Configuring learning contexts with mobile devices

1. Configuring learning contexts with mobile devices John Cook john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk RLO-CETL, London Metropolitan University

2. Structure • RLO-CETL (very brief) • Cultural emergence of Generation CX • Learner generated context studies: • Earlier work with undergrads • Current work

3. RLO-CETL • Designing multimedia learning resources and learning objects (RLO-CETL) • For web and mobile phones • EG for Study Skills, Business Studies and Sports Science • See http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk/index.htm

4. Cultural emergence of Generation CX • A recent Demos publication called ‘Their Space’ (Green and Hannon, 2007, p. 10) researched children and young peoples’ digital interactions that are part of everyday life and reported: “The baseline finding from our research was that the use of digital technology has been completely normalised by this generation, and it is now fully integrated into their daily lives … Almost all are now also involved in creative production …”.

5. Cultural emergence of Generation CX • Do we now have to think of learners in terms of a ‘Generation C’ – a generation of content producers? • What teaching environments, what pedagogical practices, might work for these learners?

6. Cultural emergence of Generation CX • Learner generated context (ConteXt: CX) and not Content ‘is king’ • View cultural emergence of Generation CX in terms of • Bakardjieva (2005, p. 34) “technology-in-use-in-social-situations” • learner generated contexts (Cook, 2007a; Cook 2007b; Cook 2007c)

7. Cultural emergence of Generation CX • Bakardjieva (2005, p. 34) characterises her approach as technology extended to include the acts of use in social situations. • This is where a user enacts or invents ‘use genres’, i.e. they mobilise available cultural tools to respond to a social situation.

8. Cultural emergence of Generation CX • Provisionally, I define a ‘mobile learner generated context’ as • Being conducted by a learner or learners • Who are using mobile devices • To communicate or individually reflecting ‘on the move’ • And who, in the course of a dialogue with another person or interaction with multimedia resources, raise questions that create a context • When an answer to this context-based question is generated this can give rise to knowledge.

9. Earlier work with undergrads • Cook et al. (2006) • Mobile phone surveys with students (117) • 98% have mobiles • 61% think it’s extremely useful to be able to learn at any time and place • 55% of the students answered positively about the university contacting them via their own mobile for learning purposes. Only 23% thought ‘it would be a negative aspect’.

10. SMS ‘learning hints’ Some responses from students about the ‘learning hint’ text messages sent them

11. Current work • Study 1 – Case Study • Study 2 – Grounded Study (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) • Study 3 – BNIM (Wengraf, 2005) • Study 4 – Learning objects for learners on the move

12. Study 1-3 • Goal of research, examine • (i) learners’ informal/private ‘space’, • (ii) learners’ formal education. • The focus on use genres in post-compulsory education.

13. Study 1-3 • Identifying and documenting the possibilities for mobile learning in terms of this question: • Do learners incorporate ‘near future’ mobile devices into their own informal/private and formal practices? • I expected to find that • Early users actively discover the relevance of mobile learning to their own context • Users were actively initiating mobile device-based practices that designers and promoters of these technologies have not been able to imagine.

14. Study 1 – Case Study

21. Study 2 – Grounded Study Wine Group (2) CB: What did you think about the assignment and the technologies that were available to help you complete it? (4.15) C: I mean the phone was such a good package. You could interact with each other, you could call. We would text and we didn't have the restriction of paying money. Whatever came up, we used to call each other. So we used to communicate with the phone, take pictures and the video, it was a nice package. But me too, as Suzie, I believe that actually interacting between the 3 of us through mediaBoard it was a little bit not really helpful. Well, it was a way for the lecturers to actually see how much we interact between the three of us, because they have no proof of how much we actually speak on the phone, or how many texts we send, but at the same time, yes it was a hassle. Show Clip

22. Study 3 – BNIM • We using Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive-Method or BNIM (Wengraf, 2005). • BNIM was chosen because it: • focuses on the way in which people talk, hopefully about use genres • provides a detailed narrative that is very close to the experience under study, • could potentially allow me to see what is happening in context and across a range of possibilities.

23. Study 4 – Learning objects for learners on the move • Multimedia learning objects can • provide multimodal channels that enable students to build up their own knowledge representations of the task in hand • and if used in a collaborative way they can help students in identifying the gaps in their own knowledge • hence assist successful task comprehension and performance • (Soloway and Norris, 2005) Show Clip Prototype

28. Conclusions • Data analysis for user-centred studies 1-4 taking place now. • The appropriation-configuration is spanning the informal-formal learning divide. • Wider issues of user generated contexts will include teachers and learners as active generators of context • How do we introduce quality assured RLOs and other resources into the user generated context?

29. References Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet Society. The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications. Cook, J. (2007a). Smells Like Teen Spirit: Generation CX. Ideas in Cyberspace Education (ICE3), 21-23 March, Loch Lomond, Scotland. Cook, J. (2007b). Putting Control into the Hands of the Learner: M-Learner Generated Contexts. Paper accepted as part of Symposium: Mobile Learning and Creative Disruption in Learning Organisations and Pedagogy (convener John Cook). CAL ‘07, 26-28th March, 2006, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Cook, J. (2007c). Generating New Learning Contexts: Novel Forms of Reuse and Learning on the Move. Invited talk at ED-MEDIA 2007 – World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, June 25-29, Vancouver, Canada. Cook, J., Bradley, C., Holley, D., Smith, C. and Haynes, R. (2006). Introducing Blended mLearning Solutions for Higher Education Students. mLearn, Banff Canada, October 22 – 25. Green, H. and Hannon, C. (2007). Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation. Demos: Leicester, UK. Available from http://elearning.heacademy.ac.uk/weblogs/pathfinder/?p=46, accessed February 1 2007. Soloway, E. and Norris, C. 2005. Using handheld computers in the classroom: Concrete Visions. Podcast of Keynote from mLearn 2005,4th World Conference on mLearning . Available from http://libsyn.com/media/digit5th/SolowayNorris.mp3, last accessed February 2006. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Sage: London. Wengraf, T. (2001; reprinted 2002). Qualitative Research Interviewing: Biographic Narrative and Semi-Structured Method. London: Sage Publications. Link to showcase: http://www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk:8080/rlo/mlearn/mlearn_showcase.html John’s m-learning publications/talks/workshops etc: http://homepages.north.londonmet.ac.uk/~cookj/top_files/Cook%20m-learning%20bibliography.pdf