Supporting Distance Users of Mobile Learning Technology

Enabling Mobile Learning In Social Contexts

Knowledge has an inherent nature to mobilize in concert with people’s increasingly mobile lifestyle. Research indicates that learning activities happen frequently in daily lives. It can take place as long as people hope to start and adapt their activities to enable educational behavior and outcomes. Vavoula (2005) conducted a study on everyday adult learning episodes in which 161 learning episodes were reported from 15 participants in a research period of two weeks. Of the total 161 learning episodes, 51% of them took place at learners’ home or workplace, while 21%, 6%, 5% and 2% of episodes happened respectively in a workplace outside the office, at places of leisure, outdoors and in a friend’s house (Vavoula, 2005). Other locations took 14%, including places of worship, the doctor’s surgery rooms, cafes, hobby stores, and in cars. In addition to this, 48% of mobile episodes were found to be associated with work. Note that only 1% of the self-reported episodes occurred on public transport, indicating that there may be a chance to explore learning opportunities for people to utilize unproductive travelling time. These findings indicated that there are many learning episodes in daily lives where mobile learning can probably be involved and lend a helping hand.