3.1 Brief Summary of Current
Evaluation Data
Qualitative and quantitative evaluations have been
undertaken with Tatoes, Phototate and build-a-PC
and are reported elsewhere (Vogel et al., 2007). The
use of the exercises on the PDAs was not mandated
so students tended to download exercises more than
upload the completed work. However, students who
achieved higher levels in the mid-term exam
performance were positively correlated with the
group that also used the mobile exercises.
The key finding from the tutors (with 416 students
participating in various tasks from a cohort of an
introductory business course) indicates that students
who engaged with the use of mobile devices for
learning in and out of the classroom found the
experience of using a PDA provided a significantly
better set of learning experiences, was fun, and
useful for motivation and confidence building.
Approximately one quarter of the total student
cohort of 1,600 have engaged with all or some of the
tools in spite of the voluntary nature of the exercises.
While the initial evaluation results were
encouraging, there still remains a great deal of work
to be done to explore more fully the reasons why
students used or did not use the exercises. In
particular, the ongoing research seeks to determine
why students (almost all) did not use the high quality
feedback provided (all incorrect alternatives had a
detailed description of why the selection was
incorrect) with the Tatoes exercises. The expectation
was that students would take the opportunity to
explore incorrect alternatives in order to improve
their understanding: this was not observed. The
current cohort of students are experiencing specific
teaching interventions in an attempt to determine if
their current approach to learning can be modified,
and encourage more students to use the exercises.
4 THE FUTURE
The future may see a paradigm change as mobile
devices become more integrated into educational
environments (see Table 2). However, for this to
occur we need to establish sound pedagogical
frameworks based upon experience and research into
how students use the tools in practice: what the
specific learning needs are, and how more effective
feedback, communication and collaboration can be
enhanced. Four tools, Tatoes, Crossword, IGO and
Build-a-PC, have been designed with the facility for
lecturers to provide high quality feedback to
students. The use of the Tatoes environment
provides limited evidence that writing multiple-
choice questions with detailed feedback may
encourage some students to not only look for the
correct answers to a question, but to spend time
examining what makes other distracters wrong.
Phototate provides a tool for reflective practice and
data generation by students away from traditional
classrooms and lecture halls, providing support for
more flexible modes of learning.
The focus in the past has been on the perceived
limitations of mobile devices, rather than the
pedagogical affordances and flexibility offered. The
rate of uptake (voluntary) by students has been
steady as they take advantage of the:
• the quality of the feedback provided for incorrect
distracters and correct answers; and
• flexibility offered by anytime/anyplace learning.
What this project has made clear is that offering
students the flexibility of mobile learning options in
addition to current wired learning environments is
viable now, and not something that educators need
to wait for. The key issues are not technological, but
pedagogical and institutional.
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