Abstract:

Mobile devices are acquiring a greater relevance in every different area of daily life. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report 2018, the number of smartphones will reach 6.1 billion worldwide by 2020. However, although mobile Internet access is a fact, taking advantage of its use to develop activities that improve other dimensions of life is still a pending task. One of these uses to be promoted is the use of mobile devices for learning inside and outside the classroom.

How to improve the learning experience using mobile phones? It is necessary to highlight the educational use of mobile devices as a support tool for evaluation and decision making in teaching. This is the focus of the paper that has been developed in the context of a project for the renewal of teaching methodologies focused in the reinforcement of learning via mobile devices. The main objective was to pedagogically validate a mobile application (ProfePlus) aimed at improving learning evaluation processes to optimize decisions in teaching. Specifically, using this app we expected to generate students' evaluative information in real time, automatically and graphically via smartphones, allowing teachers to make didactic decisions regarding the reinforcement of learning.

A team of teachers developed a questionnaire of 24 multiple choice questions as a common set of questions to be answered by the students through ProfePlus. Despite the teaching effort and the involvement of the students, the app presented a series of learning design and technical disadvantages. The main results of applying this app are summarized as follows. First, the app did not allow including questions in the platform. This fact generated a slowing down in the activity, with students focusing on the tool rather than in the process. Second, the app did not allow accessing to IOS devices. Third, the students could not know their individual performance. Finally, this app seemed to be suitable for peer evaluation, but it worked better as a response counter.

The poor results offered by ProfePlus provide some practical implications that need to be taken into account when developing and using mobile devices for pedagogical purposes. From a technical perspective, part of the students was deprived of participating in the activity. So, one practical implication to consider for improving ProfePlus would be to develop the application for all mobile operating systems. From an educational perspective, mobile devices aimed at contributing to learning reinforcement should be designed, taking into account the users (students and teachers), as well as the expected results and educational objectives pursued with its use. In the case of ProfePlus, several shortcomings related to these aspects were evidenced. Other set of practical implications for improving ProfePlus would be related to: providing teachers with more control over the design of the questionnaires in the application; displaying questions, answer options and students answers at the same time on the same screen in real time; and, providing teachers with final reports containing individual students’ performance.

Taken all this into account, we can conclude that not every technology or app is educationally plausible. The pedagogical study carried out on ProfePlus reveals not only its technical problems, but the prevalence of an evaluation approach that does not contribute to m-learning development that reinforces learning processes.

Keywords:

Teaching methodology, mobile phones, evaluation, didactic decisions.