Importance of Mobile Learning in Educational System

What is Mobile Learning?

Are you feeling lazy or struggling to reach schools or colleges on time? Or you have busy office hours so that you could not give yourself time for learning.  Now no more worries! Thanks to Mobile learning in educational system.

Mobile Learning, also known as M-learning is an educational system. Mobile learning supports, with the help of mobile devices, a continuous access to the learning process through different devices like mobile, laptop, tablet etc. You can learn whenever and where you want.

Study anywhere anytime.

The statics shows the number of smartphone users in India reached 340 million in 2017 and same could reach almost 468 by 2021.thus it is very easy for the person to learn whatever they want at any time and anywhere.

Save time, frustration and money.

With the help of M- Learning, people can save their time, energy and money, they can learn at home, office, and even during travelling. Mobile Learning is handy in that it is accessible from virtually anywhere. Sharing is almost neck & crop among everyone using the same content, which leads to the reception of instant feedback.

Cost Effective

Mobile Learning has the added benefit of being cost-effective, as the price of digital content on tablets is falling sharply compared to the traditional media like books, CD and DVD, etc. One digital textbook, costs one-third to half the price of a paper textbook, with zero marginal cost.

More Content

Videos and audios are things that are added to mobile learning and video make it possible to make learning more lively and people feel more interesting through mobile learning.

Work

Mobile Learning in the context of work can embrace a variety of different forms of learning and knowledge base institute. It has been defined as the “processes of coming to know, and of being able to operate successfully in, and across, ever-changing contexts, including learning for, at and through work, by means of mobile devices”.

• Mobile Learning for work
• Mobile Learning at and through work
• Cross-contextual Mobile Learning

 

1)         Learning for work

which could be also described as ‘just-in-case’ learning, involves classic and formal education activities, such as training courses, that prepare learners for future work-related tasks. A corporate application is the delivery of mobile compliance training, which can be seen as a viable means to reach geographically mobile employees, such as staff in logistics and transport systems.

2)         Learning at and through work

which could be labelled as “just-in-time” mobile learning, occurs in informal education settings at the workplace. Employees can use the mobile phone to solve problems via handheld devices, for example by accessing informational resources, such as checklists and reference guides prior to customer visits or mobile decision support systems. The latter is popular in clinical settings where they support highly mobile medical staff through rule-based algorithms in the decision regarding more complex patient cases. Their application was associated with learning and in particular with practice improvement. Learning through work also occurs by interacting with a distant colleague via phone. “People tagging” is a standpoint whereby people assign the topics they associate with co-workers and their family and friends.

3)         Cross-contextual learning

that bridges the gap between work settings and formal education formats has perhaps the biggest potential for work-based mobile learning, especially with respect to tertiary education systems. This involves approaches in which learning in the workplace is facilitated and substantiated, for example through formative assessments, reflective questions or the documentation of personal achievements in multimedia learning portfolios.

Self-learning

Mobile technologies and approaches, i.e. mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), are used to assist in different language learning. For instance, handheld computers, cell phones, and podcasting (Horcoff & Kayes2008) have been used to help people acquire and develop language skills. 

Value

The value of mobile learning

Tutors who have used Mobile learning programs and techniques have made the following statements in favour of Mobile learning.

• It is necessary to bring new technology into the classroom.
• Devices used are more lightweight than textbooks and PCs.
• Mobile learning can be used to variegate the types of learning activities.
• Mobile learning supports the learning process.
• Mobile learning can be a useful add-on tool for students with special needs..
• Mobile learning can be used as a ‘hook’ to re-engage disaffected youth.
• Mobile Learning can be designed to combine decision making in complex learning scenarios with informative scoring and assessment.

Submitted by- Pinkey Jaiswal | Vishal Panwar | Aditi Nupur (PGDM 2018-20)