On Social and Mobile Learning Architectures

Foryears, we have been following educational paradigms that promote formal,structured, unidirectional interventions to help learners acquire and retainmiscellaneous knowledge. We hoped they would retain it until the moment theymight need it.

Now,we are witnessing how these long-standing patterns in teaching and learningprocesses are in tension with more dynamic, connected, and collaborative waysof finding and exchanging context-relevant information. As learning designers,we cannot ignore these new channels of communication and knowledge transfer. Weneed to start thinking beyond the traditional training courses, beyond the constraintsof LMSs, and outside of static educational environments.

Itis time to seize innovation by leveraging social interactions and designing uniquelymobile experiences in order to help learners make meaning of the world aroundthem. Here are some ideas about how to accomplish this.

Leveraging social interactions

Oneof the main premises of social learning is that meaningful interactions amongindividuals can lead to increased understanding. Social networking as aneducational tool naturally promotes collaboration and participation and therefore,it could profoundly transform traditional educational settings and practices. Byusing social media and participating in virtual communities, educators can becomefacilitators of interactions and content curators while students can model and produce—asopposed to passively consume—the learning content.

Twitter

The Twitter Experimentcarried out by Dr. Monica Rankin, professor of history at the University ofTexas at Dallas, is a clear example of how we can make the transition fromteacher-centered approaches to student-centered tasks and student-generatedcontent. Four years ago, Dr. Rankin decided to integrate Twitter into an actualclassroom setting in order to foster higher participation in class discussions.She left behind the traditional model of unidirectional lectures.

Students reportedthat this experience made them more willing to participate and allowed them toexpress themselves more freely. They also highlighted how the immediate accessto relevant resources and information helped them advance their understandingon the subject.

Inaddition, Dr. Rankin found that this type of synchronous communication activityvia social media helps students stay focused on the task as they gatherrelevant information at the exact moment they need it and try to provide themost accurate answers in front of their peers. Students interact with thecontent in a more meaningful way and shape it according to their needs; as aresult, they will be more likely to remember and retrieve the key informationlater.

The 140-character payoff

Anotheraspect that I found particularly interesting about using Twitter foreducational purposes is the 140-character constraint, which demands cognitiveeffort. To be able to express their opinions or share relevant evidence,students need to evaluate, compare, analyze, and synthesize the informationavailable—and express the result in 140 characters. This requires thathigher-order thinking skills come into play.

Inrelation to this, it is worth mentioning a very interesting challenge issued bythe social learning specialist, Jane Hart, some months ago. In her article, Instructional Design in 140 characters #140id, Jane refers to @cookbook’s tweets asexcellent examples of how small bits of instructions cleverly expressed in only140 characters can be very useful to guide performance of specific procedures,in this case, recipes. The challenge was based on the idea of creating newsources of information and opening new learning paths by sharing briefinstructional texts or just-in-time, just-enough, just-for-me recommendationson a daily basis.

Designing uniquely mobile experiences

Whenwe talk about social and contextual learning, the role of mobile devices asprimary tools for communication, instant data capturing, and enhanced realitiesacquires special relevance. But, are we really exploiting these mobile devices’capabilities when they can significantly improve a learning experience?According to researchers Pimmer and Pachler (see the References at the end ofthis article), “Many ofthe current approaches [tomobile learning in work contexts] tend to repackage eLearning content in order to make it suitable for the smaller screensofmobile devices—following behavioral and cognitive paradigms.”

Indeed, paradigms and principles conceived inpast decades persist and dim the path towards more innovative and disruptivesolutions in education. It is true that mobile learning could not be theultimate solution for every knowledge or skill gap. It is also true that mobiledevice capabilities should not be used just because they are cool features tohave. They should be used when they support a pedagogical purpose and couldenhance aspects of a learning experience. However, if users’ needs andbehaviors determine that mobile devices are the most appropriate delivery pathto support a learning goal, designers should make the most of these capabilities.

iArchi[tech]ture

When educational technologists and courselecturers started to work on the project iArchi[tech]ture,they had this purpose in mind. They decided to focus “upon the unique affordances of smartphones with relevance toArchitecture and student ePortfolio generation facilitating situatedlearner-generated content, including: geotagging of images and video, augmentedreality (e.g., Wikitude), microblogging (e.g., Twitter), and mobile codes (e.g.,QR codes)” (see References).

The researchers, educators, and studentsinvolved in this project aimed at making the most of mobile devices provided bytheir institution and they created a meaningful learning experience in theirfield. Students captured geotagged photos and videos and designed a layer ofdigital information (points of interests or critiques of poor designs) toaugment real-world architecture in their city. They also made use of 3Gnetworks to share resources from the point of capture and created a solidcommunity of practice through effective communication and mutual support.

Observation in real life

Another project intended to take fulladvantage of mobile devices’ unique features to broaden the understanding ofreal world phenomena is Physics On the Go, created by ProfessorCesar Poyatos. During this problem-based learning initiative, high-schoolstudents used their mobile devices to capture data in an amusement park. Theythen utilized different mobile apps to interpret physical principles. Studentswere able to connect educational content to real-life situations by observing,analyzing, and designing their own multimedia representations of that reality.

Building more effective and integrated learning architectures

Atthis point you might be wondering, what about the issues that we may encounteron the way? How can we overcome organizational, contextual, and technologicalproblems that may affect the implementation of these projects? Can we end uphaving only unintended outcomes and chaotic interactions without relevantconclusions? How do we measure success without explicit, gradable results?

Thisis the reason I refer to “learning architectures.” These are unifying andcoherent systems based on a thorough planning process and leading towards adefinite goal. The first planning step involves a careful analysis of thelearning needs and objectives that we need to address. In addition, we need topay close attention to the learners’ characteristics, behaviors, and theircontext of performance. It is also important to evaluate the technologyavailable and how we can leverage it to enhance learning. Finally, we shouldlook for ways to document these new experiences and to gather relevantinformation throughout the process.

The importance of data and the value of the xAPI

Whyis data gathering important? Because it will allow us to answer key questionsfor a more comprehensive learning strategy targeted at improved performance.What do these types of activities mean in a specific context and in a biggerlearning ecosystem? What is the value for the learner as a performer of certainsocial, collaborative, and mobile actions? What types of knowledge or skill didthe learner call upon, and what types will they need to reactivate?

Untilrecently, the task of capturing different kinds of experience was not possiblethrough existing learning specifications, such as SCORM, which can only capturethe learner’s performance through a specific course. Now, the xAPI (formerlyknown as the Tin Can API) will enable us to collect relevant information acrossheterogeneous environments and across different flows of actions (includingsocial interactions, mobile activity, as well as simulations and games). AsMegan Bowe affirms, “The point of Tin Can is not just to generate a pile ofsimilar data, but to get meaningful data that can be widely understood and isvaluable to those creating learning experiences and supporting performance” (seeReferences).

ThexAPI allows for tracking granular actions and for capturing statements ofexperience. The statements are reported in an LRS (Learning Record Store). Anin-depth analysis of the statements could enable us to obtain detailed learners’performance profiles and these could be valuable tools to make informeddecisions about intervention strategies in the future.

Conclusion

Thetype of experiences described in this article pose new challenges and raise manyquestions. Also, some issues may arise during the implementation and evaluationphases. Their disruptive nature could be threatening for establishedpedagogical practices and their most dedicated adopters. However, currentsocial, active, and distributed ways of learning demand new approaches. Socialinteractions and uniquely mobile activities should be integrated intoeducational practices since they are part of learners’ lives and because theseactivities can foster a better understanding of the world around the learners.Well-thought-out strategies can help us, as learning designers, analyzeproblems, evaluate resources, and collect performance data in differentcontexts in order to determine more effective paths towards proficiency andinnovation.

References

Bowe,M. “What’s Up with Verbs in .95?” Tin Can API Blog. 11 October 2012. https://tincanapi.com/2012/10/11/whats-up-with-verbs-in-95/

Cochrane,T. & Rhodes, D. “iArchi[tech]ture: Developing a Mobile Social MediaFramework for Pedagogical Transformation.” AustralasianJournal of Educational Technology, 2013, 29(3). https://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/view/191

Hart,J. “Instructional Design in 140 characters #140id.” Learningin the Social Workplace Blog. 5 February 2013. https://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/02/05/instructional-design-in-140-characters-140id/

Pimmer,C., and N. Pachler. “Mobile Learning in the Workplace: Unlocking the Value ofMobile Technology for Work-Based Education.” Mobile Learning Development for Flexible Learning. AthabascaUniversity Press, 2013. https://www.christoph.pimmer.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Pimmer-Pachler-Mobile-Learning-in-the-Workplace1.pdf

Poyatos, C. Physics On the Go. 2012. https://sandiegoysanvicente.com/physicsonthego/