A MOBILE ASSISTED BLENDED-LEARNING EXPERIENCE

The concept of learning has been redefined in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Thus, instead of memorizing contents of a subject, it implies to manage different resources to access and use the information in order to achieve the knowledge and the expected skills.

But resources to access and use the information has also change a lot in the last few years thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), giving different models of Technology Assisted Learning (TAL). Firstly, due to the use of PC’s in Education, Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) methods appeared in educational centres; secondly thanks to internet and the development of Course Management Systems (CMS), Network Assisted Learning methods (NAL) arose which allows us to learn, anywhere; and now, because of the development of the mobile devices, Mobile Assisted Learning (MAL) methods are being adopting by several educational institutions, since they support the students, not only anywhere, but anytime.

Mobile devices are increasingly ubiquitous and sophisticated and their potential for use in education is described as a “new paradigm”. For these reason, mobile (assisted) learning is receiving a great theoretical and empirical research attention.

In this sense, the purpose of this article is to analyze a blended-learning experience assisted by mobile devices at the university level. In order to do that, we describe the context and methodology, extract the main advantages and disadvantages and provide several conclusions.