MOBILE LEARNING IN TRADITIONAL FACE TO FACE COURSES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION

The trend to mobile working has changed the way most businesses work today. The market for mobile devices has grown quickly over the last years and the number of mobile devices shipped has outnumbered the sales of traditional PCs and laptop computers. Employees use PCs and mobile devices to access the same information, only the context of usage changes. The same changes occur in universities .Today students use smartphones, tablets and laptop computers for many tasks in their daily life. They expect to be supported by technology in their efforts to study in the most efficient way possible. This is especially true in computer science students, as these students are faced with new possibilities new technology offers in their everyday life.

Computer science not only uses IT technologies, but develops new ways of using devices and even new devices. An image of delivering old fashioned ways in teaching not using modern technologies can do a lot of harm to the image of the whole university. Courses in computer science therefore are obliged to adapt rapidly to new trends like mobile working.

At the University of Applied Science Technikum Wien the authors implemented a concept of teaching to incorporate the new possibilities of our changing IT world together with the need for a stable and solid education in computer science.

The key elements of the concept are:
• BYOD (bring your own device)
• Mobile learning and mobile teaching
• Project based learning

BYOD
Already starting with 2007 the authors implemented BYOD in many courses [1]. Bring your own device is now a commonly used concept in software engineering and in computer science. Also, BYOD is a commonly used concept in companies today. One has to keep in mind, most companies do not like the concept, but have been forced by their own employees to adapt to the need of accessing and manipulating information by using the own device of the employee. The concept does seriously influence the security strategies of companies implementing the concept [2].

Mobile Learning and Mobile Teaching
Students in computer science using their own device for study purposes want that wherever and whenever they like. Recent advances in mobile internet access furthermore led to virtual environments students use for learning. Many students create groups on Facebook, use cloud services to access learning materials and use other services like skype to connect from everywhere. This behaviour seriously influenced the role of the teacher. In many courses teachers in computer science get questions e.g. via email. These questions again are answered via email and or other services. This influences the way of teaching in many aspects. The effort students have to do to master a subject becomes more important. Traditional contact time (face to face teaching) loses importance in many ways.

Project Based Learning:
Project based Learning (PBL) has become a key element in teaching computer science. This concept imposes many risks, but if used in an appropriate way it is capable of bridging theory and practice, which in turn is essential in computer science [3-4].

Details on the implementation of the above concepts will be given in the proposed paper.