 Hello there, I'm happy to present to you some research on mobile learning since I'm a researcher in mobile learning. My name is Mohammed Ali and I'm a professor at Athabasca University. So hopefully by the end of this session you will be able to describe some recent research in mobile learning. Let me start out by talking about some of the research initiatives that I'm involved with in mobile learning. Quite a bit of research in English is a second language training for workers. There are many, many people around the world who is actually looking at use of mobile for English as a second language training and other language training and the reason is because when you do training on mobile devices you can reach as many people as possible because many people around the world need training in different languages. So in many, many research projects on English language training for workers and for students. Use of mobile devices by older adults. I'm involved in a project where we are given mobile technology to older adults to see how to use the technology for learning and to access information. Learner use of mobile devices in form and community of practice in distance education. Another project where we are actually looking and see how our distance education students are using mobiles to communicate with each other, to form community of practice so that they can share information, they can help each other and how they are using mobile devices to interact with the professor or the teacher. Also a project on mobile technology in libraries. How do students access information using their mobile technology? We converted our library so that students can access the library catalog on their mobile devices. Involving a project called state of mobile learning in Canada where we look and see how companies in Canada, education, industry, business are using mobile learning. A project in mobile learning in the workplace, how people in the workplace are using mobile learning so that they can do professional development to improve themselves. Mobile technology to deliver physician assistant training. In developing countries where there is limited healthcare you need more healthcare provider. So by using the technology to train physician assistant you will have more healthcare available. And use of mobile technology so people can access information on their mobile devices. Health information which is critical sometimes because they need to know about their health so that they can get the appropriate drugs so they can talk to the appropriate doctor. So there is some sample mobile learning research initiative that I'm involved with. There was a research study that was done by Dr. Wu in 2012 and they analyzed a number of research studies. Actually they analyzed 164 studies and the first thing they did is they looked and see what type of studies were done on mobile learning and based on their analysis they found that 58% of the studies that they analyzed evaluated the effects of mobile learning. How effective is the mobile learning? 32% did their research on designing a good mobile learning system for learning. So what does it take to design a mobile learning system? A 5% investigated the effective domain during mobile learning and that has to do with how people feel about mobile learning. So the effective domain and 5% evaluate the influence of learner characteristics in mobile learning. So what are some of the learner characteristics learning style in terms of mobile learning? So as you can see most of the research studies that were done were done evaluating the effects of mobile learning, how effective it is, and how you design a good mobile learning system. And in terms of the results that they're reported in terms of whether the results are positive, neutral, or negative, 142 studies they found reported positive outcome of mobile learning. Six studies reported neutral results, one reported negative result, and 15 did not report any result. The result was not conclusive. So as you can see most of the research studies that were analyzed reported positive outcomes of mobile learning. Again that shows that people are actually seeing the benefits of mobile learning. In terms of benefits based on research, Culplar and Square in 2008 reported some of the benefits based on research. And the first one is portability. Learners can take the technology to different sites and move around within a location. So it's very portable, it's very small, they can take it in their pocket, they can take it in their purse, in their small bags, etc. So it's very portable. Social interactivities. Learner can exchange data and collaborate with other learners or teachers. So because of the communication capabilities of the technology they can communicate with teachers. It makes communication very very easy. Contact sensitivity can gather data unique to the current location, environment, and time, including both real and simulated data. Has to do with contextual learning. So people can actually learn in their own environment, in their own context. So people in remote locations, people in different cultures can learn in their own culture. Connectivity can connect mobile technology to other devices, and to a common network that creates a true share environment. So you can actually link the mobile device with a network so that you can connect to other networks. So you can actually duplicate the network system in a location. So it gives you good connectivity. And individuality can provide scaffolding that is customized to the individual learner. So actually cater for the individual learner needs. So as the learner completes the lesson, the system will learn about the learner and prescribe the appropriate next step for the learner. So based on research there are many many benefits of mobile learning. I mentioned I was involved in a study on the state of mobile learning in Canada and what's the future directions. And other countries are starting to duplicate the study to find out what's the state of mobile learning in their country. For this study what we did is we surveyed organizations from across the Canada, different provinces. And we actually did interviews, we did online survey with these companies across Canada. And interesting questions that we asked these companies. The first one is how innovative are Canadian organizations in mobile learning? So we want to find out how we are in terms, how we compare to other countries. And based on the results we got is 5% says that we are innovators in Canada with regards to mobile learning. 22% says we are early adopters. We tend to adopt early, 22%. 41% says we are early majority. We tend to adopt, but we may wait a little bit longer. And 25% said we are late majority. So 25% wait a little bit longer. Until others prove that the technology is good, it's working, then they will adopt. And 7% says that they are laggards. This gives us an idea of how innovative Canadian organizations are in terms of mobile learning so that we can plan for the future and motivate organizations. An important question we ask them is how effective is mobile learning in their organization? And 25% says very effective. 28% says effective. 41% said somewhat effective. And 6% says not at all effective. So we think because these organizations are new to mobile learning, which is a recent initiative in most organizations, they haven't seen the really effectiveness of mobile learning. But it's encouraging to see over 50% says either very effective or effective in organizations. So what we did based on this national study across Canada, we came up with some recommendations for Canada. We said a national agency should be established that look at mobile learning in Canada. So we can bring developers, educators, researchers together and manufacturers show that we can share best practices and research results. We also recommend that we develop standards for mobile learning so that we can share materials between organizations. Very, very important so we don't duplicate efforts. We need to include do more research in Canada on mobile learning. So we suggest we have a research stream in our research, different research agencies. And we need to develop training materials to train teachers, professors so that they can actually design and implement mobile learning in their organizations or in their courses. And then we made specific recommendations to organizations. Very important for organization when they develop their different levels of plans, they should actually include mobile learning as part of the plan in their strategic plan, their business plan, and also in their educational plan because most organizations have an educational or training plan and mobile learning should be part of that. We also suggest that they create partnerships between industry and educational institution so that they can do collaborative research because industry will provide the subjects, the resources to do the research, and education have the expertise to do the research. So we need more partnership. We need a national research agenda for mobile learning so that we all know what we have to look forward to in terms of research. And when we do our research, we should publish our research in the journal so that we can share best practices with each other, share the research outcomes so that we can learn from each other. So it's very important for us to have a research plan, to have create partnership, etc. so that we can move mobile learning forward in Canada. So other countries are duplicating the study. If anyone is interested in duplicating the study, they can contact me. In terms of research that's needed in the future for mobile learning, what's the most effective interfaces for mobile and virtual technologies and virtual devices? As we all know that this screen size of the mobile device is very small and we are moving to virtual keyboard and virtual screen, what's the most effective interface? How do we build interfaces for these devices? We need more research in that areas. We need research on the learning style of different cultures and use of mobile learning. Different cultures have different learning styles. So for example, some cultures, they like to read lots of textual material, some cultures are very verbal. They like more audio, some like more multimedia material. So we should look at the style of different cultures and see how we can design mobile learning for the different cultures. At the same time, we should look at the characteristics of mobile technology for different cultures. What's the interface? What's the input device for the different cultures? And as you all know, when we design graphic materials, we use symbols, graphical symbols. The question is, are these symbols appropriate for different cultures? So we have to understand different cultures when we design our mobile learning materials. Very important to build interactivity on mobile devices. So we need more research on how to build good interaction on mobile devices. And the reason is because the students, the young students today, they are accustomed to playing games. They do interaction on their mobile devices. And we need to build similar interactivity on mobile devices. If not, they will be bored when they complete the mobile learning. And how to design and deliver multimedia materials for mobile devices. So as because the multimedia materials are information rich, we need to design more multimedia for delivering mobile devices rather than just present textual materials. We have the nomadic learner who is always on the move. How do we design learning material for someone who's always in the move? So here's an example. If someone starts a mobile lesson on their mobile device and they have to move from one location to the next, where do they start when they continue with that lesson? Do they start over again or they continue from where they left off? So we have to think about the nomadic learner when we design mobile learning. So we need more research in that area. In more a very increasing area in terms of training is vocational training around the world. So how do you design vocational training on mobile learning in a mobile world? How do you combine hands-on with knowledge information in terms of training? And a lot of organization are using that blended learning where the theory part of a course training is done on mobile on computers and the hands-on part are done face-to-face with a coach. So some people are looking at blended learning, but we need more research. What's the right mix between theory and hands-on using mobile technology? How to design content for different age group? So we have learners, high school, university, college, all our adults. How do you design the same content for the different age group? Because it's very important when you design content, learning materials. You design once for different age group, different technology. So how do you design the same content for different learners? How do you sequence the content? How do you give, how do you do a prior learning assessment to give them credit for what they already know etc? And what are the characteristics of next generation of technology for learning? If you think back 10, 15 years ago, you never imagined that you can take courses on a mobile phone. Think 15 years from now, what would the technology be looking like? So what I'm telling professors, teachers, is what you need to do is when you design courses now, you should design for unknown technology because you don't know what's going to come in five to ten years. Maybe mobile technology will not exist. We will have different technology. It will be non-physical, it will be ubiquitous. So how do we design for future technology that we are not aware of? And I call it unknown technology. So we need more research on mobile learning to allow teachers to implement mobile learning successfully. Teachers need to know best practices for mobile learning and then need to know what's the most effective way to implement mobile learning. And so we need more collaboration between researchers and teachers in terms of to make mobile learning successful. Thank you.