What is Mobile Learning (M-Learning)?

IT departments will also need to help teachers navigate those waters, especially to address any compatibility issues.

“One of the things we need to think about when supporting our faculties is, are they using tools that are going to integrate well with the LMS?” says Mindy Colin, instructional consultant at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The idea is that the IT, the technology, the faculty training and the department of student affairs as well as student services meet periodically. There has to be a lot of communication. ”

Good integration with a university’s LMS means less hiccups and a more seamless learning experience.

“We need to help make sure students are wasting no energy, no cognitive burden, figuring out what’s next, and just letting them focus on learning,” Merrill says.

Training for students is also key, especially as they may find that every school year or semester they need to learn programs again.

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Ensure that technical infrastructure can support mobile learning

Because mobile learning is not completely remote and can be partially facilitated on campus, good connectivity is required, both in and out of class.

“Sharpening Wi-Fi is absolutely essential,” says Colin, especially given the number of devices now finding their way to campus.

“We found that a lot of students brought between two and three devices,” Rockey says.

Embracing the cloud is also necessary for adequate bandwidth, security, ease of use and future security.

“You see all LMS services – Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard – moving to the cloud and supported by major cloud services,” says Colin. Because m-learning can use streaming or uploaded video, such as lectures, cloud also offers instructors an easier way to bring content to students.

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“Streaming services like Kaltura, Panopto and YuJa integrate with LMSs,” says Colin. “Having them on the cloud makes a big difference, because they have applications that students and faculty can use to record on their phones and then just upload directly to the streaming service, which is automatically connected to their LMS. . ”

Perhaps the biggest step universities can take to embrace m-learning is 100 percent. The more committed they are to adopting it, the better it is for everyone.

“Mobile has increased exponentially over the past few years because it is no longer complementary,” says Merrill. “It’s the standard now.”