Web Information Systems and Technologies

Abstract

Mobility is an intrinsic property of learning encompassing spatial, temporal and developmental components. Students’ expectations on how and when they learn are creating increasingly heavier demands upon all aspects of their learning. Young people in particular have made mobile devices fundamental to their daily lives. However, educators and developers are faced with the dilemma: do you develop applications for the mobile or the wired environment? In this paper we argue that learning environments will remain combinations of wired and wireless for the foreseeable future. However, not all affordances offered by wired environments are transferable to small mobile devices. In fact, some tasks are better served by applications that are designed to be entirely mobile. The paper will present initial results and evaluations of five of learning tools with the properties mobility, flexibility and either instructor- or student-generated content.