Abstract:

The context of this paper is mobile vocational teacher education. A group of 22 teacher students is studying mobile guiding methods for their own students. Many of them are already working as teachers at vocational schools etc. The education process started in January 2016 and will conclude in May 2017.

It is the aim of this education to support the adoption and development of mobile solutions for guiding students at various learning contexts. An efficient development of mobile learning processes requires co-operation between the teacher educator (e.g. the author of this paper), each teacher student and finally his/her students. During the education it has become evident that the concepts and ways of describing mobile guiding are often rather vague. This makes it difficult to analyse the related phenomena and to intentionally develop the guiding processes.

When asked how a teacher student applies mobile guidance or teaching in his/her own teaching work, the answer may be e.g. ”I´m applying Moodle” (a well-known Internet-based learning platform). This definition may be clear enough for general discussion but it is definitely too loose and obscure for any intentional development work. It does not create new understanding on the framework or the progress of the guiding process.

The surroundings and situations related to mobile learning and guidance are various and often very dynamic in nature. It is difficult to define and describe clearly the most relevant features of these processes. In addition, the way of developing mobile guidance is unique in each institution and every single developer has his/her own emphasees. Therefore there is a need of flexible solutions/tools to analyse the phenomena in a way that is appropriate for each educational institution.
This paper presents an approach that makes it possible to take grip of various mobile guiding processes – or in a less demanding sense of the word – web supported learning processes.

In more detail, this innovation is a mobile solution that:
• makes it possible to describe the guiding and learning process with parameters that are common to the teacher and the students
• makes it possible to gather useful information on the approaches and tools used by the teacher and the students
• supports intentional development of mobile learning processes
• lets the developer freely define the dimensions of mobile learning for ones own development purposes
• creates a flexible development framework relevant for all participants
• presents a diagnostic tool that is applicable in connection with various teacher-student -interactions, not only in the specific context that is behind this innovation.

The virtual presentation will describe the prototype of a tool with the features described above.

Keywords:

Learning diagnostics, mobile learning.