According to the 2016 ECAR survey, 96% of undergraduates in the U.S. now own a smartphone and the trend is on the rise. How can educators design learning so as to improve access for the smartphone learner?
4. Low-income and rural
households are the most likely
demographic to depend on
smartphones for their primary
Internet access.
– Pew Research Center
5. When asked why they do not subscribe to home
broadband, 65% of smartphone-depended users
responded…
“the smartphone does everything online that you
need to do”
6. •Text Messaging
•Browsing the Internet
•Video & Voice Calls
•e-mail
•Social Networking
Top Smartphone uses for average Americans
9. An increasing number of
students use their
smartphones for at least one
course. However, only 46% of
students consider their
smartphones essential for
coursework - compared to
93% for laptops.
11. Affordances of Smartphones
Always available (anywhere / anytime)
Just-in-time communication
Capture video / audio / screenshots
Internet browser
Social Media
Bluetooth (connectivity w/ other devices)
12. “Advantages” of using smartphones for academics
...makes it easier to access
coursework (72 percent)
...increases communication with
other students (65 percent)
...increases communication with
instructors (60 percent)
Interaction Matrix (Rhodes, J CC-BY)
13. Deep and meaningful formal
learning is supported as long
as one of the three forms of
interaction (student-teacher,
student-student, student-
content) is at a high level.
Anderson’s Interaction
Equivalency Theorem
14. Student-Content: Technology helps me...
Conduct research for class assignments
Keep track of course news or announcements
Document class work or projects
Investigate topics outside class time
Reflect on course materials
Analyze data
15. Learner to Content Interactions and the
SmartphoneGamification
Quizzing
Video
Audio (podcasts)
Photography
Blog
YouTube
Google Forms / Docs (commenting)
OERs
Flickr / Instagram
Tumblr
Wikipedia
20. Student-Student: Technology helps me...
Work with students on class projects
Participate in group activities
Discuss course topics with other students
Ask other students questions
Get feedback from other students in a timely manner
Learn something from other students
Explain course ideas or concepts to other students
21. Learner to Learner Interactions with Smartphone
Text Messaging
Video Messaging
Audio Messaging
Video Conferencing
Commenting on Posts
Sharing Digital Media
GroupMe
Skype
Zoom.us
Tumblr
YouTube
Google Hangouts
22. Learner Interactions and Social Media
Messaging individually / groups
Sharing from browser & other apps
Posting images, video & audio
Commenting & “liking” on others’
Receiving alerts / notifications
Intuitive interface ( SM mechanics)
Cross platform / device / browser
Privacy
23. Student-Instructor: Technology helps me...
Ask my instructors questions
Get feedback from instructors in a timely manner
Understand my instructors’ expectations
Discuss course topics with my instructors
View my instructors as approachable
- ECAR: Undergraduate Students & IT, 2016
24. Learner to Instructor
InteractionText messaging
Asynchronous Audio
Asynchronous Video
Video Conferencing
Commenting
Sharing Digital Media
GroupMe
Skype / Zoom
YouTube
Google Drive (Docs / folders)
Dropbox
Archive.org
26. Teaching Presence and Instructor Immediacy
Setting Expectations
Virtual Office Hours
Feedback
Asynchronous Audio Communication
Video Messaging
Web-conferencing
27. Blogging using Social Media
Fostering social presence
using social media.
Blogging (journaling) for
deep and meaningful
learning
Video-blogging with
YouTube
User experience
“Smartphone Learning” replaces “Mobile Learning” as the Smartphone has emerged as the dominate mobile device.
Present with speaker view and Audience Q&A (drag presentation to 2nd monitor)
Mobile learning has been an emerging educational technology for several years. It is important to understand why it has yet to be fully embraced by learners and educators - the challenges and affordances, as well as how the technology has evolved to this day when it makes more sense than ever.
mLearning 1.0 = PDAs, Blackberrys, Feature Phones w/ cameras, Tablets, Laptops, e-readers...
mLearning 2.0 = Smartphone Learning
This number is up 5% over a two-year period, during which time there has been a decrease in the number of homes with broadband Internet service.
It is important to understand that your students who have limited resources may be in this demographic.
General population in US top uses of smartphones.
Top undergraduate uses of smartphones…
The average undergrad uses their smartphone in ways that are dissimilar to the average american but may in fact, be relevant to use in an academic context.
Distinction between social networking and social media - social networks are the people (our network of friends / contacts) we interact with using social media.
ECAR 2016 Study of Undergraduate Students & Information Technology
If this trend continues along the same path we may see as much as 98% smartphone ownership in 2017 and 99% in 2018.
Student value the laptop for instruction and although they are using the smartphones for learning, they don’t find them the most valuable for this purpose
In Rey Junco’s Twitter and Student Engagement research projects, he has a mandatory orientation to the app and how it is used in his class before students begin the assignments.
Junco, R., Elavsky, C. M., & Heiberger, G. (2013). Putting twitter to the test: Assessing outcomes for student collaboration, engagement and success. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(2), 273-287.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01284.x
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01284.x/epdf
The mobility of the smartphone, having a browser along with both cellular and wifi connectivity are among the most powerful features as well as the camera and ability to share.
Photo credits: Andrew Currie “Skype/Qik Test” CC-BY on Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewcurrie/2682227633
Note: the top three listed here are also the three main types of interactions: Student to Content, Student to Student, and Student to Instructor Interaction.
Why don’t students use the smartphone more for learning?
Top reason given was lack of technical support - stating “instructors typically provided limited support” (Chet et al 2015). Need for support (EDUCAUSE).
Terry Anderson
These are some of the ways students use technology to support student - content interaction.
Content (media) may be inherently interactive, or have interactivity added to it through social media or using such tools as Google Docs comments with groups.
T. Bates…
Smarthistory is one of the Khan Academy Channels. This particular channel includes 680 videos. Other channels include Math, Computing, Medicine, Organic Chemistry, Statistics… These videos are accessible using closed captioning. Average length of these videos is a little over 10 minutes each.
In addition to being able to embed these videos in most LMSs and Websites, users can share them using social media such as Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and Stumble Upon,
Archive.org is a collection of millions of free to use digital materials, including archived websites, video, texts, audio, television and radio programming, software, images, concerts, etc. Most materials are available for streaming or download. Users can also create and contribute their own media to the archive. This is useful when instructors need a service to stream their own media and are willing to share within an open repository.
If sharing content to Tumblr from Internet Archive, use the browser share option as opposed to the share button on Archive.org - which can be problematic.
MOOCs such as Saylor.org offer open content and even quizzing.
I won’t play this short tutorial on converting PDF files and JPGs to Google Docs during the presentation but there are several reasons for doing so:
1) the file becomes user-friendly for the smartphone screen (one of the challenges of smartphone learning is reading text on a smaller screen)
2) Google Documents do not count against your drive space in Google Drive; so it makes sense to convert and then to delete the original, and
3) using Google Docs can improve accessibility as images and some PDF files are not accessible to screen readers.
Responsive design
Zoom.us can be used not only fr web-conferencing but can record directly to your desktop in file formats that can be uploaded to YouTube and Archive.org for streaming, or to Google Drive for download and play offline.
Asynchronous and Synchronous
Just-in-Time Communication
Cross-device / Cross-platform
Intuitive / User Experience Design UX
User-driven
Participatory
User managed profile (privacy)
Use as an example, Skype audio & video
https://coi.athabascau.ca/
Begin with the social presence to create a sense of community between the learners and one another as well as the learners and instructor, Teaching presence guides the learners in discourse and reflection.
Students prefer to have both synchronous and asynchronous communication with their instructor. By sharing images, as well as asynchronous audio and video instructor immediacy is increased and student feel more connected to the course.
“...students and instructors reported that feedback tended to be more conversational, supportive, and fully developed when communication was by video than would be possible or practical with text. These perceptions were supported by content analysis of feedback comments. We found that video comments had significantly (P \ .01) higher word counts than text comments. Video feedback also contained more praise, support, and relationship building comments than text feedback” (Borup et al 2015).
Borup, J., West, R. E., & Thomas, R. (2015). The impact of text versus video communication on instructor feedback in blended courses. Educational Technology Research and Development, 63(2), 161-184.
Skype, Zoom, and Google Hangouts are great tools for text, audio, and video messaging - as well as conferencing.
Blogging is an activity that supports deep and meaning learning in multiple ways. Learners capture and share media along with their own reflections. Others may comment, like, share, etc. Discussions can become much more substantive than with short messaging or threaded discussion.
Small group and class discussions around Google Documents can be captured using the commenting feature. This can alert members as others participate in the discussion and offer a means for the instructor to capture student contributions / participation.