Finally got around to rewriting my proposal for the capita selecta master course, ah - the holiday season taking its toll... Here's the first part.
Proposal for Capita Selecta course – Master Active Learning
Introduction
In 2003, Simons introduced seven principles (aspects, pillars) of didactics for digital learning. These seven principles were converted to principles for mobile learning didactics by Pols (2008), and one more didactic principle exclusive for mobile learning was added by Rubens (2005). For this course, I would like to elaborate on the eight existing principles of didactics for mobile learning and their distinction from those for digital learning.
Principles
1. Relating - Digital didactics: Identifying and creating relationships and roles, social interaction. Consulting sources and experts, peer-to-peer feedback.
Mobile didactics (extras): Finding relevant information just-in-time, in formal as well as informal settings. Rating and voting systems.
2. Creating - Digital didactics: Actively creating knowledge and constructing meaning, individually as well as together. Research. Stimulating reasoning and argumentation.
Mobile didactics (extras: Creating knowledge just-in-time and wherever, individually as well as together. Making IT-applications more accessible.
3. Sharing - Digital didactics: Publishing and sharing learning outcomes. Broadening audience by applying products as learning objects.
Mobile didactics (extras): Digital testing and assessing.
4. Making transparent - Digital didactics: Visualising patterns of social interaction and thinking processes. Schematising.
Mobile didactics (extras): Offering teachers better information about students’ abilities and knowledge.
5. Learning to learn - Digital didactics: Enhancing meta cognitive development through peer-to-peer feedback, online reflection and visible learning processes.
Mobile didactics (extras): Immediate feedback and reflection.
6. Competences first - Digital didactics: Assessing competences online (e.g. through 360 degree feedback). Digital portfolios to visualise development of competences.
Mobile didactics (extras): Enhancing accessibility. Digital testing to clarify competence directed assessment.
7. Increasing flexibility - Digital didactics: Independency regarding time, space, learning conditions, learning styles, tempo and occasion.
Mobile didactics (extras): Even more so! Motivation through ownership learning process. Adapting to students’ personal environment.
8. Organising learning - Mobile didactics: Designing organisation of learning more efficiently and effectively. Synchronising.
Subject and research question
Towards a ninth principle of didactics for mobile learning
The previous principles do not fully reflect the specific usage of mobile devices in education. Therefore, a ninth principle might be based on user interaction with a mobile system, similar to what is described in the ‘Task-Artefact Cycle’ (Carroll et al, 1991).
A given task sets requirements for the design of an artefact to help an individual perform the task. The resulting artefact, in turn, creates new or unexpected possibilities or poses new constraints on the performance of the task. These possibilities and/or constraints often suggest a revision of the original task for which the artefact was made. The new task sets new requirements for the redesign of the artefact and so on and so on). The task-artefact cycle is in other words an iterative process of continuous, mutually dependent development between task and artefact, a process that will never reach an optimum state.
http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/task_artifact_cycle.html
I would like to research whether this ninth principle might be the specific principle to mobile learning in education. My research question is: What is specific to mobile learning in education?
More of this when the proposal is finished.
