Mobile learning: Two case studies of supporting inquiry learning in informal and semiformal settings

Mobile technologies can support learning across different contexts as their portability enables them to be used by the learner in whichever context she or he is in. They can be particularly beneficial in informal and semiformal contexts where learners have more control over their learning goals and where motivation is often high. Inquiries in informal contexts are likely to be personally relevant in terms of topics of interest and capitalise on learners' location as learners decide what, where, when and whether to learn. There is considerable interest in how such benefits can be harnessed for more formal learning and one challenge is how to make inquiries personally relevant in such contexts. However, there is little literature that considers the structure needed to support informal and semiformal inquiry learning. This paper contributes to that literature by examining dimensions for researchers and designers to consider investigating or developing support for inquiries in informal or semiformal settings.The paper examines two case studies of inquiry learning in contrasting settings in order to understand more about learner control and how technology can support learners' inquiries. Case study one considers the use of web based software to support science inquiry learning by 14–15 year olds in a semiformal context, whilst the second case study reports on informal adult learners using their own mobile technologies to learn about landscape. These case studies are compared and contrasted in terms of the dimensions of learner control, location of learning, and the different support mechanisms for inquiry learning and a framework is proposed for considering these dimensions.     

From public policy to family practices: researching the everyday realities of families' technology use at home

Informed by ‘critical’ approaches to ‘educational technology’, this paper aims to move away from presenting a ‘could’ and ‘should’ explanation of children learning with technology to a more nuanced, context‐rich analyses of how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are being used by technologically privileged families at home. Here, a critical approach means locating the findings within a framework, which not only includes reference to the policies and politics of educational technology, but also takes account of uneven, contested, and contradictory uses of ICT in everyday family life. To achieve this, the paper presents accounts of technology use in situ from eight case families. The data reveal that although ICTs were purchased for their perceived educational potential, how parents and children approached and used them in the home for learning was entwined with many other dimensions of social life. The findings suggest that there is a need to move beyond one‐dimensional debates, such as access to ICT ensures use, to more nuanced accounts that focus on the ‘messy’ realities of ICTs usage ‘as it happens’ in the home. In sum, more explicit empirically based information on ICT practices in the home need to be made available for policymakers and families.     

Parents' perspectives on technology and children's learning in the home: social class and the role of the habitus

Government attention (in England and elsewhere) has been drawn to the role of technology in supporting learning in families. However, sociologists of education highlight that parent's ability to engage with their children's education and learning is not a straightforward issue. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper attempts to open up a space for examination of the differential experiences of parents from different social class backgrounds, of technology in the home, and how this informs the potential they see for family learning using technology. We use Bourdieu's concepts of ‘cultural and economic capital’ and ‘habitus’ to explore several themes. Firstly, the paper explores the impact of material inequalities of access on families and how this structures parental engagement with technology in relation to their children's schooling; secondly, how the harms and risks of technology are differentially experienced, negotiated and managed by parents from different social class backgrounds – with varying amounts of social and cultural resources available to them; thirdly, through discussion of the ‘generation gap’, we examine the significance of the parents' working lives (in terms of the privileged forms of engagement with technology, which professional employment increasingly requires and facilitates) in shaping parents' own relationships to education and learning.     

Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology

This paper makes a case for academic research and writing that looks beyond the learning potential of technology and, instead, seeks to develop social scientific accounts of the often compromised and constrained realities of education technology use 'on the ground'. The paper discusses how this 'critical' approach differs from the ways that educational technology scholarship has tended to be pursued to date. These differences include viewing technology as being socially constructed and negotiated rather than imbued with pre-determined characteristics; developing objective and realistic accounts of technology use in situ ; and producing 'context rich' analyses of the social conflicts and politics that underpin the use of technology in educational settings. The paper concludes by encouraging academic researchers and writers to show greater interest in the issues of democracy and social justice that surround educational technology.     

Examining learning in relation to the contexts of use of ICT

Abstract Although ICT resources are commonly expected to produce uniform benefits, they are necessarily employed within pre-existing contexts of educational and social activity, and the outcome in terms of both pattern of use and learning depends on how they fit in with these. As a result, the same technology or software may have unexpectedly diverse effects, according to specific setting. If the object is to exercise control over outcome, then the conditions of use need to be planned for within the design and implementation of the technology. In order to do this, it is crucial that research gathers data on how outcomes are affected by the interplay between technology and context. This raises questions about the methods that would be appropriate for the conduct and dissemination of such research. These points are discussed in relation to three studies, one each at primary, secondary and university levels of education.     

From transaction to transformation: information and communication technology, professional development and the formation of communities of practice

Abstract Using the concept of ‘layers of community’, this paper describes and explains the ways in which teams of teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together on the research project InterActive Education: teaching and learning in the information age. The focus is on the development and dissemination of professional knowledge as it relates to teaching and learning that incorporates information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool. Drawing on a range of data, we illustrate how ‘micro‐’, ‘meso‐’ and ‘macro’‐communities inter‐connect to create the settings for improved professional growth. The purpose is to challenge the linearity embedded in much of the professional development processes associated with ICT and to re‐model the relationship between practice and research.     

A review of research on bridging the gap between formal and informal learning with technology in primary school contexts

This study reviews empirical research articles published in the field of technology‐enhanced learning in the out‐of‐class contexts in primary schools between the years 2007 and 2016 and explores how the body of research has connected formal and informal learning experiences, referred to in the paper as bridging the gap. The review focuses on 43 selected experiments from 41 research papers, which are in detail examined and classified using the 3 criteria: (a) the Bloom's taxonomy for learning, (b) the intentionality to physical settings classification used to differentiate types of learning in various environments, and (c) the characteristics of seamless learning design. The findings confirm that technology can enhance learning in and out of classroom, especially by impacting student interest, motivation, and engagement. The close examination of the subset of studies with cognitive gains shows that they successfully bridged the gap between learning spaces and that such bridging positively correlates with the number of steps in the learning activity design. The successful bridging of the gap between learning spaces could further benefit from including more online social learning activities into the designed learning process and from involving teachers as cocreators of the learning process and resources.     

Designing social media for informal learning and knowledge maturing in the digital workplace

This paper presents an original approach to designing social media that support informal learning in the digital workplace. It adapts design‐based research to take into account the embeddedness of interactions within digitally mediated work‐based contexts. The approach is demonstrated through the design, implementation, and evaluation of software tools supporting a particular type of informal learning called knowledge maturing. The paper: introduces and presents the rationale for, and concept of, knowledge maturing; presents a new design methodology for developing social media that support informal learning and knowledge maturing; focuses on one prototype, for ‘people tagging for organisational development’, that was produced by the methodology (and concisely describes two others); presents the formative evaluation of the highlighted prototype; and finally, discusses the implications and insights arising from this work.     

What seams do we remove in mobile-assisted seamless learning? A critical review of the literature

Seamless learning refers to the seamless integration of the learning experiences across various dimensions including formal and informal learning contexts, individual and social learning, and physical world and cyberspace. Inspired by the exposition by Chan et al. (2006) on the seamless learning model supported by the setting of one or more mobile device per learner, this paper aims to further investigate the meaning of seamless learning and the potential ways to put it in practice. Through a thorough review of recent academic papers on mobile-assisted seamless learning (MSL), we identify ten dimensions that characterize MSL. We believe that such a framework allows us to identify research gaps in the stated area. A practitioner interested in adopting an MSL design or doing a new design can use our analysis to situate the dimensional space where the constraints or parameters of his or her design problem lie, and look at relevant design and research-based evidence of other related MSL systems to refine her own design.     

‘You can't not go with the technological flow,can you?’ Constructing ‘ICT’ and ‘teaching and learning’

This paper seeks to show how ‘policy’, ‘management’ and ‘information and communications technology’ (ICT) were constructed for schools in England between 2000 and 2003 and to discuss some effects of these constructions on teaching and learning in the institutions involved in the InterActive Education Project. It argues that their contribution collectively constituted ‘ICT’ as a particular kind and form of challenge for schools, and that recognising the nature of this constitution is crucial to understanding the relationship between ICT and teaching and learning. Informed by an abductive methodology, this paper draws on analyses of policy documents and interviews with the head teachers of the educational institutions taking part in the InterActive Education Project to show how the possibilities and opportunities of using ICT were shaped by those constructions. It suggests that the main policy framing ICT in education over the period in question, the National Grid for Learning, had the provision of hardware and infrastructure as its main target, but offered little advice on how they might be used. This constituted the core of the management problem of ICT for schools. The final section of the paper outlines some of the mechanisms through which schools addressed these issues and discusses some possible implications for what counts as ‘teaching and learning’ with ‘ICT’.     

Crossing boundaries in Facebook: Students’ framing of language learning activities as extended spaces

Young people’s interaction online is rapidly increasing, which enables new spaces for communication; the impact on learning, however, is not yet acknowledged in education. The aim of this exploratory case study is to scrutinize how students frame their interaction in social networking sites (SNS) in school practices and what that implies for educational language teaching and learning practices. Analytically, the study departs from a sociocultural perspective on learning, and adopts conceptual distinctions of frame analysis. The results based on ethnographic data from a Facebook group in English-learning classes, with 60 students aged between 13 and 16 from Colombia, Finland, Sweden and Taiwan indicate that there is a possibility for boundary crossing, which could generate extended spaces for collaborative language-learning activities in educational contexts where students combine their school subject of learning language and their communicative use of language in their everyday life. Such extended spaces are, however, difficult to maintain and have to be recurrently negotiated. To take advantage of young people’s various dynamic communicative uses of language in their everyday life in social media, the implementation of such media for educational purposes has to be deliberately, collaboratively and dynamically negotiated by educators and students to form a new language-learning space with its own potentials and constraints.     

Instructional design or school politics? A discussion of ‘orchestration' in TEL research

This paper argues that the emphasis on orchestration as a metaphor for teaching in technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) environments, featured in recent academic discussions, is an opportunity to broaden the scope of the inquiry into educational technology. Drawing on sociological literature and research that investigated the systemic factors that influence the uptake of information and communication technologies in formal and informal learning contexts, the paper contends that a focus on instructional design does insufficient justice to the complexities of actual technology use in classrooms and after‐school programs. It is suggested, instead, that orchestration might better be used as a heuristic device to deepen our understandings of the relationships between power, bestowed on teachers or claimed by them through a number of strategies, educational technology, and teaching practices. The paper concludes that to fully understand this relationship and to support teachers, concern should be given equally to the existing political and cultural dynamics of TEL environments. Examples of orchestration as a political, cultural process are provided, illustrating how teachers appropriate technology and ‘innovative’ pedagogies to negotiate power.     

Explaining changes in learning and work practice following the adoption of online learning: a human agency perspective

Online learning applications are typically introduced with expectations that they will be used to improve learning and work practices, yet they often fall short of expectations following implementation. Numerous empirical studies have reported unintended use (and nonuse) of new IT applications, providing initial support for practice-based research for viewing emergent changes in work practices. Human agency is a core concept in theories of practice, which seek to explain how recurring patterns of action develop in social contexts such as work settings. However, current applications of theories of practice do not provide satisfactory explanations for the reasons underlying changes in work practice. In this study, we investigate changes in learning and work practices associated with the implementation of an online learning system in a Taiwanese hospital. We apply a temporal theory of human agency that disaggregates agency into elements reflecting actors' orientations to the past, present, and future. We use this theory to address the following research question: why do learning and work practices change following the implementation of online learning? The case study reveals that actors face pressures to respond to the attractions of new ways of learning while preserving traditional work practices. In addition, technological features and social structures constrain the exercise of human agency. As a result, use of the online learning system declined in the period following implementation. Our analysis adds explanatory power to the practice perspective by incorporating human agency, technological constraints, and structural conditions that affect practice.     

Designing in between Local Government and the Public – Using Institutional Analysis in Interventions on Civic Infrastructures

Adapting and changing the systems and technologies involved in civic engagement with local government is among the key challenges of collaborative technologies for political participation. In such contexts, both existing sets of technologies and ingrained, often formalised practices, the ‘rules of the game’, constrain any opportunity for intervention. Additionally, ‘civic’ and expert groups with conflicting agendas and divergent demands on public choices assert their influence in these transformation programmes. The article argues that established methods in collaborative systems design have thus far overlooked the role of recurring actions involved in public participation as well as the formal rules and ingrained practices that construct them. Yet, such patterns present a valuable resource for design interventions. Thus, based on an institutional approach, the article outlines a methodology for requirement gathering by mapping the relations of actors, software and their use along identifiable action situations. The method called for a dialogue between socio-technical-spatial contexts of public service and specific actions taking place within it. Drawing on a case of organising civic engagement in urban planning, the article discusses how to find and trace existing practices across social settings, information technologies and material contexts where engagements take place. The approach underscores the existing institutional contexts in inspiring, opening and constraining the opportunities to support ‘civics’.     

The use of computer technology in university teaching and learning: a critical perspective

Abstract  Despite huge efforts to position information and communication technology (ICT) as a central tenet of university teaching and learning, the fact remains that many university students and faculty make only limited formal academic use of computer technology. Whilst this is usually attributed to a variety of operational deficits on the part of students, faculty, and universities, this paper considers the wider social relations underpinning the relatively modest use of technology in higher education. The paper explores how university use of computer technology is shaped into marginalized and curtailed positions by a variety of actors. From the 'writing' of ICT at a national policy level through to the marginalization of ICT within the lived 'student experience', a consistent theme emerges where computer technology use is constructed in limited, linear, and rigid terms far removed from the creative, productive, and empowering uses which are often celebrated by educational technologists. In the light of such constraints, the paper considers how these dominant constructions of a peripheral and limited use of ICT may be challenged by the higher education community. In particular, it concludes by reflecting on current critical thinking about how educational technologists can foster a more expansive and empowered use of computer technology within university settings.     

The dialogic dimensions of using a hypermedia learning package

The dialogic dimensions of a hypermedia learning package are often perceived as the interactivity of its design. However, it is not feasible for hypermedia to embody all dimensions of a human conversational dialogue. Instead, we should explore the opportunities for the dialogic dimensions of learning mediated by these packages. Based on a case study of the use of WinEcon (a hypermedia package) in an economics department, this paper shows how the human participants in the learning environment employ WinEcon to mediate the one-to-one dialogues between teachers and students, and the dialogues among students. Four processes are present in these dialogues: discussion, interaction, reflection and feedback to enhance students’ access to the economics discipline.     

Incommensurate practices: sociomaterial entanglements of learning technology implementation

The framing of ‘implementation’ of learning technologies in universities can have profound effects on approaches to teaching and learning that may be insufficiently acknowledged by practitioners. This paper investigates a case that demonstrated the formation of strong connections between technology and pedagogy, in which a learning content management system called for a series of accommodations between technology work and academic work. The site for this study was the meso‐level in the university: those practitioners working in‐between academics and institutional learning technologies, and draws on the accounts of practice by learning technologists during this implementation. The discussion of practice that emerges from these accounts draws on sociomaterial perspectives to draw attention to the contingencies of particular connections during the implementation process. This study does not assume that the work of implementation follows naturally from plans and intentions of human actors, rather it investigates actual arrangements and the entangled practices that bring significant unintended consequences. The findings suggest the need to attend to the potential for conflicting practices when system technologies become a key component of e‐learning, and I argue for implementation to be scoped early to encompass pedagogical goals, and for interventions by learning technologists and teaching academics over all the social, material, and discursive factors that are critical to e‐learning practice.     

Social Infrastructures as Barriers and Foundation for Informal Learning: Technology Integration in an Urban After-School Center

In this paper we explore the relationship between social learning environments and the technological ecologies that practitioners, learners, and researchers develop to sustain them. Through an examination of ethnographic research conducted at an urban after-school learning program we show how social, technological and power infrastructures influence learning and interaction in this setting. Adopting a holistic approach we examine how technologies are integrated into activities in this program to support the learning of the after-school youth. We emphasize both positive and negative infrastructures that contribute to the learning environment and discuss how identifying these infrastructures are one of the first steps towards understanding and informing technology design in informal learning settings.     

Contextual influences on user satisfaction with mobile computing: findings from two healthcare organizations

Mobile information technologies (IT) are transforming individual work practices and organizations. These devices are extending not only the boundaries of the ‘office’ in space and time, but also the social context within which use occurs. In this paper, we investigate how extra-organizational influences can impact user satisfaction with mobile systems. The findings from our longitudinal study highlight the interrelatedness of different use contexts and their importance in perceptions of user satisfaction. The data indicate that varying social contexts of individual use (individual as employee, as professional, as private user, and as member of society) result in different social influences that affect the individual's perceptions of user satisfaction with the mobile technology. While existing theories explain user satisfaction with IT within the organizational context, our findings suggest that future studies of mobile IT in organizations should accommodate such extra-organizational contextual influences.