Mobile learning in teaching English as second/foreign language to adult learners

Introduction

Mobile learning or sometimes shortened to m-learning can be defined the use and exploitation of handheld and mobile phone applications in the study process (Traxler, 2005, p. 262-263). It can thus be any educational provision where the main technologies are handheld or palmtop devices, thus in this case may include phones, personal digital assistants, tablet PCs and to some extent laptop PCs, but to the exclusion of  Desktops in carts. Traxler (2005) keenly points out that the definition should also address the growing number experiments with dedicated mobile devices such as game consoles and iPods and embrace both mainstream and industrial technological devices.

McLean (2003) considered ‘m-learning’ to be a term coined to cover the wide range of applications which have emerged from the convergence of new mobile technologies, wireless infrastructure and e-learning developments.

Mobile learning can be widened to include “Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies" (O’Malley et al., 2003 p.6). We can thus see two distinct features of mobile learning, one being that , m-learning enables the educational process to take place anywhere and at anytime; and also, any kind of handheld device (small and easy to carry) together with a communication technology, is required.

Adult learners are individuals considered to be biologically above reproduction age legally vote marry drive etc, social begins to have the adult roles such as work, become a spouse, parent etc and psychologically able to develop a self-concept of being responsible for their own life.( Crawford, p.1).  Adult learners can be differentiated from the minor or non-adult learners as they can be characterized by the following features; readiness to learn, the need to know, the learners self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions and as such are more likely to make rational decisions, the role of the learners experience compared to the more youthful ones and are more motivated to learn as education to them mat be viewed as a potent motivator for internal pressure such as the desire for increased job satisfaction, self-esteem, quality of life and the like. (Knowles, 1990, p57-63)

There key issues that arise in the mobile learning of adults include the importance of the relationship between the learner and teacher. The cross-curricular activities afforded by the mobile applications, the challenges that accompany the adult learners in the use of the mobile learning application devices and how it affects the effectiveness and the efficiency depending on the resulting indicators of progress in the mobile learning process. (Winters, 2007, p8) The paper will explore the issue of the effectiveness of using mobile learning in teaching. The paper will focus on the use of mobile learning in teaching English as second/foreign language to adult learners by evaluating relevant studies and use of special reference to the qualitative and quantitative data.

Hsua, H.Y., Wanga, S.K., & Comac, L. (2008), 'Using Audio blogs to assist English-Language Learning: an Investigation into Student Perception.' Journal of Computer assisted Language Learning vol. 21, no. 2, 181–198

The goal of the study was to improve students’ English speaking and listening abilities, it involved the use of audio blogs as the means of communicating and interaction between the tutor and the students.

The study is relevant to institutions that practice long distance learning using mobile devices especially in the field of languages where the pronunciations of words and phrases are important to the mastering and development of good communicational skills.

In the study audio blogs were used to assist in the teaching of English language, the individual learners had individual audio blogs, they would record oral assignments using their phones and upload to an oral achieve where the instructor would retrieve the audio recording, the instructor interacted with each learner through the individual audio blogs to enhance their learning according to individual needs.

By using different methodology to explore how instructor’s interaction with learners through audio blogs improves the learner’s oral English performance, the results indicated that the use of audio blogs met the instructors instructional needs and provided an effective and efficient way to evaluate learners oral performance and permitting individualized oral feedback and the individual learners positive perception in the use of audio blogs to assist in their language learning experience. The study also discussed the challenges that users of audio blogs face in the English learning and its implications in language learning. 

The use of blogs had various advantages such as ease of use, affordance in comparison with podcasting methods approach which requires a media player as a delivery device, a server to host audio files, and particular software to create RSS feeds. Audio blogs are easy archiving of assignments for evaluation and are compatible with various multimedia format files, and it is easy to facilitate interaction between the learner and tutor.

The study was divided into four steps which include; firstly, the setup of the blog by the learners and the tutor, secondly, the online audio recording system, thirdly the procedure for the distribution and the completion of assignments and finally assessment of audio blogs assignment.

Peachey, N. (n.d.), ‘Survey: Mobile learning for English language teachers’ At

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the level of awareness and openness to mobile learning among English language teachers. The study was interested in determining the level with which English tutors were using mobile tools in learning and professional development and establish whether they are willing and able to utilize them. The survey collected information about the teachers’ existing access to mobile services and the kinds of device they were using to get access to mobile Internet.

The survey narrowed on issues such as what their perception on the role that mobile learning will play in the future of English learning, as well as analyzing the type of mobiles they owned and which types they intended to buy in the future and the reasons for their intended choices in relation to the learning process, if they used their mobiles as learning or teaching tool and if they could use free mobile learning content with their students.

The results indicated that majority of the sampled teachers had access to mobile internet services and were already using mobile resources for teaching and learning, while  many planned to buy more advanced mobile devices such as iPads and iPhones. Many believed that mobiles had a greater role to play in the future learning and teaching.

The study may be utilized by phone and software application companies and organizations to create custom made mobile devises which are target teachers by understanding their market demand , solving and simplifying the limitations they encounter in m-learning. The educational institutions may also recommend to their teachers to also use m-learning to assist them in achieving their educational objectives.

The challenges to the use of mobile learning was in the form of the cost of connection fees and potential costs incurred by them and their students in the downloading academic resources via their hand-held mobile devices.

The conclusion of the survey showed that there was a clear and a commercially viable opportunity for any English language publisher wishing to invest in the development of mobile teaching and learning content material and resources in form of mobile software applications and hardware.

This study differs from the previous one by which used audio blogs in m-learning purposes while this study was more interested in the awareness and the application of m-learning devices by teachers and some of the challenges they faced.

Uzunboylu, H. & Ozdamli, F. (2011), ‘Teacher Perception for M-Learning: Scale

The study was carried out to determine the perception of teachers on the m-learning process, the research was done on the assumption that successful integration of mobile learning in education primarily demands that the teacher’s perception of such technologies be evaluated as they are of immense importance. The study was carried out on a sample population in Cyprus. The purpose was to develop a Likert-type scale to determine the perception of m-learning of teachers in secondary schools.

For this purpose, the study looked into the following four research questions: one was if the Mobile Learning Perception Scale (MLPS) which had been developed was valid and reliable? Two, what were the teachers’ perceptions to m-learning?  Three did the teachers’ perceptions of m-learning differs according to gender? And did their perceptions differ in accordance to their branches or their areas of specialty in teaching.

The study group of this research consisted of teachers from state schools, stratified random sampling method was used whereby the groups selected for the sample is the same proportion as in the population. (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006). This sampling method was deemed to be the most convenient as the population was known thus it was easy for it to be stratified and as such the results would be highly credible and reliable.

The study is different from the survey done by Peachey as it is more of a qualitative research which is interested in the individual perceptions of teachers in the usage of m-learning tools, while the latter’s survey involved the investigation of the awareness of the teachers to apply m-learning together with the traditional classroom teaching setting.

De-Marcos, et Al. ‘An Experiment for improving Student’s Performance in Secondary and Tertiary Education by means of M-Learning Auto-Assessment.’ Computers & Education 55 (2010) 1069–1079

This study was based on the fact m-learning is an evolution of e-learning (electronic learning) and as such it’s possible to develop mobile application software’s that are educational oriented in order to improve learning and teaching. There was also the importance to evaluate to what extent such applications were effective and efficient. By teachers designing a questionnaire for the students it allowed them to be able to test their knowledge and expertise in various specific topics. This study presented a tool designed to fortify students, who were in the secondary and tertiary level of education and between the ages of 14 to 21 years old, knowledge by means of self-assessment, and later an attitudinal survey was carried out to measure the student’s attitude towards m-learning.

The results indicated that m-learning improved student achievement. They made the assumption that the sampled age group used mobile phones as an integral part of their daily lives be it in their social and communication needs. And as such using their phones would make it convenient and increase their motivation to the learning process. But the research was also keen to establish if m-learning could be used in improving their learning process.

The study was carried out in three different environments of students varying in ages and the levels which were chosen for experimentation and analysis. The first group comprised 14-15 year olds who were third years in secondary, the second group comprised 17-18 year olds, who were sixth year students from secondary and finally the third group was made up of 20–21 year olds who were third year degree students. The factor considered in the age ranges was chosen to represent and cover a wide range from the adolescents to adults thus enabling the collection of These groups were selected in order to cover a wide range of ages, from adolescence to adulthood with a time span of two academic years in between the experimental group, enabling us to collect more reliable data.

A web based system was designed and built to support mobile self-assessment. The architecture comprised of  three different systems: a web server for storage delivery and evaluation of the online tests, a mobile application which students used to connect to the server to download the questionnaires and fill them, and lastly, a web based front-end that offered different functionalities to each kind of user (teachers and students). The mobile application could ran on students’ phones as it was developed using Java technology (JME for mobile applications) enabling the student’s access questionnaire server through the Internet.

Some of the limitations of running the application on the student’s personal phones were of particular relevance in the study, these included problems such as compatibility of software integration into the mobile phones, limitations of the mobile web browser, interface usability, reduced size of the screen, and limitation of the battery life when they were taking the tests. (Huang et al., 2008)

In the research the students were required to complete the mobile tests which comprised one test per learning objective using either their own mobile phones, those provided by the teacher and for those that preferred to use the web front-end to access the questionnaires from any computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser, although it was completely optional, outcome data collected from each group is presented and discussed. It should be borne in mind that each teacher provided a grade for each learning objective and each student, together with a final mark for the entire learning experience. Students’ opinions were also appraised in an attitudinal survey.

This study varies from the previous three explained studies in that it aims to show the impact of m-learning among various students, and also show the impact of using these teaching methods that   the youth use in other social activities and the impact it would result in the academic development.

Conclusion

In summary the various mobile learning studies explained they include the use of varying devices such as the audio blogs, mobile phones and other types. It’s important to note that the use of mobile learning impacts on the educational development of the students regardless of their age’s or the devices used positively, but the efficiency is dependent on the challenges that they face be they in the hardware, technical issues or the personal issues such as the cost of access to conveniently participate in m-learning. My paper will intend to fill the gap which is in the use of mobile learning as a tool for teaching English language to adult learners, analyze the challenges that they may face the qualitative and quantitative effects.

References

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