Informal Mobile LearningMike Sharples

Learning Sciences Research InstituteUniversity of Nottingham

Giasemi VavoulaUniversity of Birmingham/The Open University

mike.sharples@nottingham.ac.uk

University of Nottingham

• LSRI: International Research Institute

• Member of Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence

• Member of G1:1 global network for learning with personal technologies

Informal mobile learning

Only reference to mobile learning in Encyclopedia of Informal Education www.infed.org is 1916!

A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Dewey, 1916, “Democracy in Education”

Informal learning (Tough, 1971) (Livingstone, 2001)

• Nearly all adults (95%) are involved in some significant form of learning

• Adults spend on average 15 hours per week on deliberate personal learning

• Almost everyone undertakes at least 1-2 major learning efforts a year. The median is 8 projects.

• Learning for career, hobbies, sports, community and voluntary work, household and survival

• Consistent across ages (above age 16), cultures, and social classes

• Less than 1% of adults’ learning projects are for formal credit

Vavoula’s study of mobile learning

• March-August 2004• Diary study• 44 participants registered

– 15 kept diary for 2 weeks (161 episodes reported in total)

• Definition of mobile learning– “Learning away from one’s normal learning

environment, or learning involving the use of mobile devices”

Recording learning in context

• Temporal context: e.g. date, duration. • Social context: e.g. other people, roles they

assumed.• Situational context: e.g. location, event • Educational context: e.g. learning method,

purpose (if any)• Activity context: e.g. learning topic, available

support • Historical context: how learning interleaves with

other, everyday activities.

Sample diary entry

Results

• 59% of the reported learning episodes were mobile

• 49% were not in home or office– 8 outdoors, 34 workplace, 10 place of

leisure, 3 friends’ house, 1 public transport, 23 other (e.g. places of worship)

Results

• Most learning was to enable activity (40%) and/or solve a problem (15%)

• Only 5% of mobile and 10% of non-mobile learning was related to a curriculum

Results

• Conversation was the main learning method of mobile learning (45% mobile and 21% non-mobile)

• Mobile learning involves more activity and interaction than non-mobile

Caerus: example of Informal Mobile LearningCaerus, in Greek mythology, was the personification of opportunity and favourable moments

• Informal outdoor learning• Automatic location-based

delivery of content and services

• Personalised multimedia tours, educational games, outdoor experiments

• Tell the stories behind the sights

• Physical navigation

CAERUS

Handheld Delivery

Desktop Administrati

on

Caerus, in Greek mythology, was the personification of opportunity and favourable moments

Desktop Authoring System

• Import map image• Scale map to GPS

coordinates• Associate

multimedia with regions on map

• Create tours linking map locations

• Create themes for personalised guides and games

Handheld client

• Map based on current location

• Select a theme• Multimedia content or

service automatically ‘pops up’ when you walk to a location

• Leave ‘virtual graffiti’, share impressions, create location-based blogs

Reconception of learning• Classroom learning

– Learning as knowledge construction– Supported by ICT– How to design and manage an effective learning

environment

• Mobile learning– Learning as conversation in context– Enabled by continual interaction with personal

technologies– How people artfully engage with their continually

changing surroundings to create transiently stable and effective sites of learning