Online Learning Support in a Ubiquitous Learning Environment

Introduction

The Ubiquitous Learning Environment (ULE) has become a central issue for curriculum delivery in the 21st century and remains most instrumental in the digital world. Notwithstanding the fact that ULE enables learning at any time and place, it is a pre-condition for the student to be familiar with languages like Hypertext Markup Language revision 5 (HTML5), Structured Query Language (SQL), Resource Description Framework (RDF), and Web Ontology Language (OWL), to name a few. Furthermore, the student at some point should move beyond the ‘text’ level into concepts and conceptual organization schemes (ontologies). Once the student has moved into the conceptual processing realm (Artificial Intelligence), very important and exciting functionalities like knowledge inference (reasoning) can then be provided—functionalities which will mark a true technological turning point in the student’s learning (Mikelloydtech, 2013).

Against this background, it can be argued that ULE places varying demands on delivery and feedback methods and relies on different levels of knowledge and skills. That being the case, this chapter aims to

• 1.

  Delineate the importance of planning online learning support when managing and designing online courses in the ULE;

• 2.

  Explore the prominence of online learning support in the ULE; and

• 3.

  Reflect on the symbiotic relationship between online learning support and ULE in order to close the gap created by real-world and digital-world resources.

Background

The ULE is described by Calimag, Miguel, Conde, and Aquino (2014: 119) as “being any setting wherein students can become totally immersed in the learning process”. Researchers with a similar view include Chin and Chen (2013), who consider ULE as being a complementary teaching technique that reduces both time and location constraints within the learning environment. Previous studies (such as Jones & Jo, 2004; Calimag et al., 2014) have considered ULE as being a new hope for the future of education. Nevertheless, as new technologies have evolved—and as more ubiquitous forms of technology have emerged—the need for online learning support has become evident in order to achieve core capabilities of ULE. There are six core capabilities of ULE (as described by Kwon, 2011):

• 1.

  Cognitive capability,

• 2.

  Relational capability,

• 3.

  Emotional capability,

• 4.

  Adaptability,

• 5.

  Technology literacy, and

• 6.

  Effective learning ability.

The aforementioned capabilities can be realized, provided the following identified challenges can be addressed:

• •

  Gaining and retaining the motivation of the students (Calimag et al., 2014);

• •

  Identifying when and how technologies are best deployed, including the appropriate matching of devices with students and learning outcomes in the effective design of learning activities (Agarwal & Nath, 2011); and

• •

  Limited access for marginalized communities in the African continent (Letseka, Letseka, & Pitsoe, 2018).

This section has demonstrated that in the ULE, some students may need to balance different capabilities mentioned above. For example, balancing cognitive capability with technology literacy, will improve the limitations of students’ (created by barriers which are discussed in the next section) cognitive capabilities such as memory, thinking and problem solving capabilities, and to transfer some of the low level tasks such as calculations, storage and information retrieval to the computer.