Mobile Learning for the Teaching of Theoretical Concepts to

Undergraduate Students

Lorena Pérez-Hernández

Department of Modern Languages, University of La Rioja, c/San José de Calasanz, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Keywords: Mob Learning, Celly©, Theoretical Concepts, Oenology, Metaphor, English Studies.

Abstract: The present paper presents the objectives, justification, chronological organization, and expected results of a

work-in-progress research project located at the University of La Rioja during the academic year 2014/2015.

The main aim of the project is to implement the use of the educational mobile application Celly© in the

teaching of theoretical linguistic concepts (i.e. conceptual metaphor) to undergraduates of English and

Oenology Studies. The project exploits the use of this mobile application with an eye on extending the

learning process beyond the physical and temporal limits of the traditional teaching sessions confined to a

classroom. The use of the application is also expected to allow the teachers involved to maximize the

practise of some of the central competences required from their students: collaboration with students of

different degrees (English Studies vs. Oenology students), independent work, and a responsible use of

technology, among others.

1 INTRODUCTION

The present on-going research project is located at

the University of La Rioja (Spain) and has been

scheduled to be carried out during the academic year

2014-2015. This project is designed to explore the

potentiality of use of new technological resources,

such as mobile devices and their associated

software, as well as other Web 2.0. tools (e.g.

Google Scholar, internet repositories and archives,

online corpora of specialized linguistic texts, etc.) in

the teaching and learning process affecting

undergraduate students.

The main objective is to improve the teaching

process and the acquisition of specialized

knowledge, and computer and basic communicative

competences of students belonging to two different

and apparently unrelated areas: undergraduate

students of English Studies, on the one hand, and

undergraduate students of Oenology, on the other.

Both groups of students will be put in contact and

will collaborate with one another through the

educational mobile application Celly©. This

application has been designed to provide higher

levels of safety for its use in educational

environments, as well as to allow teachers the

possibility of moderating the discussions and

debates that they need to generate among their

students.

2 CONTEXT

In the present-day educational context, an ever

growing number of academic institutions is adopting

mobile learning as a means of taking advantage of

the numerous computer tools and applications which

offer portability and ease of use, with an eye on

taking the learning process beyond the limits of the

material classroom (Park 2011, Crompton 2013,

among others). The work-in-progress research

project that will be outlined below precisely attempts

to make use of mobile applications that enable

university lecturers to take their teaching out of the

material classroom and to endow it with the

contextualization and technological flare with which

present-day students, mostly digital natives, feel

more at ease in their learning process. One of the

most pervasive difficulties manifested by English

Studies undergraduates at the University of La Rioja

is that of putting into practice those theoretical

linguistic concepts that are included in the syllabus

of some of the more central subjects in their degree:

Semantics of the English language, Pragmatics of

540

Pérez-Hernández L..

Mobile Learning for the Teaching of Theoretical Concepts to Undergraduate Students.

DOI: 10.5220/0005447105400545

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 540-545

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

the English language, Discourse Analysis, etc.

One such concept, which cuts across the

aforementioned subjects, is that of 'conceptual

metaphor'. In the context of Cognitive Linguistics, a

conceptual or cognitive metaphor is understood, not

as a poetic or rhetorical figure, but rather as a

conceptual mapping or projection from a source

domain (usually concrete and easily accessible in

nature) to a target domain (abstract and conceptually

harder to grasp). As a result, this mapping facilitates

the understanding, conceptualization, and

verbalization of the latter (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff

and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and

Turner, 1989; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).

Simultaneously, those undergraduate students of

degrees with their own and specialized linguistic

discourse (such as those studying Oenology degrees)

are often unconscious of the figurative and, more

specifically, metaphorical basis of the specialized

language of their discipline, as well as of the

existence of complementary and competing

metaphorical models for one and the same entity or

state of affairs. By way of illustration, the main

organoleptic features of wine can be expressed

through a diverse array of conceptual metaphors

such as WINE IS A SPICE (e.g. a wine with pepper

and cinnamon notes), WINE IS A PERSON (e.g. a

young and lively wine), WINE IS A GARMENT

(e.g. a wine with a velvet cape), WINE IS AN

OBJECT (e.g. round, short, long wine), and even

through synesthetic metaphors such as TASTE IS

SOUND (e.g. a melodic, harmonious wine), or

TASTE IS TOUCH (e.g. a velvety, or silky wine)

(Suarez-Toste, 2007; Caballero and Suarez-Toste,

2008, 2010; Caballero, 2009; Negro Alousque,

2011; Pérez-Hernández, 2011, 2013).

3 JUSTIFICATION OF THE

STUDY

The present project arises from the need to address

the following issues:

-the need to create a flexible context for

undergraduate students of English Studies to use, in

a real life environment, those theoretical concepts

that are pivotal to their degree, preventing their de-

contextualized memorization, and subsequent lack

of assimilation.

-the need to raise awareness among

undergraduate students of Oenology Studies about

the specificities of their own professional discourse,

in particular about the broad figurative and

metaphorical basis of the discourse of oenology,

wine, and wine-tasting notes, and how the former

delimits, articulates, and constrains the latter.

-the need articulate a pedagogical context in

which undergraduate students of both degrees under

consideration can improve the basic competences

required in their future professional contexts:

collaboration with specialists in other

areas/disciplines, proficiency in the use of computer

tools and professional mobile applications, ability to

discuss and build arguments about their

specialization topics, ability to transfer, disseminate,

and communicate abstract notions to non-experts

and a general audience.

In addition, in the specific context of the

University of La Rioja, the present project has been

designed to fulfill the following institutional

objectives:

-the need to experiment and analyze the potential

benefits of the implementation of new and

innovative teaching strategies, by means of

exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the use of

the educational mobile application Celly© for

outside-the-classroom guided learning.

-the need to integrate, in the teaching practice of

the professionals working in this institution, the

pedagogic use of new information and

communication technologies (e.g. Internet,

electronic data bases, Google Scholar, computerized

corpora such as the British National Corpus, the

Corpus of Contemporary American English and the

CREA-Corpus of the Spanish Language Academy,

with the aim of improving the teaching and learning

process with the use of real life linguistic data.

-the need to strengthen the presence of e-

learning, in general, and mobile learning strategies,

in particular, with the objective of enriching the

inventory of teaching methodologies available to the

professionals at the University of La Rioja.

-the need to create interdisciplinary research

groups to tackle issues related to the implementation

of new teaching strategies and methodologies, as

well as to design teaching materials which provide

students with learning experiences that closely

resemble and reproduce their future professional

environments.

4 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The main objective of this project is to explore the

benefits and drawbacks of the use of mobile learning

applications, in particular, of the educational mobile

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541

application Celly© [https://cel.ly/education], and its

influence on the teaching and learning of a

fundamental theoretical notion that cuts across

several subjects included in the English Studies

academic curriculum, and that, at the same time,

structures the future professional discourse of

Oenology students, namely, the concept of

'conceptual metaphor'.

With this general aim in mind, the faculty

involved in this project shall make use of a novel

teaching methodology and teaching materials

designed to integrate the use of the aforementioned

mobile application with two small groups of

undergraduate students belonging to both of the

degrees under consideration (i.e. English Studies and

Oenology Studies). At the end of the academic year,

the selected groups of students will be evaluated on

their rate of success in the comprehension and

practical implementation of the notion of conceptual

metaphor. These results will then be compared with

a parallel evaluation performed on the group of

students who have not taken part in the experiment

in order to assess whether the use of the new method

correlates with a better understanding of the

theoretical notion under scrutiny (i.e. conceptual

metaphor), and a wider use of metaphorical

expressions in the specialized discourse of Oenology

Studies undergraduates.

Broadly, it is expected that those undergraduates

in both degrees who have taken part in the project

exceed the rest of the students in understanding,

identifying, and putting into practice the notion of

conceptual metaphor in the context of a specific

professional discourse.

This general objective can be split into the

following more specific aims:

-to guide English Studies undergraduates in the

task of describing and explaining the concept of

conceptual metaphor through the use of information

previously gathered on the Internet (via the

databases and electronic publications made available

by the University of La Rioja and Google Scholar).

-to guide English Studies undergraduates in the

task of identifying the full inventory of conceptual

metaphors underlying and structuring the

Oenological discourse in the English language. This

identification task will be based on the use of a

corpus of specialized tasting notes extracted from

different computerized corpora and internet

repositories.

-to provide English Studies undergraduates with

the necessary tools to establish a coordinated

academic rapport with Oenology undergraduates in

order to check, assess, and redefine the wine-related

metaphors that the former had previously identified.

This will be done through the use of the mobile

learning application Celly©.

-to make the Oenology undergraduates aware of

the deep and steady metaphorical grounding of the

professional discourse specific of their discipline, as

well as to help them reflect on the advantages and

disadvantages of the use of alternative competing

metaphors in their communicational exchanges

about wine.

5 METHODOLOGY

As opposed to the classical pedagogical models

whose methodology is based on the mere

transmission of information through oral lessons,

and printed or electronic documents (Herrington et

al., 2009), the present project pivots around a

dynamic methodology that turns the students into

active participants in the process of building their

own knowledge.

The use of mobile learning and e-learning

computerized tools and applications (e.g. Web 2.0,

mobile devices, tablets, etc.) allows us to put into

practice a new methodology in which students take

on an active role in the use of the aforementioned

resources in order to engage in a spontaneous and

contextualized learning process.

The methodology adopted in this project, based

on the use of mobile devices, will enable our

students an immediate access to the relevant

information, so as to make the learning process

possible in any place and time, thus broadening the

educational scenario beyond the frontiers of the

physical classroom (Geddes, 2004).

This methodology will also facilitate the task of

connecting students who attend different Schools

and study different degrees in a flexible manner,

liberating them from the need to establish physical

meetings, tied to a particular place and a fixed

timetable. This flexibility both in the students' access

to the relevant information, and in their management

of their study time is expected to translate into a

wider and more active participation, as well as

higher amounts of motivation, on their part.

Together with well-known tools related to the

Web 2.0, such as Google Docs, Skype, and

computerized corpora like BNC, CREA, and COCA),

this project implements the use of a mobile

application specifically designed for its use in

educational institutions: Celly©

(https://cel.ly/education).

Celly© is an Android application which is free

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for the use of its basic features and available for

download through the Google Play site. The

application, which can be used in mobile phones,

tables, and computers, is a messaging software

similar to the social network WhatsApp application,

but it includes some additional features that make it

safe and reliable for its use in educational contexts.

Thus, Celly@ allows the creation of private virtual

groups, under the moderation of the university

lecturers involved in the project, in order to carry out

debates, discussions, and academic surveys. These

groups and their conversations, which are called

cells, can at a later stage be downloaded for their

archiving and/or evaluation.

6 PLANNED ACTIONS

The objectives specified in Section 3 will be carried

out according to the following plan, part of which

has already been implemented:

6.1 Coordination Meetings

In September 2014 two meetings have been held:

1. A coordination meeting of all members of the

research group in order to launch the project. The

external advisors (Professors F. Gonzálvez and Dr.

K. Duvignau from the Universities of Almería and

Toulousse II-Le Mirail respectively) joined the

meeting through Skype.

2. An informative meeting with the two groups

of undergraduate students (i.e. English and

Oenology Studies). During this meeting they were

informed about the objectives of the project, and

their temporal organization, as well as about their

own roles in it.

6.2 Online/in-site Workshops and

Tutorials for Undergraduate

Students

During the months of October-December, a number

of workshops have been implemented through

Google Docs. They are aimed at the students taking

part in the project, and they have provided them with

the necessary information about (1) the use of the

Celly© application, (2) electronic databases, and (3)

computerized corpora. These workshops have been

accompanied by simultaneous tutorial assistance by

all lecturers involved in the project, with the aim of

solving doubts and problems that may have arisen

during the online workshops.

6.3 On-site Seminar on Cognitive

Metaphor

Addressed at English Studies students, Professor F.J.

Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez and Dr. Lorena Pérez

Hernández (University of La Rioja) have organized

a specialized seminar on the conceptual construct of

cognitive metaphor, in order to provide students

with an initial explanation of the concept, its nature,

elements, implications, and applications.

6.4 Design and Upload of a

Collaborative Informative

Document about the Notion of

Conceptual Metaphor on Google

Docs

With the knowledge acquired during the specialized

seminar described in point C above, the

undergraduate students of English Studies will

create an informative document on the nature and

characteristics of the notion of 'conceptual

metaphor', including a description of its basic

domains (source and target), its functions, and its

particularities in comparison to other cognitive

operations like metonymy, mitigation, or

parametrization. This informative document will be

shared through Google Docs with the undergraduate

students of the Oenology degree by the end of the

month of December of 2014.

6.5 Identification of Conceptual

Metaphors on the Discourse of

Wine

During the months of November and December, the

undergraduate students of English Studies have also

started to perform an initial search of conceptual

metaphors for the communication of wine-related

ideas in texts compiled by the members of the

research project.

Simultaneously, during the second half of

December, the undergraduate students will start to

make use of the Celly© application in order to create

cells with some of the metaphors they have

identified. Two members of the research group, will

take care of moderating the debate and participation

on the cells. They will also correct the

misinterpretations and mistakes made by

undergraduate students in the identification of wine-

related metaphors.

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6.6 Search of Specialized Wine-tasting

Notes (Specialized Texts) on

Computerized Corpora

During the month of January 2015, the

undergraduate students of English Studies will make

use of several computerized corpora (i.e. British

National Corpus, Corpus of Contemporary

American English and CREA-Corpus de Referencia

del Español Actual) in order to create a collection of

excerpts of wine-related texts on which to carry out

their definite search for the conceptual metaphors

that structure this specific discourse.

6.7 Corpora Exploration, Identification

and Classification of Metaphors

and Diffusion of Results through

Celly

During the month of February 2015, undergraduate

students of English Studies will explore the

collection of specialized texts that they had

previously compiled from computerized corpora and

Internet sources in search of the conceptual

metaphors that underlie the discourse of wine.

Simultaneously, they will share those metaphors

that they identify with the group of Oenology

students, their lecturers, and the two external

consultants. They will do this by means of the

will be held about the correctness of the identified

metaphors. Eventually, once consensus has been

reached on this issue, the metaphors will be

classified attending to their target domains.

6.8 Creation of an Online

Collaborative Document on Google

Docs with a Classification of the

Metaphors Identified during the

Project, including Examples of

Their Linguistic Manifestations

This task will be performed by undergraduate

students enrolled in English Studies at the University

of La Rioja during the month of March 2015. The

document will then be shared with the Oenology

undergraduates also through Google Docs.

6.9 Discussion among Undergraduate

During the month of April, undergraduates from

both English Studies and Oenology Studies will

debate over the classification of metaphors

previously uploaded and shared through Google

Docs.

The debate will be moderated by four members

of the research team of the University of La Rioja,

who will gradually liberate each of the wine-related

metaphors identified by English Studies

undergraduates for their discussion and potential

redefinition, if necessary, based on the suggestions

and comments made by Oenology Studies

undergraduates. See an example of the discussions

through Celly in Appendix 1.

6.10 Evaluation, Analysis and Diffusion

of Results in Conferences,

Specialized Forums, and Academic

Publications

During the month of May 2015, the members of the

research team of the University of La Rioja, together

with the two external consultants from the

University of Almería and Toulousse II-Le Mirail,

will carry out an evaluation of the objectives, and

will assess the degree to which the central concept

(i.e. conceptual metaphor) has been learned by the

undergraduates involved in the project, as well as by

a control group of students who did not take part in

it. The degree to which these students are capable of

applying their newly acquired knowledge about

conceptual metaphor to the analysis of specific

discourse types will also be assessed.

The results will be included in a document for its

dissemination in Conferences and scientific

meetings, as well as its publication in journals

specialized in new pedagogical strategies in

connection with the use of mobile technologies,

Web 2.0, and other computer tools.

7 EXPECTED RESULTS

It is expected that the new methodological and

pedagogical strategy designed for this project will

pave the way for the achievement of the following

main educational challenges:

-A stronger degree of implication and motivation

on the part of the students during the learning

process. This factor will be assessed through the

observation and quantification of the frequency of

use of the cells during the project.

-An increase in the degree of acquisition of the

basic competences: technological -use of specific

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mobile learning applications; communicative -ability

to explain and disseminate theoretical concepts to

non-experts; and professional -ability to collaborate

and coordinate with other colleagues in order to

achieve a common goal.

These aspects will be evaluated through the use

of specific surveys addressed to the students that

have taken part in the project.

-An increase in the amount of understanding of

the theoretical notion around which the whole

project pivots (i.e. conceptual metaphor), as well as

of the ability to apply this notion to the description

of any specialized discourse (e.g. wine-related

discourse). The final evaluation of the students will

include concrete questions that permit a

quantification of the level of improvement achieved

by the former.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project would not have been possible without

the collaboration of the undergraduate students of

English Studies and Oenology from the University

of La Rioja (2014-2015).

The project has been funded by the

Vicerrectorado de Profesorado, Planificación e

Innovación Docente, University of La Rioja

(APIDUR 2014) and the Spanish Ministry of

Economy and Competitiveness, grant no. FFI2013-

43593-P.

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