Developing a mobile social learning application for interdisciplinary technology courses

Abstract

Smartphone adoption has grown steadily and now represents roughly 50% of all Internet traffic. Advances in mobile application development along with its widespread adoption offers unique opportunities within computing education to quickly offer knowledge and information directly into the hands of the learner. Adopting a mobile-first approach, this paper introduces the construction of a mobile social learning platform, built on top of existing social learning software and measures its adoption in interdisciplinary computing courses. The goal of the mobile app is to complement the browser-based system and provide access to course notifications, gradebook and discussion posts. Initial results found 50% of students adopting the smartphone app regularly, while most students preferred to use the browser-based system. Students adopting the mobile application indicated that they liked the ability to view course notifications, assignments, grades and instructor feedback from within the mobile app.