Research showed that the number of students that use their mobile devices and apps for learning purposes doubled between 2012 and 2016. This growth enables new forms of learning to be used in higher education settings, like mobile learning. To make sure mobile learning can be successful in higher education, it is necessary to understand what the factors are that influence the acceptance and adoption of mobile learning apps in higher education. Different studies mention different factors. This systematic review lists the most emerging ones of the last decade like Self-Efficacy and Perceived Enjoyment by looking at the influences on both students and teachers. This study also proposes an extended version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, called the Acceptance and Adoption of Mobile Learning Applications (AAMLA) model, using these found factors. Based on the research model, twenty hypotheses were defined for other studies to be able to validate and use the model. This model could provide app developers, higher education institutes and other researchers useful insights to explain the acceptance and adoption of mobile learning apps in higher education.

The mobile device market has been steadily growing throughout the last two decades. Nowadays, most people own smartphones that support various applications. Many of these applications fall under the category of mobile learning. These apps have many exciting features which could potentially enhance the learning experience in higher education. If academic institutions decide to use such applications, they also need instructions on how to integrate these apps in a common learning portal, such as a learning management system. This research identifies six features of modern mobile learning applications - augmented reality, gamification, artificial intelligence, push notifications, personalization, and collaborative learning. Then, it describes them and their applicability in both educational and non-educational contexts, with the focus on higher education. Finally, two technologies, namely learning tools interoperability (LTI) and application programming interfaces (APIs), are presented for data and application integration.

The growing significance of microlearning in the context of digital education, higher education and lifelong learning makes it an interesting field for research. Microlearning can be described as learning through small chunks of learning activities which are designed to be concise and focused. In the studied literature, microlearning content development and the content delivery system were the topics most often researched. The main findings include the potential of microlearning tools to provide an adaptive and personalized learning experience using educational data mining techniques and building learner models. In addition, context awareness provides the potential to take contextual factors into account like location and distraction levels of the learner to enhancing focussed microlearning. Current literature focuses on features and design principles of microlearning tools rather then evaluation criteria making it difficult to adequately assess these tools. Building on the current literature focus on features and design principles together with identifying potentials and shortcomings of current microlearning tools, this research paper aims to conceptualize an evaluation framework for microlearning tools based on core criteria in the context of digitalization and higher education.

The focus in over two decades of mobile learning (m-learning) research has meanly been on PK-12 education. M-learning is seen as an important new development in PK-12 and higher education (HE). Yet, the ease of app identification is lacking. This paper aimed to classify different m-learning applications to ensure that they are more easily accessible to teachers. Such a framework has been proposed earlier. However, the technological approach misses, and the apps are mainly for PK-12 pupils. Thus, the current paper aimed to create a framework for (learning) apps for higher education, including their pedagogical and technological approaches. Overall, eleven different app types were identified and categorized into four main categories: practice, organization, social, and creation. Then the apps were further classified using their pedagogical design and instructional approach. The applications can be identified as skill-, content- or function-based applications with overlap in the different categories. Finally, the mobile platform and the features used were analyzed and included in the framework here it was found that most of the apps were hybrid applications which allow for a diverse set of features for the apps. Web based applications are the least prominent and provide the least amount of features.

Mobile learning is growing in popularity due to its nature and the access to mobile devices: students of different ages can use their mobile phones to access any information almost anywhere. The popularity of mobile devices and the current growth of social media allow to apply mobile social media learning in higher education. This systematic review gives an overview of the current usage of mobile social media learning, the use cases, barriers, advantages and difference between personal social media and higher education apps within a learning context. The main findings of this paper indicate that social media is a good tool for collaborative purposes, communication purposes, resource sharing and accessing. However, social media use cases are limited at the current state, as higher education apps provide more specific and learn-based functionalities. Furthermore, using social media in a formal way helps to make the education process more personal by having a direct connection with instructors. However, there are still barriers that institutions have to overcome, which include the social media integration models into higher education. This paper, therefore, also discusses the existing integration frameworks and proposes an extension of its current model.

Concept mapping facilitates the externalisation and internalisation of knowledge by individuals during collaborative knowledge construction. However, not much is known about the individual and collaborative learning processes during collaborative concept mapping (CCM) in interdisciplinary knowledge construction. Premised on literature on collaboration scripts to scaffold the collaboration process, this study investigates the effect of an individual preparation phase prior to collaborative work on the epistemic and social processes of knowledge co-construction, as well as the degree of interdisciplinary knowledge integration in collaborative concept mapping. A total of N = 42 third year university students were put into one of the two experimental conditions: with individual preparation phase (WIP) and without individual preparation phase (WOIP). Students worked on a collaborative assignment to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge in collaborative concept mapping. Data for analysis was derived from audio recordings of the collaborative discourse in both experimental conditions. Chi-square test was conducted to investigate if there were significant differences between the effects of WIP and WOIP on the epistemological and social dimension. Findings showed that groups in the WIP condition showed significantly more verification, clarification and positioning statements in the epistemic dimension and also significantly more integration-oriented and conflict-oriented consensus building in the social dimension as compared to groups in the WOIP condition. On the degree of interdisciplinary knowledge integration, independent sample t-tests showed that there was no significant difference for concepts, domains and cross-links between the two experimental conditions. However, there was significant difference in types of cross-links for the CCMs in the WIP condition.

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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), delivered on platforms such as edX and Coursera, have led to a surge in large-scale learning research. MOOC platforms gather a continuous stream of learner traces, which can amount to several Gigabytes per MOOC, that learning analytics researchers use to conduct exploratory analyses as well as to evaluate deployed interventions. edX has proven to be a popular platform for such experiments, as the data each MOOC generates is easily accessible to the institution running the MOOC. One of the issues researchers face is the preprocessing, cleaning and formatting of those large-scale learner traces. It is a tedious process that requires considerable computational skills. To reduce this burden, a number of tools have been proposed and released with the aim of simplifying this process. Those tools though still have a significant setup cost, are already out-of-date or require already preprocessed data as a starting point. In contrast, in this paper we introduce ELAT, the edX Log file Analysis Tool, which is browser-based (i.e., no setup costs), keeps the data local (i.e., no server is necessary and the privacy-sensitive learner data is not send anywhere) and takes edX data dumps as input. ELAT does not only process the raw data, but also generates semantically meaningful units (learner sessions instead of just click events) that are visualized in various ways (learning paths, forum participation, video watching sequences). We report on two evaluations we conducted: (i) a technological evaluation and a (ii) user study with potential end users of ELAT. ELAT is open-source and available at https://mvallet91.github.io/ELAT/.

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This article examined the role of environmental interaction in interdisciplinary thinking and the use of different knowledge resource types. The case study was conducted with two classes (N = 40) of 8th-grade students, ages 13 to 14. The outdoor trail aimed to help students synthesize history, geography, and science knowledge. Two groups’ discourse from each class was audio-­recorded and transcribed for content analysis. We coded the discourse to examine: (i) the use of different knowledge resource types (i.e., contextual resource, new conceptual resource, prior knowledge resource); (ii) the relationship among these knowledge resource types; and (iii) evidences of interdisciplinary thinking. Findings showed that contextual resources enhanced students’ capacity to develop new conceptual resources and to activate prior knowledge resources. Further, about 80% of students’ discourse demonstrated interdisciplinary connections of two subjects.

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Recent discourse and research studies on mobile learning showed increasing awareness of the complexity of mobile learning in the digital age. Notwithstanding mobile devices, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies have greatly empowered learners and educators to overcome the constraints of conventional education, such as time, space, location and to learn on the move. However, balancing technological dependency and learner autonomy remains an area of contention in designing meaningful mobile learning activities. Hence, this interactive and participatory workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on this issue to share their experience and to engage in facilitated activities and discussions on designing mobile learning activities that effectively balance learners’ agency with mobile technology. Additionally, this workshop also provides a platform for unsolved challenges and future research directions on smart technology and smart learning spaces in the context of mobile learning, laying the groundwork for joint research efforts.@en

This paper investigates the effect of anonymity in online peer review on feedback types (directive, non-directive, higher-order concern, lower-order concern) and students' revisions (processed, partly processed and not processed) in second-language writing. Participants were 114 Dutch second-year university students. They were assigned to two experimental conditions: anonymous and non-anonymous. Results showed that students in the anonymous condition provided significantly more feedback on higher-order concerns and offered significantly different types of feedback than students in the non-anonymous condition. As for revision, overall findings showed that assessees in the anonymous condition did not process more feedback (i.e., the adoption rate) than their non-identified peers, however, assessees in the anonymous condition processed significantly more directive higher-order feedback and scored significantly higher final grades for the writing module than their non-anonymous peers. These results might imply that anonymity could enable learners to provide unreservedly more higher-order concerns feedback type. On the self-same note, the adoption and revision of these higher-order feedback items was instrumental in the improved writing performance of students in the anonymous condition.

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