Report on the use of mobile telephones for training
This is a report on the effectiveness of mobile telephones in training.
In early 2002 nine students on work experience at Ericsson Competence Solutions at Dun Laoghaire in Ireland were enrolled in the Ericsson Wap Overview course to be studied by mobile learning. All completed the course and filled in the international Questionnaire on mobile learning which is being used also in Norway, Germany and Italy.
Five of the participants used the Ericsson R520 mobile phone, which is a WAP phone with standard small screen. Two of the participants used the Ericsson R380 smartphone, with a larger horizontal screen. One participant used the Ericsson R320, a WAP phone that is an earlier model of the R520. One participant used the R529, the R320 and the Ericsson T39, a smaller WAP phone with a smaller screen.
Personal background
All participants gave their employment status as 'Student' and stated that they were under 24 years of age. 55% were male and 44% female.
77% had had one to three years of post-secondary education and 22% had had four or more years of post-secondary education.
All owned mobile phones, but only one owned a PDA (personal digital assistant) as well.
Student userfriendliness
Participants were asked if it was easy to use the equipment in this mobile learning course. These were the replies:
This is a satisfactory response rate with only 11% in disagreement.
The next question asked if the mobile learning experience was fun. This is a challenging question for a new and experimental area of training as it queries whether the course developers were able to create an attractive learning environment for the course participants and whether the participants found the new learning experience attractive. The answers were:
In spite of the 33% who disagree, this is a challenging question about any new and experimental form of training and the replies can be regarded as satisfactory.
Another challenging question followed, asking whether the participants would enrol in another mobile learning course. It is one thing to study a new and experimental course, it is quite different once the course has been studied and the student knows the didactic environment and the challenges of the course structure. The replies were:
Again the response of 55% in agreement with only 11% disagreeing is a satisfactory one.
Another tricky and challenging question followed. This asked if the participant would recommend mobile learning as a mode of study to friends or colleagues. To recommend a new and experimental mode of study to colleagues and others requires a definite level of commitment to the mode of study. The aswwers were:
Here the answers are clearly distinguished. No one is uncertain and no one strongly agrees or strongly disagrees. 66% are in agreement and 33% disagree.
As one of the values of mobile learning is that it restores the 'study at any time, at any place' characteristic of distance learning which was attenuated by e-Learning's placing the student in front of a powerful wired computer for the period of training, participants were asked whether they studied the course at home or at the office or work station, or while travelling. Because of the way the course was studied 100% replied 'at the office or work'.
Didactic efficiency
If m-learning is seen as a development of e-learning, in which the state-of-the-art characteristics of e-learning today are enhanced and given new dimensions, it is important to know if mobile learning increases the quality of e-learning provision. Participants were asked:
No one disagrees and 77% either agree or strongly agree.
If mobile learning is to be accepted as a valid form of training provision, it is important that learning objectives can be met by mobile learning courses. Participants were asked:
No participants disagree and there are 77% who agree that course learning objectives can be met by mobile learning.
Among the difficulties to be met with mobile learning are questions related to the provision of course content. There are questions with the volume of content that can be provided in mlearning; with the structuring of the content in wml cards and decks; with the downloading of content from the server; with the display of content on mobile phone screens: the small standard of the WAP R520 phone and the somewhat larger rectangular and horizontal screen of the smartphone R380. Participants were asked how easy was it to download course content to a mobile phone:
The replies indicate that this course was done on a test network which could be down at times or that the WAP gateway could be down and therefore the students could not log on. This could cause frustration but also provided real network experience of the use of mobile learning.
An important feature of the design of a didactic environment for mobile learning is the ability to provide communication to and from the tutor and the organisation providing the course. This is essential for feedback on student progress and for the solution of study and technical problems. In distance learning courses this is provided by correspondence with the tutor or by telephone, in email courses it can be by typed interaction or by telephone. In mobile learning it can be by using the mobile phone or by SMS or by email.
The answers to this question reflect that the communication with the tutor was in the form of preparatory meetings in which the system and procedures of mobile learning were explained, and then by either email, phone conversations (fixed line) or by formal meetings. The functionality for using the mobile phone or by SMS or by email will be added in later course developments.
Here are the student replies:
Another important feature of the design of a didactic environment for mobile learning is the ability to provide communication to and from the other students studying the course. The large percentage of students who replied 'undertain' to this question reflects the fact that this functionality was not available in this course but will be addressed in subsequent courses:
Technical feasibility
To evaluate any educational innovation one needs to assess its suitability under four headings:
- Student userfriendliness
- Didactic efficiency
- Technical feasibility
- Cost effectiveness
Technical feasibility is particularly important for mobile learning because many doubt students' ability to read course content from a mobile phone screen, many fear the slow processing and limited storage capacities of phones today. Students were therefore asked about how easy it was to navigate through the material in the course. This question queried the design of the course materials and the student's ability to navigate through the course and from module to module of the course, the student's ability to access the definitions and frequently asked questions section of the course and the student's ability to undertake the questions in the course and to receive the feedback from the system.
Participants were asked:
Furthermore many doubt the ability of mobile phones to provide graphics, illustrations, moving images and simulations for course materials. Years of experience with CD-Rom based materials and elearning materials have led trainers and students to expect the use of illustrative materials in elearning courses and it is clear that they might expect their provision in mobile learning too.
Participants were therefore asked:
Questioning and feedback is an integral part of any educational experience. Student assessment can be formative assessment, in which students are questioned and given feedback as a part of their learning experience, or summative assessment, in which students are examined and their results are graded for certification at the end of a course.
In distance learning assessment was of three kinds:
- Self-assessment questions (SAQs), which were provided for the student to check and evaluate their own progress in a course
- Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs), which were submitted by the students to their tutor at regular intervals during the course for correction, commentary and feedback
- Computer-marked assignments (CMAs), which were submitted by the students to their institution's computer at fixed intervals for correction, commentary and grading.
In elearning questioning frequently takes the form of quizzes or multiple-choice questions or other forms of machine-marked assessment.
The provision of adequate questioning and assessment structures is one of the major challenges in mobile learning.
Participants were asked:
Cost effectiveness
One of the major factors in the development of mobile learning is that it increases access to training. Unlike distance training in which the trainee is located at home or at work at a distance from the institution, in mobile learning the trainee has the facility for being mobile at a distance from the institution. Unlike eLearning in which the trainee is situated in front of a wired computer, in mobile learning the trainee has the benefits of wirelessness.
Participants were therefore asked:
For mobile learning to be a success it has to be cost effective both for the institution providing the course and for the students enrolled in it. Careful analysis needs to be undertaken on the cost of downloading a course to a mobile phone, studying it on a mobile phone, the cost of doing and submitting assignments on a mobile phone, the cost of communication with the institution, the tutor and other students studying the course via a mobile phone.
Participants were asked:
The high number of 'uncertain' responses is due to the fact that the participants were downloading the course free of charge locally from the server.
Again the high number of 'uncertain' responses is due to the fact that the participants were downloading the course free of charge locally from the server.
Participants were also invited to comment on the mobile learning course, or on equipment functionality and user-friendliness. Here is a selection of replies:
Mobile learning is great for that 30min DART ride, otherwise I think people would not be too quick to use it. It's good to give yourself a quick test but if you want to learn something new, it might prove difficult with a small screen.
I felt that reading large amounts of text on a small screen wasn't very user friendly. It would be more efficient just to use bullet points or diagrams - people would not be using this method of learning to learn from scratch. I think it would be more widely used as a means of refreshing one's mind before an exam/interview etc. Therefore long pieces of text are unnecessary.
DART is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit which would correspond to an underground railway in other cities. Both replies query the suitability of mobile learning for genuine courses of study but accept it for short summaries and revisions.
These replies are more positive and give the prospect of successful development of mobile learning for mobile telephones.
Links could have been a bit easier to follow, i.e a more linear approach may have been better with numbering of each module and sub-module.
The importance of numbering each module and sub-module for ease of navigation in mobile learning is a valid suggestion.
Really enjoyed the WAP overview course. It was a good first step into the world of WAP technology and m-learning. I think that m-learning is a really interesting concept.
Another very positive comment supporting the implementation on mobile learning on mobile telephones.
Important suggestions that mobile learning can be effective if the course is short enough, if the student is required to learn it and receives reward for successful study.
