Using Mobile Phones to Improve Educational Outcome

Introduction

For quite some time, the international development community has emphasized the paramount role of education in bringing about sustainable socio-economic development in the South. Goal 2 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims to achieve universal primary education for children everywhere, boys and girls alike, by 2015. Significant challenges remain, however. For example, in southern Asia the enrolment ratio has reached 90%, but there still remain more than 18 million children of primary school age who are not enrolled. Similar challenges confront secondary and tertiary education. In developing countries, on average, only 54% of children of the appropriate age attend secondary school currently (UN, 2008, pp. 13-14).


Additionally, more than one-third of the world’s adult population – most living in the developing world – has no access to printed knowledge, new skills, and technologies that could improve the quality of their lives (Dhanarajan, 2009, p. 46). Inequalities in access to education continue to pose major barriers in the developing world, and the delivery of cost-effective and quality education remains a persistent problem.


In the attempt to find viable solutions to these problems, much hope has been placed in new information and communication technologies (ICTs). It is believed that ICTs can empower teachers and learners by facilitating communication and interaction, offering new modes of delivery, and generally transforming teaching and learning processes. Of the many different forms of ICTs, mobile phones are thought, for several reasons, to be a particularly suitable tool for advancing education in developing regions. First, mobiles phones are the most prevalent ICT in the developing world, and the penetration rate is rising rapidly. In Asia, mobile penetration has doubled within a short span of time; in 2001, average penetration was 19.7 per 100 inhabitants while in 2005 the penetration rate rose to 40.9 (Orbicom, 2007). Also relevant is the fact that mobile phone ownership is increasingly more common in the lower socio-economic segments of society (Samrajiva & Zainudeen, 2008). Second, mobile phones are an especially good ‘leapfrogger’ since they use the radio spectrum. There is, therefore, less need for new physical infrastructure such as roads and phone wires, and base-stations can be powered via generators in places where there is no electrical grid (Economist, 2008). Finally, in addition to voice communication, mobile phones allow the transfer of data, which can be particularly useful for delivering educational content over long distances.


The concept of mobile learning (mLearning) – understood for the purposes of this article as learning facilitated by mobile devices – is gaining traction in the developing world. The number of projects exploring the potential of mobile phone-facilitated mLearning in the developing world is steadily growing, spurred in part by the use of mobile technology in the educational sector in the developed world which has expanded from short-term trials on a small scale to large-scale integration. However, there remains a lack of analysis that brings together the findings of the rising number of mLearning projects in the developing world.


With the increasing attention now being given to the role of mobiles in the educational sector in developing countries, there is a need at this juncture to take stock of the available evidence of the educational benefits that mobile phones provide in the developing world. Consequently, this article explores the results of six mLearning projects that took place in several developing countries in Asia – the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh – both because most developing-country mLearning interventions are being undertaken in Asia and because developments in Asia seem to indicate that the region could become the global leader in educational uses of mobiles (Motlik, 2008). In exploring how mobile phone-facilitated mLearning contributes to improved educational outcomes, this article examines two specific issues: 1) the role of mobiles in improving access to education, and 2) the role of mobiles in promoting new learning, those new learning processes and new instructional methods currently stressed in educational theory. Of note, the projects reviewed deal with both formal and non-formal education as defined by Dighe, Hakeem, and Shaeffer (2009, p. 60).


The structure of the article continues as follows. After the introduction, the article engages with the literature that discusses how mobile technology can address the problems of access confronting the educational sector as well as mobile technology’s role in relation to new learning. The article then examines six pilot projects that involved the use of mobile phones for education in developing countries in Asia, analyzing the pilot projects in order to determine whether the supposed benefits that the literature outlines hold true in the developing world. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential of mobile phone-facilitated mLearning as well as with indications for possible future areas of research.
Theories of Mobile Learning


The literature on mLearning points to a variety of benefits that mobile phones could have on the educational sector. For heuristic purposes, the impacts of mobile phones on educational outcomes that are identified in the mLearning literature can be classified into two broad categories. On the one hand, mobiles supposedly impact educational outcomes by improving access to education while maintaining the quality of education delivered. On the other hand, mobiles purportedly impact educational outcomes by facilitating alternative learning processes and instructional methods collectively known as new learning.
The Role of Mobiles in Improving Access to Education


In theory, mLearning increases access for those who are mobile or cannot physically attend learning institutions – those who would not otherwise be able to follow courses in a traditional educational setting due to the constraints of work, household activities, or other competing demands on their time. MLearning makes education more accessible in that it enables learners to pursue their studies according to their own schedule. The portability of mobile technology means that mLearning is not bound by fixed class times; mLearning enables learning at all times and in all places, during breaks, before or after shifts, at home, or on the go. Interestingly, however, while mLearning is portable, it is not necessarily associated with physical movement. According to a study conducted by Vavoula, few people actually utilize the time spent in transit to learn (Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2005, p. 3).


MLearning, as Visser and West (2005) suggest, can also increase access in those situations where cost represents a significant barrier to learning (p. 132). For those in rural or remote areas where environmental and infrastructure challenges hinder other learning modalities, particularly eLearning, mLearning presents great opportunities. For the individual learner, mobile technology is much less cost-prohibitive than other technologies like personal computers and broadband connections that are necessary for eLearning. The ubiquity of mobile phones, moreover, means that educational services can be delivered with learners’ existing resources. In as much as mobile technology presents a less cost-prohibitive medium for learning, it represents an important avenue by which to reduce the gap between the haves and the have-nots in contemporary society where access to knowledge and information is increasingly important (VanWeert, 2005).


In regards to cost, the benefit of increased access afforded by mLearning is particularly relevant in the developing country context. Many developing countries are completely bypassing investments in costly, fixed telephone infrastructure for the installation of mobile phone networks (Motlik, 2008; Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2007, p.224; Traxler & Dearden, 2005). Thus, mLearning provides a potential way forward for the expansion of education programs to larger segments of the population rather than via the eLearning model that has been adopted in much of the developed world. MLearning allows a method of educational delivery that could be more cost-effective than eLearning methods, not to mention that the ubiquity of mobile phones means that many people are already familiar with mobile phone applications (Motlik, 2008).


In so much as mLearning exerts an impact on educational outcomes by increasing access, mLearning represents a continuation and improvement of distance learning through increased utility and applicability (Keegan, 2002, p. 7). MLearning, the literature suggests, broadens the availability of quality education materials through decreased cost and increased flexibility while also enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of education administration and policy.
The Role of Mobiles in Promoting New Learning


Others suggest that the benefits of mobile phones are not merely limited to increased access to educational services. MLearning, they indicate, can also facilitate changes in the character of learning modalities that in turn impact educational outcomes. In this regard, mLearning represents more than a mere extension of traditional forms of education; mLearning facilitates alternative learning processes and instructional methods that the theories of new learning identify as effective for learning.


According to proponents of new learning, mobiles facilitate designs for personalized learning in that they are responsive to difference and diversity in the way learning occurs. They facilitate designs for situated learning by providing learning during the course of the activity – in the field for a botany student, in the classroom for a teacher trainee, or in the workshop for an engineer. In this sense, mLearning also facilitates designs for authentic learning, meaning learning that targets real-world problems and involves projects of relevance and interest to the learner (Kukulska-Hulme & Traxler 2007, pp.184-86; Traxler, 2007, p. 7).


The supposed value of mobiles also arises from the manner in which they facilitate lifelong learning. Mobiles can support the great amount of learning that occurs during the many activities of everyday life, learning that occurs spontaneously in impromptu settings outside of the classroom and outside of the usual environment of home and office. They enable learning that occurs across time and place as learners apply what they learn in one environment to developments in another (Sharples et al., 2005, pp. 2, 4; 2007, pp. 222-23).


Mobile phones theoretically make learner-centred learning possible by enabling students to customize the transfer of and access to information in order to build on their skills and knowledge and to meet their own educational goals (Sharples et al., 2007, p. 223). MLearning thus exerts a democratizing effect on the learning experience as learners take a greater responsibility for the learning process instead of being passively fed information by an instructor. Whereas in traditional models of education the goal is the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, mLearning empowers students to actively participate in the learning process to make it a process of construction and not mere instruction (dela Pena-Bandalaria, 2007). MLearning thus represents learning that is not ‘just-in-case,’ education for the sake of producing a bank of knowledge, but rather represents learning that is ‘just-in-time,’ ‘just enough,’ or ‘just-for-me’ (Traxler, 2007, p. 5). As a facilitator of new learning, mLearning goes beyond an emphasis on the possession of information to enabling learners to find, identify, manipulate, and evaluate existing information (Brown, 2003, p. 2).


Mobiles can also supposedly facilitate knowledge-centred learning by providing efficient and inventive methods by which students can learn with understanding – meaning that they deepen their understanding of a specific subject matter rather than merely memorizing large amounts of information – and then use this knowledge as a basis for new learning through integration and interconnection. Mobile devices make possible assessment-centred learning as well by enabling the provision of continual feedback throughout the learning process, presenting learners with diagnosis and formative guidance as to what might be improved or what might be learned next. Moreover, in providing prompt feedback, mLearning maintains the appeal of learning and provides a motivating factor that can at times be lacking in traditional modes of education (Geddes, 2004). Mobile phones also facilitate community-centred learning, meaning learning that the learner deems valuable because of its relevance to the surrounding social context; mLearning facilitates learning that can be used to achieve socio-economic goals that respond to problems, such as problems related to health or family care confronting the surrounding community (Sharples et al., 2007, p. 223; Wagner & Kozma, 2005, pp. 83-85).


Given that social interaction is central to effective learning, as indicated by theories of new learning, mobile phones should also impact educational outcomes by facilitating communication. Mobiles permit collaborative learning and continued conversation despite physical location and thus advance the process of coming to know, which occurs through conversations across contexts and among various people. Via mobile technology, learners engage in conversation whereby they resolve differences, understand the experiences of others, and create common interpretations and shared understanding of the world (Nyiri, 2002; Sharples et al., 2007, p. 225-26).


In promoting educational modalities that accord with the theories of new learning, mLearning should offer an appeal aspect that also impacts educational outcomes. MLearning can be particularly appealing for those who have not succeeded in traditional learning environments; it can attract those not enamoured by traditional learning approaches that are generalized and decontextualized in nature. MLearning is also beneficial in that it can provide immediate feedback and thus provide continued motivation for those who are not motivated by traditional educational settings. Moreover, mLearning presents an appeal simply because the use of mobile technology in and of itself presents something new and exciting for a great array of learners (Geddes, 2004, p. 4).


Mobiles, therefore, should impact educational outcomes by altering the character of education and learning because the nature of mobile technology converges with and facilitates new learning. The new learning is personalized, learner-centred, situated, collaborative, ubiquitous, and lifelong. Likewise, mobile technology is increasingly personal, user-centred, mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and durable (Sharples et al., 2007, p. 224). The literature indicates that the benefits afforded by this convergence should exert a positive impact on educational outcomes.
Methodology


In light of the theories as to how mLearning should solve access problems as well as facilitate new learning, the authors sought to examine the existing evidence so as to confirm, or refute, the purported benefits advanced by the literature. To this end, the authors identified relevant mLearning pilot projects by conducting a search of academic publications and conference proceedings, as well as conducting a general Internet search. The projects were selected according to the following criteria:
Projects that demonstrate the use of mobile phones for educational (formal and non-formal) purposes,
Projects that were implemented in the low-income/lower-middle income countries of Asia-Pacific1,
Projects that clearly document results and have evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, such that definitive conclusions can be drawn regarding the impact of mobile phones on educational outcomes via increased access to education and/or via contribution to promoting new learning.


Six projects met the criteria of the search and are discussed in the section that follows (see Table 1 for brief summary). The search revealed that most mLearning projects have been implemented in the developed countries of Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific; mLearning projects in the developing countries of Asia have been few in number2. Moreover, of the projects undertaken, only a select few were documented in a manner that allows analysis of results. For the six selected cases, project reports and project-related, peer-reviewed publications served as the source for information.


Some key limitations of the study must be taken into consideration when generalizing the findings. Firstly, the study depended on the validity of the data presented by the sources. To minimize this limitation, the authors reviewed the appropriateness of the methodologies for each project in order to ensure, to the best of their knowledge, that they were acceptable. Secondly, the absence of a process of collecting primary data for this study meant that, in some cases, the data resulting from the projects reviewed did not always relate to the research question of this study. Consequently, some of the projects produced only limited information concerning the indicators that this study assessed.