Opportunities
The following 10 items are the major opportunities that m-learning provides higher education institutions.
1. Continuous Learning
2. Educational Leapfrogging
10. New Lifelong Learners
6. Synergy with Mobile Banking and Health Initiatives
4. Teachers and Learners Trade Roles
5. Education's Longtail
9. Software Literacy
3. Breaking Gender Boundaries & Reducing Physical Barriers
8. New Opportunities for Traditional Educational Institutions
7. Customized Education
Best Practices
The best practices or evidence-based methods can support higher education institutions move closer towards the opportunities m-learning offers.
Easy to Follow Navigation
Take a simplistic approach to navigating.
Interaction
Be minimalistic.
Bare Essentials
Provide Engaging Course Content
Content should be concise, yet engaging and effective.
Promoting skill development and the effectiveness of learning through badges, for example.
Goals & Rewards
Create Course Content Before Repurposing the Content
Focus on key elements of content that will help achieve the learning objectives.
Use competitive and supportive learning to enhance social interaction.
Social Interaction
Education in the information age allows for highly individualized options, always on connections, and a wide array of free and low-cost online options that create opportunities for continuous learning.
“Leapfrogging means to jump over obstacles to achieve goals. It means to get ahead of the competition or the present state of the art through innovative, time-and-cost saving means.” (Harkins & Moravec, 2016) This is possible in both developed and developing countries.
"A by-product of the continuous learning phenomenon is the fact that the grandparents of children growing up with a touchscreen in their hands–people in their 60s ...are being pulled into M-Learning more than ever" (Sergio, 2012). This allows for unpredictable demographics of mobile learners.
"M-Learning promises to be able to put girls and women of all ages in contact with high-quality education privately and on their own time. Along similar lines M-Learning also helps bring educational material within the reach of people with extreme disabilities, who may not be physically able to get to a classroom or campus on a regular basis" (Sergio, 2012).
"M-Learning could usher in a boom of interest in learning software programming languages, which could very well become a new lingua franca. This is already happening; Numerous startup web-based businesses today such as Codecademy teach people via interactive lessons how to understand and write software programs" (Sergio, 2012).
M-Learning utilizes seemingly endless educational materials and resources through mobile channels such as YouTube, TED-Ed, Khan Academy, and applications like EdPuzzle. These materials provide full lessons and tutorials which attract niche audiences as well as higher education institutions.
Mobile devices and accompanied technologies allow students to access educational materials and to also create content and information to share knowledge.
M-Learning can learn from mHealth and mFinance. Moreover, these efforts are interconnected and can improve personal health, socioeconomic status, as well as community and national economies.
M-Learning can complement and enhance traditional educational institutions both in attracting students and in generating profits. EdX is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider created by Harvard and MIT to host online university-level courses including some free courses.
Learners can create and choose their own paths and utilize M-Learning to enhance their strengths and follow their passions.
The game provides the engagement and the learning is delivered effectively, especially when linked with competitive learning.
Game Mechanics
Balance reading and interaction.
The course should be accessed on all platforms and devices.