Mobile and ubiquitous learning in higher education settings. A systematic review of empirical studies
Mobile and ubiquitous learning are increasingly attracting academic and public interest, especially in relation to their application in higher education settings.The systematic analysis of 36 empirical papers supports the view that knowledge gains from instructionist learning designs are facilitated by distributed and more frequent learning activities enabled by push mechanisms. They also lend themselves to the activation of learners during classroom lectures. In addition, and as a particular advantage of mobile technology, "hybrid" designs, where learners create multimodal representations outside the classroom and then discussed their substantiated experiences with peers and educators, helped to connect learning in formal and more informal and personalized learning environments.Generally, empirical evidence that would favour the broad application of mobile and ubiquitous learning in higher education settings is limited and because mobile learning projects predominantly take instructionist approaches, they are non transformatory in nature. However, by harnessing the increasing access to digital mobile media, a number of unprecedented educational affordances can be operationalised to enrich and extend more traditional forms of higher education. Systematic review to study mobile and ubiquitous learning in higher education.Positive outcomes associated mainly with instructionist and hybrid designs.Instructionist benefits caused by more frequent learning activities.Hybridisation links formal education with informal and personalized learning.Limited evidence to legitimize broad application of mobile learning in HE.
Comput. Hum. Behav.