Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 34

The Future of mLearning Begins with a Baseline Pedagogy
Figure 5. Examples related to the evaluations portion of the pedagogy.
background. The focus in those two areas
of the pedagogy is on instructor-to-student
and student-to-student interaction. To better
express this baseline mLearning pedagogy,
the following figures identify a few of the
options related to each of the four core areas
of the pedagogy:
Certainly, this pedagogy is familiar
and many of these options are currently in
use in traditional or eLearning classrooms.
The point here is to draw in the strengths of
those pedagogies while further developing
the role of technology for access and creating
new learning. Again, the LMS-less approach
takes advantage of market demand for
compatibility, which makes mLearning
wholly available today.
Strengths of the mLearning Pedagogy
There are a few things that are easier
or more convenient to do on a mobile
device, like a smartphone, than they are on
a laptop or desktop computer. For example,
microblogging similar to Twitter could
occur spontaneously rather than in a formal
study session. Microblogging could be used
in a number of ways in the classroom. For
example, students could use microblogging
to report, converse, and archive items
(Anderson & Dron, 2011), such as sources
related to a particular topic, brainstorm,
vote on a debate or topic, or provide a
running commentary like at the bottom of
a news channel. Most of these should not
serve as independent cognitive processes or
evaluations, but they can be useful tools in
the classroom. Microblogging, in particular,
helps close the gap between the life of the
student outside and inside the classroom
because participation is not limited to formal
class or study times. Also, providing a running
commentary of an event helps close the gap
between the theoretical and the applied.
For example, a student could attend a local
political speech or even watch a documentary
on something like the Rwandan genocide
and tweet about it throughout, which could
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