mLearning: Active Collaborative Design Patterns for Mobile Open Education

Session Title: mLearning: Active Collaborative Design Patterns for Mobile Open Education

Presenter: Wendy Foster, M. Sc. Candidate, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University

Download Video

Time & Date: 1:30 P.M. - 2:15 P.M., Thursday, August 13, 2009

Location: Rm. C150

Session Description: As Sharples (2005) significantly notes in Towards a Theory of Mobile Learning, the “mobile age” demands both a reconceptualisation of learning in tandem with a recognition of “the importance of context in establishing meaning, and the transformative effect of digital networks in supporting virtual communities that transcend barriers of age and culture.”

Using the lens of situated cognition (Brown et al, 1989; Collins, 1988; Greeno, 1998; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Schell and Black, 1997), this paper will explore the theory and practice of mobile learning with particular attention to the role that mLearning can play in emerging Open Education initiatives.  A pattern language for mLearning design processes will be proposed as a means to leveraging contextual learning within Open Education practices, more generally, and as a method for providing foundation coherency to the diverse mobile learning domain.

Authentic learning strategies and the generation of dynamic communities of practice, supported and facilitated by mobile technologies, require the formulation of context sensitive and adaptable design principles and evaluation methods.  Through a review of the current literature on mLearning applications, lessons learned from exemplar cases, and a discussion of an in-process mobile, game-based learning project, a pattern language for mobile learning design will be advanced.

The networked and associative nature of pattern languages, more generally (Alexander, 1977), is particularly well-suited to mLearning and situated learning design that makes use of the connective and flexible affordances of mobile technologies for content delivery and engagement.  Well established in computer science and interaction design, pattern languages, or pattern catalogues, for addressing design knowledge transfer have been taken up, in recent years by educators (Jones et al, 1999; Mor, 2007) in online and game-based learning practice.  Given the wide range of interest in mLearning application development from diverse sectors in academia and industry, and the correlative variation in project scope, the advancement of a collaboratively produced set of patterns for addressing the challenges of mobile instruction is required to advance and cohere research and learning objectives of interest to the field.

A community-driven, and practice-oriented pattern language for mLearning design would offer Open Education initiatives a context-aware framework for addressing instructional and technology design problems.  A pattern-based approach to mLearning design and development supports, additionally, a structured, solutions-based resource, which privileges the formulation and adoption of a meaningful, shared vocabulary for systems building and assessment.  An mLearning pattern language would extend and formalize existing design guidance and principles for both theory-building and practice in this rich and emergent open learning domain.