1. Mobile Learning:
Current Status in the Asia Pacific and
Examples from Singapore
Dr. Hyo-Jeong So
National Institute of Education,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
hyojeong.so@nie.edu.sg

2. Overview
• This presentation is based on the “Review of Mobile
Learning Policy in the Asia Pacific” presented at the first
UNESCO mobile learning week in Paris (December 15-16
2011) and the examples of school-based research on
mobile learning that I have been involved in Singapore.
• Two main goals of this presentation are
– To provide the audience with the snapshot of the current status
of mobile learning in the Asia Pacific region
– To provide the audience with some examples of mobile learning
research implemented in Singapore schools for better
understanding of both the potential and challenges of mobile
learning

3. Current Status
MOBILE LEARNING IN ASIA PACIFIC

4. Mobile Phone Diffusion
• Asia-pacific region varies in great measures in the areas
of governance, leadership, political and economic
status, and more importantly, in socio-cultural aspects.
• Asia-pacific region also include countries with varying
degrees of ICT implementation and integration.
• Mobile Phone Diffusion: Asia Pacific is a unique region
with both mature (e.g., Japan, Korea, Singapore) and
potential (e.g., Cambodia, Viet Nam, India) countries.

5. Mobile Cellular Subscriptions
Per 100 population % change
per annum
(Top 5) 2000 2005 2010 2005-2010
Macao, China 32.7 110.7 206.4 13.3
Hong Kong, China 80.3 125.5 190.2 8.7
Viet Nam 1.0 11.5 175.3 72.4
Maldives 2.8 69.0 156.5 17.8
Singapore 70.1 102.8 143.7 6.9
(Bottom 5)
Bangladesh 0.2 6.4 46.2 48.5
Afghanistan 0.0 4.3 41.4 57.3
Nepal 0.0 0.8 30.7 107.4
DPR Korea 0.0 0.0 1.8 -
Myanmar 0.0 0.3 1.2 32.8
(From UNESCAP Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2011)

6. Key Characteristics of Mobile Learning
The review of mobile learning initiatives and
research in the Asia Pacific region revealed the
following 3 Key characteristics:
1. Making learning more accessible
2. Using mobile device for self-directed learning
3. Designing future learning environments with
mobile technology

7. 1. Making Learning More Accessible
• Literacy education with mobile phones in rural areas
– Adult literacy rate in the South Asia region: 65%
– MILLEE project in India (Kam, et al. 2009) : mobile games to
teach English for children in rural areas
– UNESCO-Mobilink project in Pakistan (UNESCO, 2010): mobile-
based literacy education for women
• Distance education/e-learning with mobile phones to
provide more educational opportunities
– SMS-based learning to deliver low-cost distance learning to
students in the Philippines and Mongolia
• “text2teach” project in the Philippine: an example of
mobile learning projects successfully scaled up to larger
number of schools

8. 2. Promote Self-Directed Learning
• Increasing awareness of the importance of informal learning and
life-long learning
• South Korea
– The first nation in the world to declare a nation-wide plan toward
digital textbooks by 2015
– Digital textbooks provide customizable tools and content for learning
– Digital textbooks are expected to be beneficial to students with
disabilities and students in rural areas
• Bangladesh
– “English in Action”: a nation-wide plan to raise people’s English
language skills by 2017
– BBC Janala: multi-media platform to learn English on mobile phones
and on an affiliated website.
– BBC Janala services are offered at a more affordable rate, which costs
almost half as much as typical services

9. 3. Design Future Learning
Environments
• Evident in more developed countries with strong ICT
infrastructures such as Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore
• South Korea: Promotion Strategy for Smart Education
• Malaysia: Smart School program
• Singapore: FutureSchools @Singapore program
• Mobile devices considered for designing learning
environments that meet the demands of the 21st
century skills

10. Categorization of Mobile Learning
in the Asia Pacific
Category 1 Mature mobile market, high penetration e.g.)Korea, Singapore,
of mobile phones, strong ICT Malaysia
infrastructure, mobile learning considered
under a broad context of national-level ICT
policies
Category 2 Growing mobile market, medium-high e.g.) Bangladesh, India,
penetration of mobile phones, basic ICT Pakistan, the Philippines
infrastructure, use of mobile phones for
distance learning and informal learning
contexts
Category 3 Emerging mobile market, low-medium e.g.) Afghanistan, Nepal
penetration of mobile phones, weak or
basic ICT infrastructure, little mobile
learning activities

11. MOBILE LEARNING EXAMPLES
FROM SINGAPORE

12. Overview
• In this section, I present two school-based
research projects on mobile learning that I
have been involved in Singapore:
1. Leveraging mobile technology for seamless
learning
2. Mobile learning activities to foster critical
thinking skills and in-situ knowledge building

13. Singapore Education & ICT
• An island country in Southeast Asia with over 350
schools
• Well-known for high academic performance in
international comparison tests (e.g., TIMSS, PISA)
• Systemic implementation of educational policy
on ICT since the IT MaterPlan in Education in
1997
• Government support for educational research on
ICT
• Close partnership among the Ministry of
Education, researchers and schools

14. Project 1: Leveraging Mobile
Technology for Seamless Learning
• “Seamless Learning”
– Linking formal & informal learning
• Transformative affordances of mobile
technology
– 24x7 access through 1:1 computing
– Mobile device as a learning hub
• Worked with Primary 3 students (age 9-
10) and teachers in one Primary school
• Mobile phones given to all students in
one experimental class

15. “Seamless Learning” Spaces Mediated by
1:1 Mobile Devices
Type II Type III
Out Class
Planned learning out of class Emergent learning out of class
E.g. Field trip to heritage site which E.g. Using mobile phones to capture
is part of a school curriculum pictures and video clips of animal and
directed by self-interest
Type I Type IV
In Class
Planned learning in class Emergent learning in class
E.g. Searching for answers in the E.g. teachable moments not planned by
classroom the teachers
Planned Emergent

16. Design Approach
• Mobile phone as a “learning hub”
Upload
Download
GoManage-LMS
Mobile Phone with Learning Applications
• Co-design of mobilized curriculum by teachers
and researchers

17. Mobilized Curriculum:
Design Considerations
• Provide an environment to integrate all learning
activities so students can have a hub to launch or
continue their learning activities
• Extending classroom learning activities beyond school
hours and premises to support the notion of seamless
learning
• Assess formatively: through learning
activities, students can receive feedback for their own
ideas from peers or the teacher
• Design student-centered learning activities to promote
engagement and self-directed learning
• Ensure that the teacher plays the role of facilitator to
move away from didactic teaching

18. Key Findings
• Infrastructure changes
– “mobilized” science curriculum
• Student changes
– More ownership of constructed artifacts
– Demonstrated self-directed and collaborative
inquiry learning
• Teacher changes
– Organize learning activities by thematic units
– From being dominant to being a facilitator
– Not worried about telling “I do not know”

19. Project 2:Fostering Collaborative
Knowledge Building Culture with Mobile
Technologies
• Under the FutureSchools@Singapore program
• Research work with one of the future schools in
Singapore
– Whole school ICT approach
– Small teacher-student ratio (1:20)
– Each student has own laptop (1:1 computing)
– iPads for outdoor learning
• Focus on the use of mobile devices and
applications for the development of collaborative
learning and critical thinking skills, which are
important 21st learning skills.

20. Design Approach
• Equip & Empower students to become “mobile”
learners: to engage with their surroundings to create
impromptu sites of learning
• Pervasive use: Using mobile devices and Web 2.0
tools to engage in knowledge building activities in &
out of school (So, Seow, &Looi, 2009)
• Mobile learning trail
– Anchoring learning experiences from abstract to
concrete
– Location-based learning: building knowledge in
authentic contexts

21. 3-Prong Approach: FAT
• 3-prong approach (FAT: Facilitation, Activity &
Technology) to enhance productive knowledge co-
construction in location-based collaborative learning
(Tan & So, 2011)

22. Mobile Learning Trail:
Design Considerations
• Provide students with an authentic
platform to apply knowledge in a real
world setting.
• Set the stage for collaborative
knowledge building in mobile learning
contexts.
• Design both application-based and
knowledge generative tasks (e.g., ill-
structured problems) to promote
critical discussion and thinking among
students
• Design learning activities that consider
the physical affordances of real
environments

23. Key Findings
• Students expressed appreciation for the
authentic learning experiences
• The use of networked devices and Web 2.0 tools
supported pervasive learning contexts, as well as
asynchronous communication with other groups.
• Mobile technologies also enhanced the
immediacy of facilitation from teachers.
• Students’ critical thinking skills improved after
experiencing and participating in mobile learning
activities

24. IMPLICATIONS

25. Key Challenges of Mobile Learning
in Schools
• Curriculum: Design learning activities to
harness mobile technologies in the classroom
• Ownership of devices: Promote routine use of
mobile devices
• Disruptive technology: Need for policies on
acceptable use of mobile devices in schools
• Teacher professional development: Need to
train teachers about how to integrate mobile
technologies for teaching and learning

26. What Makes a Difference
• “It’s not the devices but the learner that is
mobile” (Sharples, Taylor &Vavoula, 2005)
• Plan for routine use of mobile devices
• Plan for linkages with informal use of mobile
devices
• Link mobile devices to curricular activities
• Empower teachers to design and enact mobilized
curriculum

27. Future Directions
• “Knowledge Ladders” framework (Kozma,
2011): basic education, knowledge
acquisition, knowledge-deepening and
knowledge-creation
• Basic education and knowledge acquisition
approach is a predominant paradigm of
learning adopted in most mobile learning
cases in Asia Pacific.
• A vision for future mobile learning needs a
macro-level plan about how countries can
progress from basic education and
knowledge acquisition to knowledge
deepening and knowledge creation types
of learning.

28. References
• Kam, M., Kumar, A., Jain, S., Mathur, A., & Canny, J. (2009). Improving
literacy in rural India: Cellphone games in an after-school program.
Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Conference on Information and Communication
Technology and Development (ICTD ’09), Doha, Qatar, April 17-
19.http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mattkam/publications/ICTD2009.pdf
• Kozma, R. (2011). A framework for ICT policies to transform education. In
ICT policies and educational transformation. Paris: UNESCO.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002118/211842e.pdf
• Sharples, M., Taylor, J., &Vavoula, G. (2005, October). Towards a theory of
mobile learning. Paper presented at 4th World Conference on mLearning,
Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.mlearn.org.za/CD/papers/Sharples-
%20Theory%20of%20Mobile.pdf

29. References (Cont’d)
• So, H. J., Seow, P., &Looi, C. K. (2009). Location matters: Leveraging
knowledge building with mobile devices and Web 2.0 technology.
Interactive Learning Environments, 17(4), 367-382.
• Tan, E. & So, H. J. (2011). Location-based collaborative learning at a
Geography tail: Examining the relationship among task design,
facilitation and discourse types. In Proceedings of the CSCL
conference (pp. 41-48). Hong Kong, China: International Society of
the Learning Sciences.
• UNESCAP. (2011). Statistical yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2011.
http://www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb2011/
• UNESCO. (2010). UNESCO & MOBILINK, driving female literacy
through connectivity.
://www.unesco.org.pk/education/documents/Press%20Release-
Mobile%20based%20literacy.pdf