Mobile Learning

After a quick look at the table of contents of the assigned book, Herrington et al. (2009), I found myself attracted by the term “Storytelling” in the title of Chapter 4:

4: Early childhood education

Digital story telling using iPods

Ian Olney, Jan Herrington and Irina Verenikina

Having said that, a voice in my head called “enough of this Digital Storytelling business”!!! Being the selected technology for my project, the term is dominant in my previous posts of Module 2. Therefore, I thought I’ll select something else for a change. I ended up printing the following chapter:

3: Adult education

Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources

in adult education

Anthony Herrington

Surprisingly, when I started reading the chapter that night (Herrington et al., 2009, p.28), I discovered that the aim of the research was:

“… to evaluate the technological and pedagogical affordances of using a Smartphone (combined mobile phone and personal digital assistant) as a data collection tool to create digital narratives or stories …”

I thought I must be haunted by this topic somehow for some reason! This was another emphasis on the importance of the potential that Digital Narratives have in the field of education, that I personally strongly believe in by now. My fear of boring colleagues by the continuous discussion of the same topic again and again throughout my posts got suddenly slashed by the curiosity of knowing more about the utilization of mobile phones in this context.

Shortly after handing out the Digital Narrative Assignment Outlines as a first intervention in Module 2 project, I received many queries from the students on the possibility to use their smart phones in capturing media for their Digital Narratives. Although not previously thought of this as an option, I found myself strongly objecting to the use of smart phones for this purpose. My reasons were very much related to the expected limited quality of produced media. Herrington (2009, p.33) discusses the limitation in more details based on his students experience in developing teaching episodes using smart phone captured media:

-        Incompatibility of video format among smart phone and PCs

-        Mobile image aspect ratio and that used with the video editing software

-        Resolution in low light situations

-        Audio recording difficulties

-        Lack of video zooming capability in smart phones

The second intervention of Module 2 project was a learning opportunity that I never mentioned before in my PGCTHE published reflections due to time management considerations. This was another assignment for a totally different course in nature than MIS, that is Leadership and Teambuilding. Unlike the first assignment that was based on group work for the DN component and individual for the Discussion component, the L&TB assignment was totally individual and had a report component rather than a discussion. The students were asked to develop a “Personal Leadership Portfolio” of reflections based on series of self-assessments given throughout the course. In addition, the students were requested to produce a DN describing their personal leadership skills and motivational strategies based on the achieved learning from the self-assessments and the overall course.

During the second intervention this different group of students made the exact same inquiry that their fellow students made during the first intervention, which is the possibility to use mobile phones to capture the required media. Unlike the first response I provided the first group, I found myself encouraging the second group to use their smart phones for this purpose! I actually never noticed the contradiction until I read the assigned reading for Module 2 this week which made me stop and think for very long time before documenting the main points that came to my mind.

The implicit rational that made me take different stand from using mobile phones for media capturing in each scenario was mainly the nature of the assignment objective. The MIS assignment created a formal learning opportunity for the students to collectively discover as a group the opportunities and challenges that “Enterprise Applications” bring to an organization in the authentic context of a case study. The formalities of communicating with professional organizations employees often at the managerial levels, the sensitivity of shared information, and the privacy requirements surrounding each case study gave the whole experience a formal approach. This implied a lot of planning due to the limited chances for filming and the required minimum level of professionalism in the presentation of the final product.

The L&TB assignment on the other hand created a less formal individual learning opportunity for the students to deeply reflect on their own leadership traits and skill using different day-to-day situations. Herrington et al. (2009) provided various descriptions for scenarios where mobile capturing is recommended for opportunities it offers:

-        Portability and ease of use

-        Recording spontaneous moments

-        Smartphone can be seen as less intrusive

The scenarios described by Herrington et al. (2009, p.134) matches to a full extent the nature of the L&TB assignment:

-        Real world contexts that have personal meaning

-        Educational or purely lifestyle content

-        Learners are mobile across topics, space and time

-        Less formal and spontaneous contexts

The clarity on the criteria to guide selecting the right media capturing tool in various DN assignments was the most important outcome of this reflection task. Moreover, various enhancement ideas were generated and got then filtered by the proposed “design principles for mobile learning” discussed in the 13^th Chapter of the same book. Those ideas can be divided in two categories: Assignment Structure, and Supportive Pedagogies. Both are discussed next.

Assignment Structure

Two new criteria are found relevant and as a result will be added to the Assignment Marking Scheme: Storyboarding, and Tips & Tricks.

Storyboarding is to be developed in the planning phase of the assignment. This is to guide the students’ effort while developing their DN. The content part of the current DN marking scheme provides a logical sequence for the storyboard. There is however a gap in the mapping of the sequenced concepts to the most effective presentation media.

The sharing of best practices on the use of technology plays a vital role in the success of DN assignments. Therefore, rewarding students for sharing Tips & Tricks on the best use of technologies would contribute to achieving this objective.

Supportive Pedagogies

Formative assessments to produce DN on very specific concepts, present it in class for discussion. This would prepare the students for a summative DN assessment by providing opportunities to evaluate the whole concept and mechanism of presenting their learning in DN format. Moreover, the formative assessments will automatically put the students in a position of evaluating their own skills from many other aspects of their studies.

Facilitated DN workshops to allow the students of edit their videos in the class, while the teacher float and check for any important technology Tip or Trick that can be useful for the rest of the class. The students are then given the chance to share the Tip or Trick during the session.

Assignment blog to be administered for the purpose of sharing technical Tips & Tricks.

References

Herrington, J., Herrington, A., Mantei, J., Olney, I., & Ferry, B. (Eds.) (2009). New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education. Wollongong: University of Wollongong. Available: http://ro.uow.edu.au/

Herrington, A., (2009). Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education. In J. Herrington, A. Herrington, J. Mantei, I. Olney, & B. Ferry (Eds.), New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education (pp. 28-35). Wollongong: University of Wollongong. Retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/

A Reflection on the Reviewed Literature

The reviewed literature helped me in realizing the limitations of the marking scheme developed as part of the implementation plan, (Yousuf, 2012). The marking scheme was very much content focused with no indication of Digital Narrative specific criteria. This included two components: Digital Narrative, and DN Discussion. As a result, I got concerned for the possibility of the developed marking scheme to mislead my students in a way that would negatively influence the produced assignment deliverable.

It was evident upon the submission date that I my concern was valid, many of the Digital Narratives lacked quality on the media level as well as the analysis level. The students whom delivered such poor quality misunderstood the concept of the assignment and thought it’s just a video of an interview. The reviewed literature clarifies that Digital Narratives term actually refer to many aspects, among which the analysis element that take place as part of the preparation phase to produce any Narrative. Al Yousuf (2012) is one of the videos that lacked the analysis dimension described here. Some students still produced very good Digital Narratives; Al Nuaimi (2012) is an example of good DN. However, this was purely the product of the students’ strong common sense.

As a result of comparing the literature to the outcomes from the first experiment with Digital Narratives, I decided to revise the marking scheme of this MIS Assignment. The new marking scheme included more Digital Narrative specific criteria, inspired by “The 7 elements of Digital Storytelling” as published by the Center of Digital Storytelling (2007), and specifically including the 10 elements recommended by the University of Houston’s Digital Storytelling team in “The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling” (2012).

The new marking scheme is composed of three distinct sections: DN Content, DN Production, and DN Discussion. I’m currently a second experiment with the updated Implementation Plan with a group of students that started classes two weeks ago after completing their work placement assignments. I have the intention to post another reflection on the outcome of utilizing the updated marking scheme with this group. Below is the structure and criteria followed with the current group:

Digital Narrative Content: 10%
Requirements	Max	Actual
Product overview: description of the selected product and the enterprise application category it belongs to. This description should include but not limited to the general purpose and capabilities of the selected enterprise application category. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Organization overview: general information about the organization selected, like but not limited to: product/service, competitors, market segment and size … etc [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Business challenges: description of the problems and/or opportunities encountered by the organization for which IS investment was considered. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Management role: description of changes/investments made on the managerial level for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Organizational role: description of changes/investments made on the organizational level for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Technology role: description of the IT infrastructure and additional technology investments made for the purpose of the new IS. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Information System capabilities: description of the new IS features. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	15
Business Solutions: description of the organization’s strategic objectives achieved as a return of the IS investment. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	10
Total	100
%	10

Digital Narrative Production: 10%
Requirements	Description	Max	Actual
The overall purpose of the story	Why you think you were asked to investigate and talk about Enterprise Applications as Accounting student?	5
The narrator’s point of view	A major believe or opinion you have developed as part of your journey with the Enterprise Applications topics.	5
A dramatic question of questions	Include in your work question or questions that help views to think deeply and hopefully understand your content better as a result.	5
The choice of content	Make sure you only use relevant content.	5
Clarity of voice	Pay particular attention to the clarity of any used audio.	5
Pacing of the narrative	Be reasonable, don’t make the follow of content too fast or too slow.	5
Use of a meaningful audio soundtrack	Make good choice of soundtrack to enrich the viewers experience rather than distracting them.	5
Quality of the Images, Video & other Multimedia Elements	Make sure you only use good quality content.	5
Economy of the Story Detail	The overall duration of the narrative should be feasible: don’t be too short by eliminating important aspects, and not too long without added value.	5
Good Grammar and Language Usage	Aim at accurate and professional communication always.	5
Total		100
%		10

Digital Narrative Discussion: 10% (Individual)
Requirements	Max	Actual
Student demonstrates interest in understanding other groups work by asking good questions or making good comments on various aspects of the Digital Narratives shared by the other groups. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	30
Student demonstrates excellent understanding of various aspects presented in his own group’s Digital Narrative by providing good answers/feedback to other groups’ questions/comments. [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	40
It is compulsory that each member of any group respond to all questions/comments posted against their own Digital Narrative.	10
Quality of used vocabulary (i.e. course and business related) [   ] Excellent [   ]   Very Good  [   ] Good  [   ] Satisfactory   [   ] Poor	20
Total	100
%	10

Note: The Digital Narratives submitted by the students are all private based on the interviewed organizations request. The two sample videos are flagged "unlisted" to allow anybody with the link to view them. Therefore, you'll need to copy the provided links in the references section for this purpose. 

References

Al Nuaimi, A. (2012) CRM in DP World. [video online] Available at: http://youtu.be/U3bsjVFeNdk [Accessed: April 22, 2012].

Al Yousuf, M. (2012) Dnata CRM. [video online] Available at: http://youtu.be/e1T_puFFZFI [Accessed: April 22, 2012].

Center of Digital Storytelling (2007) Digital Storytelling Cookbook, Chapter 2. [online] Available at: http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf  [Accessed: March 27, 2012].

The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling (2012) The 7 Elements of Storytelling. [online] Available at: http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/7elements.html [Accessed: April 15, 2012].

Yousuf, B. (2012) Project Implementation Plan. baraayousuf, [blog] WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012, Available at: http://baraayousuf.blogspot.com/2012/02/bmgn-n340-management-information.html [Accessed: April 22, 2012].