Abstract:

This paper explores the development of a 2011 international collaborative mlearning project that builds upon the success of the implementation of over 30 mlearning projects by the researcher between 2006 and 2011. In particular the project builds upon a 2010 Architecture mlearning project (Cochrane & Rhodes, 2011). The 2011 project aims to produce a significant core group of mlearning evangelists from the participating lecturers and students who will become technology stewards within each of their respective institutions, and facilitating the establishment of further international co-creative mlearning projects in 2012. The 2011 project incorporates international collaboration between Architecture elective course students in New Zealand (Unitec) and groups of students in the UK (Sheffield University and Salford University), Spain (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), and Germany (Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin), where the researcher has established partnerships with lecturers keen to explore the potential of mlearning integration. The learning contexts include: Third year elective Architecture students (Unitec), first year Design students (Sheffield), Sociology of Technology elective students (Beuth), Audio Production students (Salford), and Master of Education students (Tarragona). This international collaboration aims to enhance student teamwork by requiring students to utilize the communication and collaboration affordances of smartphones (for example Twitter, and Qik mobile video streaming) as they form international teams and negotiate learning outcomes and team projects with the lecturers in all four countries creating a virtual cultural exchange experience. Students explore the roles of digital identities in online communities. The project focuses upon each student group sharing their own mobile generated content as appropriate for their context and garnering feedback from the other international groups. Thus each local physical community of practice is also augmented by a virtual community of practice made up of the participants from all three countries. Each lecturer brings unique mlearning experience and expertise to the collaborative project. The project involves exploring the use of:
• Google Docs for collaborative project mapping and management by the lecturers
• Twitter for communication and sharing of ideas (Buchem, 2011; Cochrane, 2010).
• Student blogs for recording project progress and peer commenting (Cochrane & Bateman, 2011)
• Mobile student-generated media (geotagged images [Flickr or Picasaweb], video [YouTube] etc...) (Keegan, 2010)
• Student-team projects in each country/course - remotely presented via Prezi (involving student critique) (Buchem & Camacho, 2011)
• Student-generated Augmented Reality 'Layer' for Wikitude or Junaio from each student team representing their outputs of their project (e.g. links to Architectural images, QRCodes, mobile video episodes on YouTube (Cochrane & Rhodes, 2011)
• Collaborative teaching, for example Skype remote presentations and VODCasts from each project leader
The resultant artifacts produced as reified learning objects by each student team COP become boundary objects that the lecturers use to broker the international virtual COP between the five local physical COPs. It is also hoped that this international project will facilitate pedagogical shifts towards heutagogy (Garnett, 2010; Luckin, et al., 2010) within each of the participating countries context.

Keywords:

m-learning, web 2.0, collaboration, heutagogy.