Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University

shailey minocha

Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University

Shailey Minocha reflects on the one-day symposium organised by Eduserv in May 2010. The aim of the event was to discuss whether and how mobile technology will play a significant role in the delivery of UK Higher Education in the future.

The Eduserv Symposium 2010 on the mobile university brought together colleagues from academia and practice to discuss the impact of the growth in mobile technologies on Higher Education: for example, on the student experience, learning and teaching initiatives, research, libraries, role of the educators, and the computer services support. Stephen Butcher and Andy Powell of Eduserv gave the welcome addresses. Stephen mentioned how this symposium was the largest that Eduserv had hosted and gave a background of Eduserv’s activities. Andy (Chair) set the context for the day: significance of the themes of mobile learning and mobile university and its implications on learning, teaching, research and support services such as the library and technical or systems support services, and, of course, on Eduserv’s activities.

The details of the event [1] and the presentations (including videos) of the event [2] are available. The individual presentations during the event have been discussed in a number of blog posts. In this report, I discuss the themes that emerged during the day and the challenges for educational institutions.

Themes from the Presentations

In this section, I will discuss the various technological, organisational, pedagogical and social aspects that emerged from the presentations during the day.

Technological Aspects

Paul Golding, in his keynote, described himself as a ‘mobilist’ and not an ‘educationalist’, and as the ‘setting the scene guy’ for the event. He started his presentation by outlining the transition from Mobile 1.0 to Mobile 2.0, where the internet-centric phones (3G and 3.5G) have replaced the internet-capable (2G) phones of the late 1990s. In Mobile 2.0, the focus of the users is on data-centric services by using the Internet rather than the traditional functions of calling and texting. In the next three years, Paul envisages that there will be a 40% penetration of smart phones in the UK (currently, it is 15%). Further, there is now a Mobile 2.0+ stage where iPad-like devices can help do ‘things’ faster and to be more productive. Other recent innovations in the usability of mobile devices that are helping to enhance student/user experience are: larger screens and QWERTY keyboard support, either on the touch screen or a tactile keyboard.

Paul discussed how user behaviour has changed over the years and we are no longer limited to the traditional functions of calling and texting. There is a mobile application for almost everything that one wants to do on the move: hail a taxi, share video clips, find routes or directions, check the weather, and so on. So effectively, Paul said, ‘[you can] run your life on your mobile.’

Paul provided some interesting statistics: for example, 1.2 billion phones are sold annually worldwide and in 59 countries there are more active mobile subscriptions than people, that is, not just in mobile handsets since ‘SIM’ cards are to be found in cars and other devices. The changing landscape in mobile IT amongst students and the students’ usage of mobile devices was highlighted by other speakers during the day, and emphasised by Nick Skelton of University of Bristol in his case study talk in the afternoon.

Paul discussed augmented reality services such as Google Goggles [3] where, just by pointing a smartphone’s camera at a location (say, a landmark, or on a book, or an artwork), the application recognises the object and automatically returns relevant information. Other examples are Junaio [4], a next-generation mobile augmented-reality browser for camera-equipped devices, and Wikitude [5]. Gartner Research has identified augmented reality as one of the top ten most disruptive new technologies for 2008-2012 and augmented reality is expected to be used by more than 30% of the mobile workforce by 2014. (Marieke Guy of UKOLN discusses augmented reality in a blog post [6].)

Paul discussed various key drivers that are influencing user behaviour with mobile devices: smartphone adoption, faster networks (3G+), data-friendly tariffs, increased device usability of smartphones, Web 2.0 centricity (eg growth of social software such as blogs, wikis, and creation and consumption of user-generated content), social networking (eg being able to access Facebook or Twitter via the mobile device) on the move, sensors proliferation (eg accelerometers), mobile application stores, and the apps ‘gold rush effect,’ where people are building apps and selling them. Paul pointed out that the extension of Web 2.0 to mobile devices has opened up the platforms to developers to design and implement mobile applications. Paul also highlighted that the Internet trends of social computing, cloud computing, and real-time ‘right-time’ Web (driven by Twitter, getting status updates from people and machines) will make the mobile phone into a ‘personalised’ computer, that is, a concatenation of a ‘person’ and a ‘right-time’ computer, which, in fact, results in a ‘new person’ or the advent of ‘augmented cognition’. This, he said, will affect how we think since we will have access to ‘right information’ in real-time and at the ‘right time’ and at the ‘right place’.

Paul concluded his talk by highlighting an innovation challenge: ‘How can UK institutions lead in creating the ‘right-ware’ in mobile education?’

Tom Hume in his talk in the afternoon discussed how the market relating to mobile operating systems remains very fragmented. For example, to reach 70% of UK mobile owners you need to support 375 different handsets with diverse capabilities. This degree of diversity can be particularly challenging for educational institutions.

Organisational Aspects

The presenters from academia discussed how students, when they first start at university, are now more concerned about access to the Internet than enquiring about the university support services or expecting to be provided with email accounts or hardware and software, as raised by Christine Sexton of University of Sheffield. This changing expectation of students, to be ‘Internet-enabled’ as soon as possible and their increased use of smartphones and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices (eg iPod Touch) present new challenges for universities. For example, Andy Ramsden, University of Bath, raised the question in his talk whether mobile adoption should involve enabling access to existing desktop applications in an institution on mobile devices, or should we be exploiting the capabilities that mobile devices can provide (eg application software or apps, location-based and real-time services)?

Other issues that were discussed during the day were: providing a robust wireless infrastructure, and developing application software (or apps) to provide services to students (eg directions to lecture rooms, or routes for wheelchair access on campus, or study timetables).

Tim Fernando, OUCS, discussed the Mobile Oxford (MOX) Project at the University of Oxford [7]. MOX provides information and access to services to guide students, staff, and the general public both in the university and in the city. It includes a map with bus schedules, library search, podcast library (from iTunes U), news, examination results, weather, and so on. Tim also mentioned another project called Molly [8] with which he and his colleagues are involved. Molly is an open source framework for the rapid development of information and service portals for mobile Internet devices.

In his keynote Paul Golding mentioned the Blackboard Mobile Project [9]. Blackboard Mobile is an example of a platform that allows institutions to provide key services on students’ mobile devices. The Blackboard Mobile Central module enables students to access a campus directory, campus maps, news, events, the library and the course catalogue. The Blackboard Mobile Learn module allows students and educators to access teaching and learning on their mobile devices wherever and whenever they want. Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is the first European institution to launch Blackboard Mobile Central [10].

Other initiatives that I came across while writing this article are the MIT Mobile Web [11] and the Ohio State University’s mobile site. Ohio State University has designed a site m.osu.edu [12] for iPhone and other smartphones. It provides access to campus news, locations of traffic hot spots on the campus, library catalogue and campus events, as well as location-based services such as the nearest dining hall, Wi-Fi hotspot, and bus stop, among others. The arrival time of the buses at a specific stop is an example of a real-time service that this mobile site provides.

Pedagogical Aspects

John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton, in his closing keynote mentioned how the mobile network and mobile education applications have helped to educate communities (particularly, in Africa) where other educational interventions may not have been possible. He gave examples of mobile devices (eg personal digital assistants (PDAs)) being used to capture in situ observations, or data collection in field trips, or capturing artefacts on the move such as photographs, or for informal learning or training, or using mobile devices while moving around in a context-aware environment such as a museum. John also discussed the role of mobile learning in filling the ‘dead time’, for example, when waiting in queues, or for a train.

Other applications discussed during the day were: mobile services that can help support users with special needs, for example, enabling deaf or hard of hearing users to send text messages, and using sensors for data collection which could be useful for researchers who are working in the field or in labs.

The Open University (OU) has been involved in an EU-funded project: Mobile Technologies in Lifelong Learning [13]. The OU is also working on a number of iPhone applications as well as optimising some of its Web sites for mobile delivery. One example of an iPhone App that OU has developed is Devolve me [14]. The Mobile Innovations Group at the OU has a showcase of its educational applications [15].

Social Aspects

Paul Golding gave some examples of how mobile Internet devices are being used for social networking: the social networking site, facebook.com is the second amongst the top 10 sites that are accessed on the mobile Internet and Twitter.com (for real-time interactions) featured tenth in this list.

Tom Hume, one of the afternoon’s speakers, emphasised the human-computer interaction (HCI) and usability principles of developing mobile services which emphasise the need to involve users throughout the development life cycle so as to understand their requirements and to conduct iterative evaluations with users. Tom discussed his experiences of applying one of the HCI techniques, personas, for collecting and discussing user requirements. The glossary on the Usability First site explains the concept of ‘persona’ [16]. Persona is a description of a specific person who is a target user of a system being designed, providing demographic information, needs, preferences, biographical information, and a photo or illustration. Typically, multiple personas are developed in the early stages of design that represent the spectrum of the target audience. Personas are one aspect of a scenario, the other aspect being a description of how this person would typically interact with the system being designed. The point of developing personas is to avoid the trap of designing for the ‘average user’ who does not really exist; instead the aim is to make sure that the system will work for somebody specific, rather than no one in particular.

Challenges on the Way Ahead

A wide range of difficulties and issues were highlighted during the conference in terms of what lies on the way ahead. Here is a selection:

There is a need to investigate the expectations that students have of their institutions in terms of mobile services. Do students really want to learn on the move?; or is it the access to mobile services related to administration such as reminders for deadlines, or maps to reach classrooms, and so on, that they value?
What are the techniques for collecting requirements from students and for eliciting their expectations?
Simon Marsden, University of Edinburgh, in his presentation, discussed a Mobile Campus project at his institution. As a part of this project, a Mobile Services survey was carried out in March 2010 to explore the kinds of mobile devices students have, what they use them for and which potential University services (from a set of services listed in the survey such as campus maps, University directory, timetables, and so on, that the survey listed) would they like to be made available. The results of the survey [17] are available. However, this survey was focussed on administrative (University) services and did not enquire about students’ expectations of mobile educational applications.
How should Computing support services in academic institutions be adapting to student requirements and expectations where students are using their own hardware and software rather than institution-supplied technology? Which models of support should be used?, asked Christine Sexton.
In another of the case study talks, Wayne Barry, Canterbury Christ Church University, discussed the iBorrow Project [18]. There are 200 netbooks in the library building that students could borrow and use within the building. One of the significant outputs of this project is an insight into how students use learning spaces.
Should mobile Web and even provision of mobile devices be an integral part of an institution’s strategy of teaching, learning, support and perhaps also marketing? Nick Skelton, University of Bristol, gave a message at the end of his presentation: ‘Think of mobile in every system that you are developing….build mobile in everything you do’.
What are the financial implications for educational institutions? Is it cost-effective to outsource the creation of mobile applications? Christine Sexton suggested that it was quicker and cheaper to out-source than to develop them in-house.
Management of students’ expectations: what are the costs involved in providing ²⁴⁄₇ support? Will the availability or non-availability of mobile services influence students’ perception of an institution? Will an institution’s readiness influence student recruitment? Will students be prepared to pay for learning materials developed for mobile devices?
Security issues: confidentiality and integrity of the data can be compromised if the mobile devices are stolen or lost.
Accessibility: how can mobile services and devices be made accessible for users with special needs? How to develop mobile education applications and services that can operate on a variety of Web-enabled mobile devices and not just iPhones? How important is it to test our assumption that the majority of students and staff have Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices? What if an institution is supporting distance-education students in other countries? Are fast networks and affordable tariffs available in the countries in which we support our international students?
What are the pedagogical advantages of developing educational applications for mobile applications as compared to mobile-optimised Web sites? Niall Sclater discusses this very comparison in his blog post [19] while in his post, Jason Grigsby [20] illustrates the fact that even though the Mobile operating market is fragmented, the mobile Web continues to converge on HTML 5 and Webkit. For example, The Mobile Oxford Project uses AJAX/HLML5 to provide cross-platform compatibility.
What are the pedagogical applications of augmented reality services on mobile devices (perhaps in field trips, or for learning a foreign language in a foreign land, or for learning about an exhibit in a museum, and so on) ? Do these applications facilitate student learning through ‘immersion’ and engagement? What are the ethical implications of using such applications?
What is the role of text messaging in education? Can real-time interactions through text messages facilitate student engagement? Steve Wheeler provides an an overview of text messaging [21] and also significant is the research on short message service to encourage interactivity in the classroom [22] and experimentation in using SMS to support learning new English language words [23].
Change management issues: how to convince colleagues about the advantages of mobile learning? Also, staff training issues to induct staff in the use of mobile applications and services, and to guide them in the support of students?
Are the mobile networks, mobile services and mobile devices being developed at the same rate? Are mobile networks and infrastructure quite behind and sometimes very expensive as compared the growth that we have seen in the development of mobile devices and mobile services?
What are the techniques for evaluating the effectiveness and student satisfaction of mobile educational applications? What do ‘effectiveness’ and ‘student satisfaction’ imply in mobile education?
A question regarding research ethics came up in the discussion following Wayne Barry’s talk on the iBorrow Project: what are the ethics of collecting research data on students’ use of university-provided mobile hardware and applications?
Sustainability of the mobile learning initiatives: John Traxler in his closing keynote mentioned that although there have been many initiatives on mobile learning and of providing mobile services to learners, sustaining the projects has been a major challenge. Most of the initiatives have been short-term projects and have not been scalable.

Conclusions

There were four lightening talks after lunch. Each talk was six minutes long and presented one case study of practitioners’ experiences in employing mobile technology in their institutions. I am unsure of the brief that was given to the presenters but there was an implicit presentation format in each of the talks: motivation of the case study; funding body, if any; when it was conducted; the experiences so far; and the way ahead. This format of short talks was very interesting and allowed one to get a glimpse of the initiatives being carried out in mobile education. The panel discussion at the end of the four presentations gave the audience an opportunity to ask questions and helped to bring together some of the common themes in the four presentations.

All the delegates to the event were given QR (Quick Response) tag badges. This implies that using a QR code reader, you can scan the badge of the person you spoke to at the event and then you would be emailed with their contact details, like a virtual business card. Mike Ellis of Eduserv discusses the QR tag in his blog post [24] while another useful resource to look up on QR tags is by Marieke Guy [25].

On the whole, the event was very well-organised and well attended. The preparations for the event are discussed by Andy Powell in his blog post [26]. The event was streamed live and, therefore, many colleagues all over the world had the opportunity to attend the event virtually and even ask questions of the speakers during the event. Andy Powell also offers his reflections on chairing an event with a local and a virtual audience [27].

I hope that the challenges outlined in this article will help to stimulate discussion among academics and practitioners, and enable creation of a research agenda for a mobile university.

References

The URLs in these references were last accessed by the author on 7 July 2010.

Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University, Event details
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym10/
Eduserv Symposium 2010: the Mobile University, Presentations (Slides and Videos)
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym10/presentations
Google Goggles for Android http://tinyurl.com/yj2s7jm
Junaio http://www.junaio.com/
Wikitude http://www.wikitude.org/
What’s the big fuss about Augmented Reality, a blog post by Marieke Guy, 2 November 2009
http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/whats-the-big-fuss-about-augmented-reality/
Mobile Oxford (MOX) Project http://m.ox.ac.uk/desktop/
Molly http://mollyproject.sourceforge.net/
Blackboard Mobile Project http://blackboard.com/Mobile
Blackboard’s Mobile Campus Life App Debuts in Europe: Delft University of Technology Engages Students with Custom Mobile App, Amsterdam, 15 April 2010
http://www.realwire.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=18332
The MIT Mobile Web http://m.mit.edu/about/
“m.osu.edu is smartphone-ready”, Ohio state University, 1 March 2010
http://www.osu.edu/features/2009/iphone/
Mobile Technologies in Lifelong Learning, Best Practices http://www.motill.eu/
Devolve Me for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/devolve-me/id336747243?mt=8
Open University: Mobile Innovations Group (MIG) http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/mobiles/projects/
Usability First - Usability Glossary - persona http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/persona/
IS Survey Results, Mobile Services 2010, The University of Edinburgh
http://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/areas/itservices/integrated/ITS045/Other_documents/MobileSurvey2010.shtml
Canterbury Christ Church University’s (CCCU) iBorrow Project
http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/projects/iborrow/
Educational apps or mobile-optimised websites, a blog post by Niall Sclater http://sclater.com/blog/
Mobile operating systems and browsers are headed in opposite directions, a blog post by Jason Grisby
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/mobile-operating-systems-and-b.html
Txt in Line, a blog post by Steve Wheeler, University of Plymouth
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/05/txt-in-line.html
C. Markett, I. A. Sanchez, S. Weber and B. Tangney. 2006. Using short message service to encourage interactivity in the classroom, Computers & Education, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 280-293.
N. Cavus and D. Ibrahim. 2008. m-Learning: An experiment in using SMS to support learning new English language words, British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 78-91.
QR tag demo at the Eduserv Symposium 2010, a blog post by Mike Ellis
http://labs.eduserv.org.uk/blog/2010/05/qr-tag-demo-at-the-eduserv-symposium-2010/
Quick Response Time, a blog post by Marieke Guy
http://remoteworker.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/quick-response-time/
Preparing for the mobile university, a blog post by Andy Powell of Eduserv
http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2010/05/preparing-for-the-mobile-university.html
Audience and chairing events in a social media world, a blog post by Andy Powell (Eduserv)
http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2010/05/audiences-and-chairing-events-in-a-social-media-world.html

Author Details

Dr. Shailey Minocha
Reader in Computing
The Open University, UK

Email: s.minocha@open.ac.uk
Web site: http://mcs.open.ac.uk/sm577

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