Abstract:

The latest reports about trends in higher education (HE) have placed mobile learning in a central position. There is evidence that the use of mobile devices enriches the learning process adapting it to the characteristics of the digital natives. Nevertheless, few are the teachers who are using mobile devices for their teaching practices. Incorporating mobile devices into education requires rethinking the curriculum and training teachers to design and support mobile-based activities. This paper presents the design of a virtual course for HE teachers about m-learning.

The present proposal is based on six years of experience training academic staff in the context of eight courses. The course started in a face-to-face mode in 2014 in the form of a two-day course and it was rapidly shifted to the online mode and replicated in four Spanish universities. It is offered in two modalities (two weeks or one-month length) and requires 15-30 hours of dedication. The ratio of participants is 20-35 and teachers from all disciplines are accepted.

The course comprises four topics: introduction to m-learning, advantages and obstacles of m-learning, apps and tools, and teaching possibilities and real experiences of applying m-learning. For each topic, there is a motivation video, a theoretical presentation with resources, learning activities and a forum. In all cases, the LMS used has been Moodle. The activities are progressive, mainly individual, and are oriented towards the design of a mobile-based activity.

The activities consist of:
1) presentation activity,
2) reflection about a teaching need,
3) selection and test of apps and tweet about their usefulness for education,
4) design a mobile-based micro activity,
5) reflection about the potential of m-learning. Group and individual feedback are given all along the course.

The opinions of academic staff collected through the satisfaction questionnaires and the forum demonstrate they are satisfied with the course, especially with the moderator, the pedagogical design, the content, and the tools. Teachers highly appreciate personalised learning and feedback. They demand more time to complete the course, more examples, and practice with a predefined set of apps. The dropout average is low (13%) which confirms the satisfaction of teachers with the course.

The course evolves and is being improved annually. Examples and apps are updated although it is fairly complicated as there are few examples published and experiences and apps are constantly disappearing or changing. We have also incorporated a motivational video per each topic, we selected sets of apps organised by domains of thinking, we introduced journal publications to the battery of examples, and we have recently introduced a voting app to substitute the second activity to boost learning and reduce the workload for the mediator.

From the mediator’s point of view, the impression is that academic staff gain knowledge and competences on m-learning although there is a need to monitor the transfer of the design into practice. We wish to implement some future improvements such as: presenting the key data in a timeline maker, create an infographic with the detail of activities, convert the theoretical presentations in video presentations, organise the apps in a bookmarking tool, collecting the experiences in a virtual wall, and record interviews about real experiences.

Keywords:

Teachers’ training, mobile learning, online learning, pedagogical innovation.