Mohammed ArifSupervised by

Lyn Pemberton and Mithileysh Sathiyanarayanan

Improving Saudi Arabian Education

The keen adoption of m-learning in educational environments and the number of pilot projects show that m-learning is experiencing exponential growth.

Constructivism has been the learning paradigm during the past few decades… And m-learning is thriving in social constructivist learning paradigms.

“The mixing of distance learning with mobile telephony to produce mLearning will provide the future of learning.”

Keegan (2003)

“The mobile revolution is finally here. Wherever one looks, the evidence of mobile penetration and adoption is irrefutable: cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, portable game devices, handhelds, tablets and laptops abound. No demographic is immune from this phenomenon. From toddlers to seniors, people are increasingly connected and are digitally communicating with each other in ways that would have been impossible to imagine only a few years ago.”

Wagner (2005)

E-learning is the macro concept that includes online and mobile learning environments.

M-learning is a subset of e-learning. E-learning is in turn a subset of distance

learning, which is in turn a subset of flexible learning.

“M-learning is e-learning through mobile computational devices”

Quin (2001)

Diagram 1: The subsets of flexible learning

Flexible Learning

Distance Learning

E-learning

OnlineLearning

M-learning

Paper-basedDistance Learning

Contact Learning(residential/face-to-face)

(Brown, 2004)

Social media focus Anytime, anywhere

learning Incorporates texting Students can be

resources

How learners (of any age) use new technologies to participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together.

Source: Ambient Insight, 2007

Distilled-down version – learning “nuggets”

“Just enough” i.e. brief content

Always on On demand (Just-in-

time) learning Facilitates learning

during naturally occurring times

Performance support

Students in field settings

Students on the go

Multi-way, active learning

Can add texting capability to an mLearning module

Can transmit images and other data

The main aim of the study is to determine the improvement that will be achieved by applying mobile learning systems in teaching and learning in the Saudi Arabian high schools.

Investigate on the empirical studies carried out by researchers on adopting mobile learning in education?

Investigate the critical factors for mobile learning to be successful in teaching and learning.

Investigate the factors affecting the use of mobiles by teachers in the Saudi Arabian high schools.

Provide optimal solutions for the challenges and difficulties faced by teachers' in teaching and learning in Saudi Arabian schools.

Critical review of technologies for teaching and learning using mobile learning.

Implement existing model for effective implementation of mobile learning in teaching and learning in Saudi Arabian high school?

Test the implementation of the model in the Saudi Arabian high schools, evaluate the results.

Provide solutions and recommendations for adopting mobile learning in Saudi Arabian high schools.

Figure: UTAUT Model from developed countries context (Venkatesh et al. 2003)

Figure: Research Model to understand the effect of attitude from developing countries context. In this study, Saudi Arabian context

The results are provided in the thesis.The raw data can be accessed from https://drive.google.com/open?

id=0B6suWOQKRkzXfjdjbTJJNjlCdy1pWUtiSHNUYTNTZWRnVTFOaVhxZzFlUHpoa2dKSFFYcEE&authuser=0

The schools must take initiative to improve infrastructure and resources needed for using mobile learning.

Efforts to advance the adoption of mobile learning in higher education in Saudi Arabia should focus on improving attitude towards the use of the technologies for education and on ensuring that the facilitating conditions are addressed.

Social factors also play a role in influencing adoption. Hence, the motivation and supportiveness of lecturers and colleagues is important in promoting the adoption of mobile learning.

Main advantage the main advantage of m-learning is that it increases

flexibility for students studying at a distance (Rekkedal, 2002)

mLearning has the potential to increase student retention (Fozdar & , Kuma2007)

University Leaders: ACU, CTU, Open University,

International Academy of Design and Technology

Experts: Judy Brown & David Metcalf (UCF) Organizations:

LearningTown (mobile learning group) http://www.learningtown.com/

The eLearning Guild http://www.elearningguild.com/ International Association of Mobile Learning

mLearning Conferences: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/ http://mlearnopedia.com/ http://www.elearningguild.com/mLearning conference

Blog: handheldlearning

Instructional Design for M-Learning – David Metcalf

Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers – Kukulska & Traxler

Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training (eBook of studies from AU Press) – Editor: Mohamed Ally

Mobile Learning: on-line journal