Abstract:

In recent years, the fast development of mobile technologies has greatly enriched and assisted students’ subject learning in higher education, and more and more lecturers have started using mobile technologies (smart phone, tablet, pocket pc, notebook, etc.) to assist their teaching. This project aims to showcase the vitality and creativity of tertiary students of different levels (undergraduates, masters, doctorates) and from different disciplines (Science, Social Science, Education, Arts and Humanities, etc.) in mobile learning, and lecturers’ good practices of utilizing mobile technologies in assisting their teaching, with the ultimate goal of promoting mobile learning in the HKIEd and beyond.
From 2013 to 2015, through a Community of Practice (CoP) project led by the current PIs, a Mobile Learning Community (MLC) was established successfully in the HKIEd. Although the CoP project was a success, without funding support, it is hard to sustain the meaningful community activities. In this newly proposed project, we aim to promote mobile learning in the HKIEd and beyond through further development of the Mobile Learning Community we have established. First, we aim to expand the membership of the MLC, and include members from sister institutions in Hong Kong, and from overseas institutions. A survey among HKIEd staff members about their current practices regarding the use of mobile technologies in their teaching will be conducted, and follow up interviews will be carried out, so as to identify and promote good practices of mobile-assisted teaching. Students’ mobile learning stories will also be collected and shared. Furthermore, we will conduct a series of seminars/workshops/sharing sessions on mobile learning by students and staff from HKIEd, and invite experts in this area from outside HKIEd to give public lectures on mobile learning. E-portfolios about students’ mobile learning experiences and teachers’ mobile-assisted teaching experiences will be compiled and uploaded onto the MLC website. Large number of App reviews related to different subject learning written by students will be uploaded onto MLC website for sharing as well. A Facebook page will be created to allow community members to exchange ideas about mobile learning conveniently.
It is hoped that, through this project, an extended and intensive study of the use of mobile technologies by students and academic staff can be carried out, which will shed light on how mobile technologies can be integrated into existing technology use in higher education and enhance students’ subject learning.

Code:

T0177

Principal Project Supervisors:

• WANG, Lixun
• MA, Qing

Keywords provided by authors:

• Mobile learning
• Mobile learning community (MLC)
• Community of practice
• Learning apps
• Mobile technologies

Start Date:

01 Sep 2016

End Date:

31 Aug 2018

Status:

Completed

Result:

Lectures and students in EdUHK were, in general, positive towards encouraging mobile learning in subject teaching and learning. However, students’ distraction by mobile devices in class might be the major reason why some lecturers were reserved about using mobile technologies in teaching. Smartphones and laptop computers were the two most popular devices used by students and lecturers to carry out or prepare subject-related activities. Teachers had the practice of uploading content notes, power point files, reading materials and reference resources onto the Moodle platform, while providing online quizzes, survey questionnaires and discussion forums. Meanwhile, students were most interested in accessing lecture PPT slides and course-related videos on Moodle on a handled mobile device anytime and anywhere. To teachers, the “limited storage of mobile devices” was the biggest obstacle to the use of mobile technologies in teaching, whereas “lack of training” was the students’ worry. Google drive, Google docs, Google sheets & Google slides were highly recommend by students for sharing resources and for doing group work project. Apart from Moodle, Kahoot, Socrative, Edmodo (especially good for big class size) were the most common app used by lecturers.
On the whole, lecturers and students believed that the use of mobile technologies to support teaching and learning would become popular and even a trend in the coming future.

Impact:

A series of seminars were held to promote mobile learning and the Mobile Learning Community in EdUHK. Up to 30 August 2017, a total of 666 members, including 55 teaching staff and 611 students, have been recruited and many more will join the Community as well. Both teachers and students have positive attitude towards mobile learning as reflected in the seminar evaluation forms. On the one hand, students look forward to seeing more and more teachers using mobile technologies in teaching as it is agreed that this is a trend in the 21st century. On the other hand, teachers show their willingness to practice using mobile technologies in teaching.
It is believed that appropriate use of mobile technologies is very important in teaching as its overuse would bring undesirable effects on student learning. With the appropriate application of mobile technologies, teaching will be more interactive, students will be more engaged in learning and learning outcomes will be better achieved. Moreover, mobile technologies are good tools to engage student learning if the learning activities are associated with learning strategies and pedagogical goals. In other words, the learning activities in contexts of the softwares/apps make learning meaningful, while promoting deeper learning and self-learning. However, face-to-face traditional teaching will not be replaced by mobile learning, but can be supplemented by it.
 
 

Deliverables:

Seminars/ Presentations/ Sharing Sessions

(2016, November) “Seminar on Mobile Learning in Higher Education: Seoul National University Cases” presented by Prof Lim Cheolil at The Education University of Hong Kong on 4 November 2016. (No of participants: 16)
(2017, March) “Seminar on Mobile-assisted English learning practices among tertiary students in the EdUHK” presented by Dr Wang Lixun at The Education University of Hong Kong on 22 March 2017. (No of participants: 9)https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/797d786b-d42d-41ea-abbd-3ea9...
(2017, May) “Seminar on Using online student response system and discussion forum to assist student learning of linguistic courses” presented by Dr Ma Qing at The Education University of Hong Kong on 17 May 2017. (No of participants: 8) https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/892066f6-30af-443c-8922-c995...

  Books/ Book Chapters/ Journal Articles/ Conference Papers

Wang, Lixun. (2017, June) Investigation of Mobile Learning and Mobile-Assisted Teaching Practices among Students and Lecturers in a Higher Education Institution. Paper presented at the International Academic Conference on Education & Social Sciences, Pragap, Czech Republic.https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/1aa29cf2-1e80-4514-988c-6773...  
Wang, Lixun. (2019). Chapter 19: Promoting Mobile Learning through the establishment of a Mobile Learning Community. In M. Carmo (Ed.), Education Applications & Development IV (205-214). Lisboa, Portugal: inScience Press. ISSN (printed version): 2183-2978. Publication link: http://press.insciencepress.org/index.php/press/catalog/book/18

Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)

Mobile Learning Community website: http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/ml-eduhk/https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/18389a0c-f8ba-4a64-b708-319b...

Financial Year:

2015-16

Type:

TDG