Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 36

The Future of mLearning Begins with a Baseline Pedagogy
Weaknesses of the mLearning Pedagogy
Despite the pedagogy’s strengths,
there also exist some weaknesses. First, since
an LMS-less mLearning classroom isn’t a
place students go to, this type of learning
environment could feel very abstract and
unreal to students, which would presumably
negatively affect their ability to successfully
stay connected with and complete courses.
A simple webpage to post announcements
and provide links to the course materials
for that week could help alleviate this until
students adapt to the environment. Also,
students could receive announcements via
an RSS feed if available. Second, regulatory
controls could be difficult given the number
of options available. Third, abiding by laws
like Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act (FERPA) may not be readily achievable
in an LMS-less classroom (Mastors, 2013).
Finally, a virtual campus for registration, etc.
is still required, so some form of software
overhead is needed.
Conclusion
mLearning has the potential to
create a revolution of learning in developing
countries and an evolution of learning in
developed countries through a convergence
of: 1) human interaction - a strength in a
traditional classroom; and, 2), nearly worldwide
reach - a strength of an eLearning
classroom. The revolutionary potential
in developing countries comes from the
ability to provide education to people living
in the global south at a level never before
experienced. Six billion people in the world
have mobile phones (UN News Centre,
2013) and 2.1 billion people have broadband
subscriptions for them (mobiThinking,
2014). Of those, 1.16 billion are located in
the global south (mobiThinking, 2014).
The evolutionary potential in developed
countries comes from the ability to expand
mLearning so that it incorporates other
mobile devices and fee based apps, which
could provide a more cohesive learning
experience for students.
In both environments, pedagogies
related to mLearning should be driven
by theory and envisioned without the
dependence of an LMS in order to take
advantage of the demand for compatibility
between devices in the civilian market.
Two portions of the pedagogy, content/
presentation and instructional assets,
should leverage the options available on the
Internet. Doing so provides more options
for use in the pedagogy than are currently
available to instructors in traditional or
eLearning classrooms. The remaining
two portions of the pedagogy, cognitive
processes and evaluations, should focus
on instructor-to-student and studentto-student
interaction by pushing the
technology to the background.
Significant testing across disciplines
is needed to identify the best practices.
Having a nearly unlimited number of options
is great providing that cognitive processes
are organized, scaffolded and result in new
learning. Presumably, the options that create
new learning in natural sciences aren’t
necessarily the same options that create
new learning in other fields like history.
Likewise, the options that best fit one culture
won’t necessarily be the same ones that best
fit another culture particularly considering
the differences between developing and
developed countries.
References
Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three
Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy.
International Review of Research in Open and
Distance Learning, 12(3), 80–97.
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