In 2011 when I participated in my first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course),the topic of the course was Mobile learning. Mobile devices were novel innovations at that time. The thought to use mobile devices for learning seemed a good idea for access to learning anytime anywhere.
Now, fast forward and mobile devices are “ubiquitous tools” in personal, professional, and education activities. Almost 100% of the higher education students in the following survey report owning mobile devices.
Yet, the students in the survey prefer to learn using a laptop. When asked reasons for ambivalence in using mobile devices for learning the students mentioned that mobile devices were tools for “small tasks”. Other reasons for student ambivalence to mobile devices for learning may be the screen size, the lack of connectivity, the pandemic experience with remote learning.
Perhaps mobile learning using the right tasks in the right class will evolve for education to deliver content through many channels.
' Mobile Learning Practices in Higher Education | EDUCAUSE
“Learning and Education delivering content through many channels.” Good take Kris, as we tend to want to find the ONE next big thing, but the history of media shows that the next big thing generally has some important relationship to the previous big thing(s).
What we end up with is a mix of media where the context changes, which puts the old and the new media into new relationships.
As McLuhan taught us, a new contexts and a new media relationships can be very hard to see, and understand. They just sort of “show up” in our lives and we make it up from there as we go along.