Design Principles for Mobile Learning

From New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education, chapter 13 (Design principles for mobile learning), Herrington, Herrington and Mantei discuss the eleven themes that emerged from their action research. In earlier chapters, they and other authors described 10 projects that were launched to integrate mobile devices (smart phones, iPods, etc) in teaching and learning. In this thirteenth chapter, they review and reflect on those projects. They call the following themes “design principles for mobile learning.”

1. Real world relevance: Use mobile learning in authentic contexts.
2. Mobile contexts: Use mobile learning in contexts where learners are mobile.
3. Explore: Provide time for exploration of mobile technologies.
4. Blended: Blend mobile and non mobile technologies.
5. Whenever: Use mobile learning spontaneously.
6. Wherever: Use mobile learning in non traditional learning spaces.
7. Whomsoever: Use mobile learning both individually and collaboratively.
8. Affordances: Exploit the affordances of mobile technologies.
9. Personalise: Employ the learners’ own mobile devices.
10. Mediation: Use mobile learning to mediate knowledge construction.
11. Produse: Use mobile learning to produce and consume knowledge.

I like the thorough, systematic approach to action research here. I also like the open publication of the results. I can use these results, discuss them with my students and with colleagues.  Of these eleven principles, number 5, use mobile technologies spontaneously, reminds me of a photographers blog I read the other day (don’t remember where… have to search) in which he claimed that one of the strengths of phone cameras is that you have them with you for spontaneous pictures. So, the fact that a smart phone is usually carried about means that it is available for spontaneous use in spite of the picture, for example, not being of the highest quality.

I like my iPhone for that very reason… I can record a bit of audio, take a short video, upload a picture to Flickr, make a note in Evernote, wherever I am. Learning that takes place in the field, where we live and work, is embedded in that context. We are learning more and more about how learning is tied to context, and I think this makes mobile devices an intriguing prospect for learning.