All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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through various modes, including these
convergent mobile devices that fit in the
palms of our hands and can be used for
making the occasional phone call. Today’s
mobility continues to be a way to express
openness and freedom propelled forward by
a youthful sense of innovative app design
and use.
Based on the report Mobile Access 2010
(Smith, 2010), conducted by The Pew
Internet and American Life Project,
“Fifty-nine percent of adults now access
the Internet wirelessly using a laptop or
cell phone”(p. 1). This is a significant trend,
but perhaps of most importance is what
people are doing with these devices. This is
a new era for creative freedom, as mobility
allows for taking and exchanging pictures
and videos, sending and receiving text
messages, playing games and downloading
music. Individual activities become
collaborative actions through linking and
interacting with others and by sharing
and participating within an expansive
collaborative network. The 2011 Horizon
Report identified mobile computing as
one of the key trends in higher education,
asserting that: “mobiles are capable
computing devices in their own right – and
they are increasingly a user’s first choice for
Internet access” (p. 5). This report suggests
that the learner is an active, collaborative
and interactive participant, and mobile
devices provide easy access to the Internet
for communication and for the creation of
individual and collaborative documents.
Open Mobile Learning
As an emerging trend in higher education,
mobile learning is an area for scholarly
exploration and for collaborative practice
in face-to-face and online environments.
The relationship between open and mobile
learning has been examined in a special
edition of Open Learning (2010). This
issue features several essays that report on
innovations taking place internationally,
including: The Open University, UK; The
University of South Africa, Pretoria, South
Africa; and The University of Waikato,
Hamilton, New Zealand. As Empire State
College rediscovers its own 40-year legacy as
an open institution, it is useful for us to see
how instructors and researchers are engaging
with trends in mobile learning. The essays
in this volume also remind us how much
technology has transformed in the past 40
years and how we must continuously adapt
to these changes. According to guest editor
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, “with its strong
emphasis on learning rather than teaching,
mobile learning challenges educators to try
to understand learners’ needs, circumstances
and abilities even better than before”
(p. 18). As this journal suggests, mobile
learning opens education to students with
access to a range of portable devices and
to international audiences with immediate
access to cell phones.
According to Kukulska-Hulme, mobile
learning is complementary to current
technologies and does not automatically
replace other formats such as “desktop
computers, pen, paper and printed books”
(p. 184). She envisions the mobile device
as a way to support learning in between
classroom sessions, and as a means to
explore both formal and informal learning.
In addition, Kukulska-Hulme clearly
identified the way mobility opens education
to a wider audience. She argued that:
“learning is open to all when it is inclusive,
and mobile technologies are a powerful
means of opening learning to all those who
might otherwise remain at the margins of
education” (p. 184). She sees the mobile
device as a way to engage learners who may
have previously been unable to experience
traditional modes of learning. Further, she
argued that mobility has the potential to
bring education to international audiences
and “to girls and women, who, in many
parts of the world, are still denied basic
opportunities to improve their lives through
education” (p. 184-185). This ambitious and
inclusive method for open mobile learning
continues with several research essays that
further support the value of this approach.
Netbooks
Mobility extends beyond the smart phone
and includes such devices as the netbook.
A team of researchers (Gaved et. al.,
2010) at The Open University conducted
a study of netbook use that included over
300 secondary school students and seven
teachers during seven trials (p. 187). The
purpose of this study was to determine
“how well the netbooks performed as
mobile learning devices for education”
(p. 188). The context for these open
learners included a combination of formal
and informal environments such as the
classroom, fieldwork locations and home
(p. 196). According to this study, “netbooks
were ideal as lightweight, portable devices
for use in the field, capable of running
multiple software programs to transmit
video and audio and to store high-resolution
images” (p. 197). The netbooks also offered
extended battery life which worked well in a
variety of field locations, allowing students
the flexibility to complete several tasks
at times that were convenient for them.
The authors recommended the netbook
as an option for distance learners because
the devices are “highly portable,” flexible
and open to multiple inputs (p. 198). The
netbooks also featured highly usable screens
that allowed for a range of activities, from
writing to browsing the Web. The study
found that students considered the hardware
to be intuitive because of their previous
familiarity with the netbook functionality,
and the network connections allowed for
easy access to a range of online resources.
Although the researchers are interested in
comparing the netbooks to smart phones, it
is clear that netbooks offered flexibility and
functionality to open and distance learners.
Mobile Media Players (iPods and
MP3 players)
The potential for mobile media players
such as the Apple iPod was examined by
a team of researchers from the School of
Education at The Open University, UK.
Shohel and Power (2010) examined the
use of mobile technologies to improve
English-language instruction in Bangladesh.
The authors conducted a study of open
distance learning based on interviews with
teachers who participated in a professional
development English in Action (EIA)
program. Within this framework, “Englishlanguage
teachers are provided with media
players (iPods), preloaded with video and
audio language learning resources, along
with battery-powered speakers for use
in the classroom” (p. 204). Based on the
analysis of interviews, the authors found
that “the use of new mobile technology has
been shown to facilitate access to learning,
as well as improve the quality of teacher
education and training” (p. 213). The use
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011