Abstract:

The paper is on a two-year study on the impact of technology-rich authentic learning environments (TALE) on the effectiveness of using mobile apps for teaching and learning in Singapore. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of how teachers harness the use of technology-rich learning environments around them to help their students create, build and transfer knowledge in and across different sites of learning such as the classrooms and outside classrooms, and the simulated and non-simulated environments (e.g. students’ work attachments, competitions or carnivals).

Conventionally and traditionally, knowledge was the mandate of learning institutions as they were designed for research and curation of knowledge. To share the knowledge efficiently, the field of pedagogy explores the most efficient way to gather big groups of learners and systematically, and hopefully effectively, transfer the knowledge to them. With affordances of technology, and disruptive technology, it opens up a plethora of seamless learning environment that can effectively engage the learners because whatever they are learning is real and relevant. This is the natural learning approach: micro-learning that seamlessly permeates between the classrooms and beyond where learning occurs through social settings and authentic learning environments like even a shopping mall or at the airport.

The mobile application uses the ideas of gamification and game mechanics, which are often found in digital electronic games (e.g. computer and video games) such as:
(1) rewarding students with points to motivate them to engage with their classroom academic learning;
(2) deciphering closely the backend analytics of the application;
(3) examining how learning and literacies are acquired across different environments;
(4) making interpretations of the transfer of learning; and
(5) integrating the learning opportunities that arise from learning transfer to the instructional and/or vocational education curriculum. Motivation and self-efficacy are measured too.

Keywords:

Technology, authentic learning environment, mobile applications, micro-learning, backend analytics, flipped learning.