Mobile learning systems for digital natives

Abstract

In late 2005 and early 2006 the authors carried out a survey of Information Technology professors in eight universities in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Europe to explore their ways of coping with large group teaching. The aim was to investigate the effectiveness of various teaching methodologies in similar Faculties teaching IT around the world. Interviewees were selected through web-based research to identify the most comparable teaching departments from various universities locally, nationally and internationally. In telephone interviews many of the respondents reported on their use of the Internet for teaching and managing large groups but none mentioned the use of mobile learning as a strategy. In this paper we argue that mobile devices such as the video iPod, 3G phones and PDAs have the potential to revolutionize the learning experiences of the 21st century students.