Mobile Learning: Trends, Attitudes & Effectiveness

Mobile learning (m-learning) can be seen as learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices such as handheld computers, smart devices (e.g. Smartphone and tablets), notebooks, mobile phones, etc. It reflects how society and its institutions can accommodate and support an increasingly mobile population. M-learning is convenient in that it is accessible from virtually anywhere and at any time. Like other forms of e-learning, m-learning is also collaborative. Sharing is almost instantaneous among everyone using the same content, which leads to the reception of instant feedback and tips. This highly active process can help in improving students' performance and motivation. M-learning also brings strong portability by replacing books and notes with mobile devices, filled with tailored learning content. The challenges that face e-learning and m-learning systems come from the growth rate of students, education contents, services that can be offered and resources made available. These challenges include: optimising resource computation, storage and communication requirements, dealing with dynamic concurrency requests, etc. Such challenges highlight the necessity of the use of a platform that meets scalable demands and cost control. This environment is cloud computing. The cloud computing environment rises as a natural platform to provide support to e- and m-learning systems. The book contains a variety of relevant topics. The first chapter gives an overall view on mobile learning. The next three chapters discuss the psychological issues related to mobile learning and learners' motivation in addition to the contextualisation of mobile learners. The following two chapters introduce some theoretical framework for mobile learning and its cloud-based applications in addition to a mobile-based recommendation system. The last four chapters focus on case studies of mobile learning on natural language education.