Supporting Mobile Instructional Design with CSAM

Abstract

Teachers’ proficiency with emerging technologies has been identified as a cornerstone of a well-rounded modern curriculum that includes the development of students’ digital literacy skills. The central role of teachers’ technical knowledge is one of the bases of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Koehler & Mishra in Teachers College Record, 109(6):1017–1054, 2006, The handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) for educators. American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and Routledge, New York, pp. 3–29, 2008; TPACK.org & Koehler, n.d.; Unwin in Bulgarian Journal of Science and Education Policy, 1(1):237–247, 2007). While frameworks such as TPACK have been promoted as useful tools for guiding teacher profes- sional development initiatives, they have been criticized for failing to provide direction in exactly how technical knowledge can be promoted (Perk in Pedagogical reflections, 2009; Voogt et al. in Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29 (2):109–121, 2012). At the same time, teachers’ lack of confidence in their technical skills has been identified as a barrier to greater integration of mobile technologies in instructional design (Ally et al. 2013; Ally, & Prieto-Blázquez in RUSC, 11(1), 142–151, 2014; Kenny et al. in 2010; Power, 2015). The Collaborative Situated Active Mobile (CSAM) learning design framework (Power in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, 10(2), 2013, 2015) was devel- oped as a tool to provide scaffolding to instructional design decisions involving mobile technologies and reusable learning objects. CSAM is grounded in prominent learning theory and reflects the instructional design practices represented in recent mobile learning literature. Through the scaffolding of mLearning decision making, CSAM can be used to boost the effectiveness of instructional design, increase teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy, and fill in gaps to compliment TPACK in the development of teacher professional development strategies. This chapter describes the components of the CSAM learning design framework, as well as its theoretical underpinnings. This chapter also highlights support for the use of CSAM in research and mobile learning literature, and describes how CSAM compliments frameworks such as TPACK to help prepare teachers and instructional designers to better integrate mobile technologies into modern curriculum.