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Mobile and Pervasive Computing
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CS 72
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Evaluation of Mobile Technology
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Material 1
History of mobile phones
The history of mobile phones charts the development of devices which
connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.
The transmission of speech by radio has
a long and varied history going back to Reginald
Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship
demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military
use of radio telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers have
been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became
available from some telephone companies in the 1940s. Early devices were bulky
and consumed high power and the network supported only a few simultaneous
conversations. Modern cellular networks allow
automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice and data communications.
History of mobile phones
The history of mobile phones charts the development of devices which connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network. The transmission of speech by radio has a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940s. Early devices were bulky and consumed high power and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. Modern cellular networks allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice and data communications.
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Contents
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By 1930, telephone
customers in the United States could be connected by radio to a passenger on an
ocean liner in the Atlantic Ocean. The service was expensive, costing $7 per
minute, equivalent to about $92.50/minute in 2011 dollars.[1]
The first mobile
telephone call was placed in St. Louis, Missouri on June 17, 1946 from a
telephone set installed in an automobile. This first mobile telephone call was
the end result of more than 10 years of work by Bell Labs scientists Alton
Dickieson, D. Mitchell and H.I. Romnes.[2]
In 1947 AT&T
commercialized Mobile
Telephone Service. From its start in
St. Louis in 1946, AT&T then introduced Mobile Telephone Service to 100
towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with
only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up
manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to
talk and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed
about 80 pounds.[2]
Subscriber growth and
revenue generation were hampered by the constraints of the technology. Because
only three radio channels were available, only three customers in any given
city could make mobile telephone calls at one time.[3] Mobile
Telephone Service was expensive, costing US$15 per month, plus $.30 to $.40 per
local call, equivalent to about $176 per month and $3.50 to $4.75 per call in
2012 dollars.[2]
AT&T introduced
the first major improvement to mobile telephony in 1965, giving the improved
service the obvious name of Improved Mobile Telephone Service.
IMTS used additional radio channels, allowing more simultaneous calls in a
given geographic area, introduced customer dialing, eliminating manual call set
by an operator, and reduced the size and weight of the subscriber equipment.[2]
Despite the capacity
improvement offered by IMTS, demand outstripped capacity. In agreement with
state regulatory agencies, AT&T limited the service to just 40,000
customers system wide. In New York, NY, for example, 2,000 customers shared
just 12 radio channels and typically had to wait 30 minutes to place a call.[2]
A mobile radio telephone
Radio Common Carrier or RCC was
a service introduced in the 1960s by independent telephone companies to compete
against AT&T's IMTS. RCC systems used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF
152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS. RCC based services were
provided until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment
obsolete.
Some RCC systems were
designed to allow customers of adjacent carriers to use their facilities, but
equipment used by RCCs did not allow the equivalent of modern
"roaming" because technical standards were not uniform. For example,
the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work
in Phoenix, Arizona. Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no
centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not
standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging to
alert a mobile of an incoming call. Other systems used DTMF. Some used Secode
2805, which transmitted an interrupted
2805 Hz tone (similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered
call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk
LOMO equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional
two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets, rotary or
pushbutton dials, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone.
A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their
day).
At the end of RCC's
existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that
would have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to
enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500,
2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.
In 1969 Penn Central
Railroad equipped commuter trains along the 225-mile New York-Washington route
with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while
the train was moving. The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHZ band in
nine sites.[3]
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This section needs
additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
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In Europe, several
mutually incompatible mobile radio services were developed. West Germany had a network
called A-Netz launched
in 1952 as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. In 1972
this was displaced by B-Netz which connected
calls automatically. In 1966 Norway had a system called Televerket which was
manually controlled.
A multi-directional, cellular network antenna array
In December 1947, Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young, Bell Labs engineers,
proposed hexagonal cells for
mobile phones in vehicles.[4] Philip T.
Porter, also of Bell Labs, proposed that the cell towers be at the corners of
the hexagons rather than the centers and have directional antennas that would
transmit/receive in three directions (see picture at right) into three adjacent
hexagon cells on three different frequencies.[5] At this stage,
the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies
been allocated. Several years would pass before Richard H.
Frenkiel andJoel S. Engel of Bell Labs
developed the electronics to achieve this in the 1960s.
In all these early
examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one
base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service
as the phones moved through several cell areas. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff,
as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell
phone technology, were described in the 1970s. In 1970 Amos E. Joel, Jr., a Bell Labs engineer,[6]invented
an automatic "call handoff"
system to allow mobile phones to move through several cell areas during a
single conversation without interruption.
A cellular telephone
switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973,[7] and a cellular
telephone data signaling system was described in 1977 by Hachenburg et al.[8]
The first fully
automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden in 1956.
Named MTA (Mobile
Telephone system A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using
a rotary dial. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct
dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to determine which base
station the phone was currently at. It was developed by Sture Laurén and
other engineers at Televerket network
operator. Ericsson provided the
switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi provided the
telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tubes and relays, and weighed
40 kg. In 1962, an upgraded version called Mobile System B
(MTB) was introduced. This was a push-button
telephone, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational
reliability. In 1971 the MTD version
was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining
commercial success.[9][10] The network
remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.
In 1958 development
began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR.[11] The
"Altay" national civil mobile phone service was based on Soviet
MRT-1327 standard. The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh
Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized
Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963 the service started in Moscow, and by 1970
was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are
still in use today as a trunking system in some parts
of Russia.
In 1959 a private
telephone company located in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone
Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone
equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone
services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service
through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles
including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles. For some as yet unknown
reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief
time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately
changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately
dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.[citation needed]
In 1966, Bulgaria
presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base
station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One
base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six
customers.[citation needed]
One of the first
successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP network in Finland,
launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a zero
generation (0G) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and
limited coverage networks.[citation needed]
Prior to 1973, mobile
telephony was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles.[6] Motorola and Bell Labs raced to be the
first to produce a handheld mobile phone. That race ended on April 3, 1973 when Martin
Cooper, a Motorola researcher and
executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber
equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.[12][13] The prototype
handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed 2.5 pounds and measured 9 inches
long, 5 inches deep and 1.75 inches wide. The prototype offered a
talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge.[14]
John F. Mitchell,
Motorola's chief of portable communication products and Cooper's boss in 1973,
played a key role in advancing the development of handheld mobile telephone
equipment. Mitchell successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless
communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and
participated in the design of the cellular phone.[15][16]
The first analog
cellular system widely deployed in North America was the Advanced
Mobile Phone System (AMPS). [17] It was
commercially introduced in the Americas in 1978, Israel in 1986, and Australia
in 1987.
AMPS was a pioneering
technology that helped drive mass market usage of cellular technology, but it
had several serious issues by modern standards. It was unencrypted and easily
vulnerable to eavesdropping via a scanner;
it was susceptible to cell phone "cloning;" and it used a Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) scheme
and required significant amounts of wireless spectrum to support. Many of the
iconic early commercial cell phones such as the Motorola DynaTAC Analog
AMPS was eventually superseded by Digital AMPS (D-AMPS) in
1990, and AMPS service was shut down by most North American carriers by 2008.
Two 1991 GSM mobile phones with several AC adapters
In the 1990s, the
'second generation' (2G) mobile phone systems emerged.
Two systems competed for supremacy in the global market: the european developed GSM standard and the U.S. developed CDMA standard. These differed from the
previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also
fast out-of-band phone-to-network
signaling. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and
this era also saw the advent of prepaid
mobile phones
In 1991 the first GSM
network (Radiolinja)
launched in Finland.
In general the frequencies used by 2G systems in Europe were higher than those
in America, though with some overlap. For example, the 900 MHz frequency
range was used for both 1G and 2G systems in Europe, so the 1G systems were
rapidly closed down to make space for the 2G systems. In America the IS-54 standard was deployed in the same band
as AMPS and
displaced some of the existing analog channels.
Coinciding with the
introduction of 2G systems was a trend away from the larger "brick"
phones toward tiny 100–200g hand-held devices. This change was possible not
only through technological improvements such as more advanced batteries and
more energy-efficient electronics, but also because of the higher density of
cell sites to accommodate increasing usage. The latter meant that the average
distance transmission from phone to the base station shortened, leading to
increased battery life whilst on the move.
The second generation
introduced a new variant of communication called SMS or text messaging. It was
initially available only on GSM networks but spread eventually on all digital
networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK on 3
December 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS sent in Finland.
The advent of prepaid
services in the late 1990s soon made SMS the communication method of choice
amongst the young, a trend which spread across all ages.
2G also introduced
the ability to access media content on mobile phones. In 1998 the first
downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the ring tone, launched by
Finland's Radiolinja (now Elisa). Advertising on the mobile phone first
appeared in Finland when a free daily SMS news headline service was launched in
2000, sponsored by advertising.
Mobile payments were
trialed in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for
a Coca Cola vending machine and car parking. Commercial launches followed in
1999 in Norway. The first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit
cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile
operators Globe and Smart.
The first full
internet service on mobile phones was introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in
1999.
As the use of 2G
phones became more widespread and people began to utilize mobile phones in
their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data services (such as
access to the internet) was growing. Furthermore, experience from fixed
broadband services showed there would also be an ever increasing demand for
greater data speeds. The 2G technology was nowhere near up to the job, so the
industry began to work on the next generation of technology known as 3G. The
main technological difference that distinguishes 3G technology from 2G
technology is the use ofpacket switching rather than circuit switching for
data transmission.[18] In addition,
the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2
Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).
Inevitably this led
to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies,
and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality.
The standard 2G CDMA networks became
3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several
additions to the protocol whilst retaining backwards compatibility:
§
the
introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum
burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s.
§
protocols that
would decrease connection establishment time.
§
the ability for
more than one mobile to share the same time slot.
The first
pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the
Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network
on 1 October 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on
the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in
South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of
2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank).
European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group,
on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and
two more on the EV-DO standard.
During the
development of 3G systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS were
developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the
features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of
multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up
to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE system which in theory covers the
requirements for 3G system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical
system would be sure to fall short.
The high connection
speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first
time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets
became possible[1],
with companies such as RealNetworks [2] and Disney [3] among the early
pioneers in this type of offering.
In the mid 2000s
(decade), an evolution of 3G technology begun to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is
an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications
protocol in the High-Speed
Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or
turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)
to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments
support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit/s.
Further speed increases are available with HSPA+,
which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9
of the 3GPP standards.
By the end of 2007,
there were 295 million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9%
of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the
WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services
generated over 120 Billion dollars of revenues during 2007 and at many markets
the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea
the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation.
Although mobile
phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet,
it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G coverage in the
mid-2000s (decade) that specialized devices appeared to access the mobile internet.
The first such devices, known as "dongles", plugged
directly into a computer through the USB port.
Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router"
such as the Novatel MiFi, which makes
3G internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi, rather than just to
a single computer via a USB plug-in.
Such devices became
especially popular for use with laptop computers due to the added portability
they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the
mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't
needed. Instead, the SIM card could be
inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services.
Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other
types of data-aware devices followed in the netbook's footsteps. By the
beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and theNook from Barnes & Noble, had already become available with embedded wireless internet, and Apple Computer had announced
plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad tablet
devices beginning that Fall.
By 2009, it had
become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the
growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.[20] Consequently,
the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with
the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies.
The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard
(offered in the U.S. by Sprint)
and the LTE standard,
first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.
One of the main ways
in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment
of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing
packet switching over internet, LAN or WAN networks via VoIP.[21]
Earth-orbiting
satellites can cover remote areas out of reach of wired networks or where
construction of a cellular network is uneconomic. The Inmarsat satellite
telephone system, originally developed in 1979 for safety of life at sea, is
now also useful for areas out of reach of landline, conventional cellular, or
marine VHF radio stations. In 1998 the Iridium satellite
system was set up, and although the initial operating company went bankrupt due
to high initial expenses, the service is available today.
Material 2
Defining, Discussing and Evaluating Mobile Learning: the moving finger writes and having writ . . . .
John Traxler
University of Wolverhampton, UK
University of Wolverhampton, UK
Abstract
Since the start of the current millennium, experience and expertise in the development and delivery of mobile learning have blossomed and a community of practice has evolved that is distinct from the established communities of 'tethered' e-Learning. This community is currently visible mainly through dedicated international conference series, of which MLEARN is the most prestigious, rather than through any dedicated journals. So far, these forms of development and delivery have focussed on short-term small-scale pilots and trials in the developed countries of Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim, and there is a taxonomy emerging from these pilots and trials that suggests tacit and pragmatic conceptualisations of mobile learning.
What has, however, developed less confidently within this community is any theoretical conceptualisation of mobile learning and with it any evaluation methodologies specifically aligned to the unique attributes of mobile learning.
Some advocates of mobile learning attempt to define and conceptualise it in terms of devices and technologies; other advocates define and conceptualise it in terms of the mobility of learners and the mobility of learning, and in terms of the learners’ experience of learning with mobile devices.
The role of theory is, perhaps, a contested topic in a community that encompasses philosophical affiliations from empiricists to post-structuralists, each with different expectations about the scope and legitimacy of theory in their work. The mobile learning community may nevertheless need the authority and credibility of some conceptual base.
Such a base would provide the starting point for evaluation methodologies grounded in the unique attributes of mobile learning. Attempts to develop the conceptualisations and evaluation of mobile learning, however, must recognise that mobile learning is essentially personal, contextual, and situated; this means it is 'noisy' and this is problematic both for definition and for evaluation.
Furthermore, defining mobile learning can emphasise those unique attributes that position it within informal learning, rather than formal. These attributes place much mobile learning at odds with formal learning with its cohorts, courses, semesters, assessments, and campuses, and with its monitoring and evaluation regimes. This raises concerns for the nature of any large-scale and sustained deployment and the extent to which the unique attributes of mobile learning may be lost or compromised.
Looking at mobile learning in a wider context, we have to recognise that mobile, personal, and wireless devices are now radically transforming societal notions of discourse and knowledge, and are responsible for new forms of art, employment, language, commerce, deprivation, and crime, as well as learning. With increased popular access to information and knowledge anywhere, anytime, the role of education, perhaps especially formal education, is challenged and the relationships between education, society, and technology are now more dynamic than ever.
The paper explores and articulates these issues and the connections between them specifically in the context of the wider and sustained development of mobile learning.
Keywords: Mobile learning; distance learning; definition; conceptualisation; evaluation
Introduction
The use of wireless, mobile, portable, and handheld devices are gradually increasing and diversifying across every sector of education, and across both the developed and developing worlds. It is gradually moving from small-scale, short-term trials to larger more sustained and blended deployment. This article draws on recent publications, projects, and trials in order to explore the possible future and nature of mobile education. The article then examines the relationship between the challenges of rigorous and appropriate evaluation of mobile education and the challenges of embedding and mainstreaming mobile education within formal institutional education.
Mobile learning has growing visibility and significance in higher education. Evidence for this growing visibility and significance is as follows. First, there is the growing size and frequency of dedicated conferences, seminars, and workshops, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. The first of the MLEARN series, MLEARN 2002 in Birmingham, for example, was followed by MLEARN 2003 in London, with more than 200 delegates from 13 countries, by MLEARN 2004 in Rome in July 2004, by MLEARN 2005 in Cape Town in October 2005, and by MLEARN 2006 in Banff, Alberta in November 2006. Another dedicated event, the International Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Technologies in Education (WMTE, 2002), sponsored by IEEE, took place in Sweden in August 2002 (http://lttf.ieee.org/wmte2002/). The second WMTE (http://lttf.ieee.org/wmte2003/) was held at National Central University in Taiwan in March 2004, in Japan in 2005, and in Athens in 2006. Both these series report buoyant attendance. There are also a growing number of national and international workshops. The June 2002 national workshop in Telford on mobile learning in the computing discipline attracted 60 delegates from UK higher education (http://www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/events). The National Workshop and Tutorial on Handheld Computers in Universities and Colleges at Telford (http://www.e-innovationcentre.co.uk/eic_event.htm ) on June 11, 2004, and subsequent events on January 12, 2005 and November 4, 2005 (http://www.aidtech.wlv.ac.uk) all attracted over 90 delegates. The International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) (www.IADIS.org) now run a conference series, the first taking place in Malta in 2005, the second in Dublin in 2006, and the third in Lisbon in 2007. Secondly, there have also been a rising number of references to mobile learning at generalist academic conferences, for example the Association for Learning Technology conference (ALT-C) every September in the UK (http://www.alt.ac.uk).
The mobile learning currently exploits both handheld computers and mobile telephones and other devices that draw on the same set of functionalities. Mobile learning using handheld computers is obviously relatively immature in terms of both its technologies and its pedagogies, but is developing rapidly. It draws on the theory and practice of pedagogies used in technology enhanced learning and others used in the classroom and the community, and takes place as mobile devices are transforming notions of space, community, and discourse (Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Brown & Green, 2001) and the investigative ethics and tools (Hewson, Yule, Laurent, & Vogel, 2003). The term covers the personalised, connected, and interactive use of handheld computers in classrooms (Perry, 2003; O’Malley & Stanton, 2002), in collaborative learning (Pinkwart, Hoppe, Milrad, & Perez, 2003), in fieldwork (Chen, Kao, & Sheu, 2003), and in counselling and guidance (Vuorinen & Sampson, 2003). Mobile devices are supporting corporate training for mobile workers (Gayeski, 2002; Pasanen, 2003; Lundin & Magnusson, 2003) and are enhancing medical education (Smordal & Gregory, 2003), teacher training (Seppala & Alamaki, 2003), music composition (Polishook, 2005), nurse training (Kneebone, 2005), and numerous other disciplines. They are becoming a viable and imaginative component of institutional support and provision (Griswold, Boyer, Brown, et al., 2002; Sariola, 2003; Hackemer & Peterson, 2005). In October 2005, the first comprehensive handbook of mobile learning was published (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, 2005), but accounts of mobile distance learning are still infrequent.
There are now a large number of case studies documenting trials and pilots in the public domain (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, 2005; JISC, 2005; Attewell & Savill-Smith, 2004). In looking at these, we can see some categories of mobile learning emerging (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler, in press):
- Technology-driven mobile learning – Some specific technological innovation is deployed in an academic setting to demonstrate technical feasibility and pedagogic possibility
- Miniature but portable e-Learning – Mobile, wireless, and handheld technologies are used to re-enact approaches and solutions already used in 'conventional' e-Learning, perhaps porting some e-Learning technology such as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to these technologies or perhaps merely using mobile technologies as flexible replacements for static desktop technologies
- Connected classroom learning – The same technologies are used in classroom settings to support collaborative learning, perhaps connected to other classroom technologies such as interactive whiteboards
- Informal, personalised, situated mobile learning – The same technologies are enhanced with additional functionality, for example location-awareness or video-capture, and deployed to deliver educational experiences that would otherwise be difficult or impossible
- Mobile training/ performance support – The technologies are used to improve the productivity and efficiency of mobile workers by delivering information and support just-in-time and in context for their immediate priorities (for an early account, see Gayeski, 2002)
- Remote/ rural/ development mobile learning – The technologies are used to address environmental and infrastructural challenges to delivering and supporting education where 'conventional' e-Learning technologies would fail, often troubling accepted developmental or evolutionary paradigms
Mobile distance learning could fall into any of these categories (with the exception of the 'connected classroom learning'); how it develops will depend in part on the affordances of any given situation. These affordances might include:
- Infrastructure, meaning power supply, postal services, Internet connectivity, etc.
- Sparsity, giving rise to infrequent face-to-face contact, lack of technical support, etc.
- The wider policy agenda including lifelong learning, inclusion (of rural areas for example), assistivity, participation, and access
- Mobile distance learning within a framework of blended distance learning and the affordances of other delivery and support mechanisms
Defining Mobile Education
In spite of the activity cited above, the concept of mobile education or mobile learning is still emerging and still unclear. How it is eventually conceptualised will determine perceptions and expectations, and will determine its evolution and future. There are different stakeholders and factors at work in this process of conceptualising mobile education and the outcome is uncertain.
There are obviously definitions and conceptualisations of mobile education that define it purely in terms of its technologies and its hardware, namely that it is learning delivered or supported solely or mainly by handheld and mobile technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones or wireless laptop PCs. These definitions, however, are constraining, techno-centric, and tied to current technological instantiations. We, therefore, should seek to explore other definitions that perhaps look at the underlying learner experience and ask how mobile learning differs from other forms of education, especially other forms of e-Learning.
If we take as our starting point the characterisations of mobile learning found in the literature (the conference proceedings from MLEARN and WMTE for example), we find words such as 'personal,' 'spontaneous,' 'opportunistic,' 'informal,' 'pervasive,' 'situated,' 'private,' 'context-aware,' 'bite-sized,' and 'portable.' This is contrasted with words from the literature of conventional 'tethered' e-Learning such as 'structured,' 'media-rich,' 'broadband,' 'interactive,' 'intelligent,' and 'usable.' We can use these two lists to make a blurred distinction between mobile learning and e-Learning. This distinction, however, is not only blurred but in part is also only temporary. Many of the virtues of e-Learning are the virtues of the power of its technology (and the investment in it) and soon these virtues will also be accessible to mobile devices as market forces drive improvements in interface design, processor speed, battery life, and connectivity bandwidth. Nevertheless, this approach underpins a conceptualisation of mobile learning in terms of the learners' experiences and an emphasis on 'ownership,' informality, mobility, and context that will always be inaccessible to conventional 'tethered' e-Learning.
Tackling the problem of definition from another direction, we see that mobile devices and technologies are pervasive and ubiquitous in many modern societies, and are increasingly changing the nature of knowledge and discourse in these societies (whilst being themselves the products of various social and economic forces). This, in turn, alters both the nature of learning (both formal and informal) and alters the ways that learning can be delivered. Learning that used to be delivered 'just-in-case,' can now be delivered 'just-in-time,' 'just enough,' and 'just-for-me.' Finding information rather than possessing it or knowing it becomes the defining characteristic of learning generally and of mobile learning especially, and this may take learning back into the community.
Mobile technologies also alter the nature of work (the driving force behind much education and most training), especially of knowledge work. Mobile technologies alter the balance between training and performance support, especially for many knowledge workers. This means that 'mobile' is not merely a new adjective qualifying the timeless concept of 'learning'– 'mobile learning' is emerging as an entirely new and distinct concept alongside the 'mobile workforce' and the 'connected society.'
Mobile devices create not only new forms of knowledge and new ways of accessing it, but also create new forms of art and performance, and new ways of accessing them (such as 'pop' videos designed and sold for iPods). Mobile devices are creating new forms of commerce and economic activity as well. So mobile learning is not about 'mobile' as previously understood, or about 'learning' as previously understood, but part of a new mobile conception of society. (This may contrast with technology enhanced learning or technology supported, both of which give the impression that technology does something to learning.)
In a different sense, ongoing developments on implementing e-Learning, for example in developing the ontologies of learning objects, makes us examine and question how knowledge is organised and interrelated. Here too our notions of knowledge and learning are evolving. It could be argued that the need to organise and navigate through 'bite-sized' pieces of mobile learning content (whether or not as Learning Objects) will also impact on these notions of knowledge and learning and perhaps individual learners will create their own ontologies on-the-fly as they navigate through a personalised learning journey.
One can also focus on the nature of mobility in order to explore the nature of mobile learning. For each learner, the nature of 'mobility' has a variety of connotations and these will colour conceptualisations of mobile education. It may mean learning whilst traveling, driving, sitting, or walking; it may be hands-free learning or eyes-free learning. These interpretations impact on the implementation and hence the definition of mobile learning.
Having earlier discounted technology as a defining characteristic of mobile learning, it may in fact transpire that different hardware and software platforms support rather different interpretations of mobile learning. At the risk of over-simplification, the philosophy behind the Palm™ based brand of handheld computers (or rather, organisers) initially led to a zero-latency task-oriented interface with only as much functionality as would fit inside the prescribed size of box and this would coax maximum performance out of the processor, the memory, and the battery. Microsoft-based mobile devices by comparison inherited a PC-based interface with considerable latency, making much higher demands on memory, battery, and processor. This dichotomy may be less sharp than it once was, but it could be viewed as underpinning two different interpretations of mobile learning; the former a 'bite-sized' 'just-in-time' version near to the one described above, the latter more like a portable but puny version of 'tethered' e-Learning described above. Similarly, if we were to address whether learning delivered or supported on the current generation of laptop and Tablet PCs should be termed 'mobile learning' then the answer must be 'no.' Learners, and indeed people in general, will carry and use their phones, their iPods, or their PDAs habitually and unthinkingly; however, they will seldom carry a laptop or Tablet PC without a premeditated purpose and a minimum timeframe.
Another technical factor, however, may hinder direct comparison with e-Learning. That is the geometry of mobile devices. For several years, proponents of mobile learning have looked for the eventual convergence of mobile phone technologies and handheld computer technologies, creating a basic generic mobile learning platform to which extra (learning) functionality could be added as desired. This might include camera and other data capture, media player capacity, and location awareness using, for example, global positioning systems (GPS). This now looks unlikely to happen and currently the hardware manufacturers and vendors treat their markets as highly segmented and differentiated. This may be due to the nature of the hardware itself. Unlike desktop PCs, where functionality and connectivity can be easily added or subtracted by adding or subtracting internal chips and cards, mobile technologies are fairly monolithic. In the case of laptops, external slots and ports can provide extra connectivity or memory. Anything smaller, such as a handheld or palmtop computer, has one or at best, two slots. This means that a handheld device has only the functionality with which it was made. Manufacturers cannot position and reposition variations on a basic chassis to suit changing markets. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will be able to build a conceptualisation of mobile learning upon the idea of a generic and expandable mobile hardware platform in the way that 'tethered' e-Learning has implicitly been built upon the PC or personal computer platform.
In any case, hardware devices and technical systems are all without exception designed, manufactured, and marketed for corporate, retail, and recreational users. Any educational uses of the devices and the systems are necessarily parasitic and secondary. Therefore, conceptualisations of mobile learning are also constrained by the distorting nature of the technologies and the devices.
The community of practice cohering around mobile learning nevertheless may feel the need for a theory of mobile learning (although in a postmodern era, the role of theory as an informing construct is under threat). Such a theory may be problematic since mobile learning is inherently a 'noisy' phenomenon where context is everything. e-Learning has certainly gained credibility from the work of many outstanding authors. Finding similar beacons for mobile learning may be more challenging and proponents of mobile learning are still struggling to find a literature and a rhetoric distinct from conventional 'tethered' e-Learning.
The discussion so far has implicitly focused on conceptions of mobile learning based on the culture and affordances of developed countries. If we look at the emerging practice of mobile learning based around phones and PDAs in developing countries, especially the poorest, a different picture emerges based on wholly different affordances. The radically different physical infrastructure and cultural environment – including landline telephony, Internet connectivity, electricity, the rarity of PCs, and the relative inability of societies to support jobs, merchandising, and other initiatives based around these prerequisites – has meant that prescriptions for mobile learning are more cautious than in the developed world (Traxler & Kukulska-Hulme, 2005). It has also meant that mobile phones are now being recognised as the pre-eminent vehicle not only for mobile learning, but also for wider social change (Traxler & Dearden, 2005). It is entirely possible that the emergence of mobile learning in developing countries will take the evolution of e-Learning along a trajectory that is very different from that in developed countries, where it has been predicated on massive, static, and stable resources. Distance learning will form a significant component of this because of its existing status within the development communities.
The Case for Mobile Education
It is possible to make a strong case for mobile education on 'purist' or theoretical pedagogic grounds. This 'purist' case for mobile learning includes the idea that mobile learning will support a wide variety of conceptions of teaching, and furthermore the ideas that mobile learning are uniquely placed to support learning that is personalised, authentic, and situated.
Different teachers and disciplines will have different conceptions of teaching (Kember, 1997) that they will attempt to bring to education. These conceptions of teaching may vary from ones primarily concerned with the delivery of content, to ones primarily concerned with supporting students learning (i.e., by discussion and collaboration). Mobile learning technologies clearly support the transmission and delivery of rich multi-media content. They also support discussion and discourse, real-time, synchronous and asynchronous, using voice, text and multi-media. Different disciplines, say for example sociology or literature as opposed to engineering, may also require broadly different conceptions of teaching. Distance learning versus site-based/ face-to-face education form another alternative axis to the subject axis; distance educators will have their own conceptions of teaching, often influenced by Illich (1971), Freire (1972), and Gramsci (1985).
What are called 'styles of learning' will also exert an influence on how mobile learning is conceptualised. This is currently a contested area (Coffield, Moseley, Hall, & Ecclestone, 2005), but similar arguments could be advanced about the capacity of mobile learning to fit with the various preferred approaches to learning adopted by different (distance) students at different times.
By personalised learning, we mean learning that recognises diversity, difference, and individuality in the ways that learning is developed, delivered, and supported. Personalised learning defined in this way includes learning that recognises different learning styles and approaches (though perhaps this phrase should not be related too literally to the established literature of 'learning styles,' see for example, Coffield, et al., 2005), and recognises social, cognitive, and physical difference and diversity (in the design and delivery of interfaces, devices, and content). We would argue that mobile learning offers a perspective that differs dramatically from personalised conventional e-Learning in that it supports learning that recognises the context and history of each individual learner and delivers learning to the learner when and where they want it.
By situated learning, we mean learning that takes place in the course of activity, in appropriate and meaningful contexts (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The idea evolved by looking at people learning in communities as apprentices by a process of increased participation. It can be, however, extended to learning in the field (in the case of botany students for example), in the hospital ward (in the case of trainee nurses), in the classroom (in the case of trainee teachers), and in the workshop (in the case of engineering students), rather than in remote lecture theatres. Mobile learning is uniquely suited to support context-specific and immediate learning, and this is a major opportunity for distance learning since mobile technologies can situate learners and connect learners.
By authentic learning, we mean learning that involves real-world problems and projects that are relevant and interesting to the learner. Authentic learning implies that learning should be based around authentic tasks, that students should be engaged in exploration and inquiry, that students should have opportunities for social discourse, and that ample resources should be available to students as they pursue meaningful problems. Mobile learning enables these conditions to be met, allowing learning tasks built around data capture, location-awareness, and collaborative working, even for distance learning students physically remote from each other.
Mobile learning uniquely supports spontaneous reflection and self-evaluation and the current e-Portfolio technologies (see for example, http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/ ) are expected to migrate to mobile devices in the near future.
It is equally possible, however, to make a strong case for mobile education on practical or 'impurist' grounds. This 'impurist' case recognises that learning takes place in a wider social and economic context, and that students must be recognised to be under a range of pressures, most obviously those of time, resources, and conflicting/ competing roles. This is true of distance learning and part-time students. Mobile learning allows these students to exploit small amounts of time and space for learning, to work with other students on projects and discussions, and to maximise contact and support from tutors.
Evaluating Mobile Education
This section makes the case that the increasing diversity of mobile education and the increasing power, sophistication, and complexity of mobile technologies call into question the adequacy of the conventional repertoire of evaluation techniques based largely around formal, sedentary, and traditional learning. This has always been the case with informal and distance learning anyway. There is a need for a more comprehensive, eclectic, and structured approach to evaluation based on sound and transparent principles. The section briefly elucidates these principles and shows how they can be used to underpin evaluation methodologies appropriate to mobile education.
There are a variety of problems associated with evaluating mobile learning. Perhaps the most fundamental is the problem of defining the characteristics of a 'good' or acceptable evaluation though, of course, the issue of evaluating mobile learning will also take us back to the issue of defining and conceptualising mobile learning. A definition or conceptualisation of mobile learning in terms of learner experience will take evaluation in a different direction from a conceptualisation of mobile learning in terms of hardware platforms. Of course, the categorisation of mobile learning (above) will also influence the practicalities and the priorities of evaluation.
What is not always accepted is that there are no a priori attributes of a 'good' evaluation of learning (to say that there were would be to take an implicitly realist or essentialist position that not every stakeholder would agree with, and would also confront a widely held view that in fact evaluation is a contingent activity). In an earlier work, we tried to outline some tentative candidate attributes of a 'good' evaluation (Traxler, 2002), but we also identified the reasons why evaluation of mobile learning is unusually challenging. Briefly some of these attributes were that a ‘good’ evaluation could be:
- Rigorous, meaning roughly that conclusions must be trustworthy and transferable
- Efficient, in terms of cost, effort, time, or some other resource
- Ethical, specifically in relation to the nuances of evolving forms of provision, in terms of standards from
• Legal to
• Normative - Proportionate, that is, not more ponderous, onerous, or time-consuming than the learning experience or the delivery and implementation of the learning itself (bearing in mind earlier remarks about the learners’ experiences of mobile learning)
- Appropriate to the specific learning technologies, to the learners, and to the ethos of the learning – ideally built in, not bolted on
- Consistent with the teaching and learning philosophy and conceptions of teaching and learning of all the participants
- Authentic, in accessing what learners (and perhaps teachers and other stakeholders) really mean, really feel, and sensitive to the learners’ personalities within those media
- Aligned to the chosen medium and technology of learning
- Consistent across:
• different groups or cohorts of learners in order to provide generality
• time, that is, the evaluation is reliably repeatable
• whatever varied devices and technologies are used
The last of these attributes is challenging in mobile learning, since the technologies are changing at an exceptional pace and consequently reaching any understanding of underlying issues is difficult. Some of the others are more subtle. Some issues around ethics have been explored elsewhere recently (Traxler & Bridges, 2004): mobile learning continues to evolve however.
A recent review of practice in the evaluation of mobile learning (Traxler & Kukulska-Hulme, 2005) suggests that not many accounts (none were distance learning anyway) articulated an explicit position on pedagogy or epistemology. They seldom cited any works from the literature of evaluation or any works from the literature of the ethics of evaluation. They seldom, if ever, mentioned any ethical issues in relation to their evaluation. Most accounts cited focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires as their elicitation instruments. Some used observation and some used system logs. A few accounts mentioned several techniques and were triangulated, but most accounts used only one or, at most, two techniques. None of these elicitation techniques were particularly consistent with mobile learning technologies. And all accounts of such evaluations assumed that the evaluators were told the truth by subjects (that is, learners and teachers). Hopefully mobile distance learning evaluation will learn from this critique.
Clearly, there are problems with the epistemology and ethics of evaluating mobile learning; there are also challenges in developing suitable techniques to gather, analyse, and present evaluation. Nevertheless, the credibility of mobile, including distance, learning as a sustainable and reliable form of educational provision rests of the rigour and effectiveness of its evaluation.
Mobile Education in Universities and Colleges
Mobile education, however innovative, technically feasible, and pedagogically sound, may have no chance of sustained, wide-scale institutional deployment in higher education in the foreseeable future, at a distance or on site. This is because of the strategic factors at work within educational institutions and providers. These strategic factors are different from those of technology and pedagogy. They are the context and the environment for the technical and the pedagogic aspects. They include resources (that is, finance and money but also human resources, physical estates, institutional reputation, intellectual property, and expertise) and culture (that is, institutions as social organisations, their practices, values and procedures, but also the expectations and standards of their staff, students and their wider communities, including employers and professional bodies).
Implementing wireless and mobile education within higher education must address these social, cultural, and organisational factors. They can be formal and explicit, or informal and tacit, and can vary enormously across and within institutions. Within institutions, different disciplines have their own specific cultures and concerns, often strongly influenced by professional practice in the 'outside world' – especially in the case of part-time provision and distance learning. Because most work in mobile learning is still in the pilot and/ or trial phase, any explorations of wider institutional issues are still tentative (Traxler, 2005; JISC, 2005) but it points to considerable hurdles with infrastructure and support.
Conclusions
This has been a very wide-ranging attempt to explore the nature and possibilities of mobile learning. It draws together much existing work, but this is still a relatively immature field. It has not explored the actual technologies or pedagogies in any detail and has sought to define questions for discussion rather than provide answers for what might in fact be premature or inappropriate questions. It is too early to describe or analyse the specifics of mobile learning for distance learning since the field, as a whole, is new and accounts are relatively sparse. The synergy between mobile learning and distance learning, however, holds enormous potential.
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