australia's first multimedia communication undergraduate subjects in 1993, and was the project leader in 1998-99 of the e.learning@mq project and in 2004-5 of the ITED grant scheme – successful, discipline-based, faculty capacity building projects in innovative ICT education research and development. He is the co-leader of a 2006 ALTC Project 'TeCTra - supporting student self and peer assessment in large groupwork projects' and a team member of a 2007 ALTC Project 'iCurriculum - developing an evidence-based curriculum design, graduate attributes, criterion-based assessment & eportfolio information tool'. He leads the Workready Project a curriculum renewal project at UTS developing the professional curriculum. Andrew’s research interests include the diffusion of innovations, technology in education, curriculum design and change, academic professional development and the design and production of educational mixed-media learning resources. He has successfully facilitated many international conference workshops in preparing persuasive proposals for mobile learning research and innovative learner-centred educational project planning, design and management.
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney.
PO Box 123 BROADWAY NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA Email: richard@it.uts.edu.au Phone +61 2 9514 1829
Richard has 25 years experience in systems development as a software engineer and consultant in industry and as an academic developing and delivering system engineering courses. His research interests include system architecture, data and systems integration, user-centred systems development, knowledge management and educational issues related to delivery and assessment of large group project subjects. As the head of an academic unit, he provides leadership in educational and curriculum development and conducts research in knowledge management systems. He is researching the application of mobile technology to facilitate low-cost class interactions. The ©mInteract system has been developed and is now being trialled within UTS. Initial results were published at the IMCL Conference in Amman in April 2008.
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney.
PO Box 123 BROADWAY NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA Email: laurel.E.Dyson@uts.edu.au
Laurel has over 20 years experience teaching in the university and adult education sector. She has a special interest in the education of international students and disadvantaged groups. She has successfully taught and developed educational programs for Indigenous students, senior citizens, prisoners and special needs students. In 2007 she was awarded the UTS Equity and Diversity Award for her co-leadership of the Indigenous Pre-IT Program, a bridging course which introduces Indigenous Australians to professional Information Technology competencies. She researches adoption factors and the design of ICT for Indigenous people and as a result of her outstanding work in this area, she was invited by UNESCO to lead the evaluation team of their major Indigenous international project ICT for Intercultural Dialogue in 2006. Her research interests include mobile and online technology in education, collaborative learning and communication, and the adoption of mobile technologies by Indigenous people.
In this workshop we will participate in a variety of activities to investigate low-cost mobile learning strategies and tools to improve active experiential student learning. Participants use the Facilitator’s minteract tool and discuss the issues that arise. We discuss why theories of active experiential learning are important to mlearning strategies and practices. We examine directions for needed mobile learning research and identify potential projects. We form initial project teams and start to prepare persuasive project proposals;
After introductions we will demonstrate, use and discuss a software system and online tool - mInteract – that has been developed by the Facilitators to support experiential learning in large lecture-halls and other learning spaces that are connected to the internet. Best understood by reading a recent national Australian newspaper story mInteract is a WAP/WML online application that allows students to use their smart-phone, wireless-laptop or other internet enabled device in the lecture hall and learning space to make learning more experiential, interactive and engaging at nil to very low cost.
May 13, 2008 <www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23687851-15306,00.html>
mInteract has more functionality and versatility than the existing clicker tools which are expensive to purchase by universities and often have ongoing license fees. Students can use their own phones with data-transfer plans or use mobile devices connected to university wireless networks for no-to-low cost. At most there could be a small data-packet charge of 2-4c per interaction.
Discussion of mlearning strategies and the theory of active experiential learning. Models of experiential learning often comprise four elements in an iterative process and our toolsupports this learning cycle:
Supported by mInteract students are presented with an activity – multiple-choice and short answer questions – that engages them with the subject. All students are asked to respond and those with access to the internet provide their responses electronically. The tool instantly collates these responses and presents a representative summary such as a bar-chart or list on the teacher’s screen. The teacher then introduces and displays the group summary facilitating individual reflection and abstraction. The teacher can adapt to better assist the students to build abstractions from their initial response and so progress the lecture and the learning of applications of the new knowledge.
Itin (1999) proposes a model of experiential education in which a transactional process between the teacher and the students takes place. Information is exchanged between the teacher and students and students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students. As students engage with each activity the teacher reflects and abstracts a better understanding of the status of student learning. So both students and teachers participate in an experiential learning cycle with each mInteract activity.
Other research interests of participants will be discussed.
Previous presentations of the workshop
This workshop's particular focus has not been presented before however the mobile learning research directions have. The directions were identified in the Facilitator's Ascilite2007 conference paper 'Directions for mlearning research to enhance active learning' and have been explored at these recent conference workshops;
Timelines are everything: preparing proposals for mobile learning research to enhance student learning.
IADIS International Conference on Mobile Learning, Algarve, Portugal, April 2008.
Preparing proposals for mobile learning research to enhance student learning.4th International Conference on Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning, IMCL, Amman, Jordan, April 2008.
In ICT: Providing Choices for Learners and Learning. ASCILITE Singapore, December 2007.
The Facilitator’s learner-centred educational project design and development model has been workshopped frequently.
Dyson, L. E., Raban, R., Litchfield, A. J. & Lawrence, E. (2008). Embedding M-Learning into Mainstream Educational Practice: Overcoming the Cost Barrier, 4th International Conference on Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning (IMCL2008), Amman, Jordan, April 2008.
Dyson, L. E., Lawrence, E., Litchfield, A. J. & Zmijewska, A. (2008). M-Fieldwork for Information Systems Students, Proceedings of the Forty-First Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Waikoloa, Hawaii, January 7-10, pp. 1-10.
Litchfield, A., Dyson, L., Lawrence, E. & Zmijewska, A. (2007). Directions for m-learning research to enhance active learning. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ASCILITE Singapore 2007. <http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/litchfield.pdf>
Litchfield, A. (1998). Designing educational media: Learner-centred processes. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. <http://www.ascilite.org.au/aset-archives/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/litchfield1.html>