Not logged in.

Contribution Details

Type Conference or Workshop Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Published in Proceedings Yes
Title The focus problem in mobile learning
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Christoph Göth
  • Dirk Frohberg
  • Gerhard Schwabe
Presentation Type paper
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Page Range 153 - 160
Event Title IEEE 4th International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education
Event Type workshop
Event Location Athen
Event Start Date November 16 - 2006
Event End Date November 17 - 2006
Place of Publication IEEE 4th International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education
Publisher IEEE
Abstract Text Mobile learning has a lot of potential for supporting learning in situations such as in a museum, at a tourist sight or when exploring biological phenomena at a riverside. There learners can interact with their environment and still make use of the advantages of computational power. However, we have found many of such projects hindered by placing the technology too much in the focus of the learner. Instead of interacting with the environment, we found the learners interacting with the device, heads down and ignoring the environment. We found the issue of focus to be a massive problem, one which needs a completely new metaphor for the design of an educational and technical setting. Until now, the mobile devices have been interpreted as small desktops, always in the foreground of the learners' focus. Instead, we propose a different approach, deduced from the usage of mobile phones. Mobile applications need to be designed explicitly to free the learners' focus and push the application to the background. The good news is that the actual changes to be made in existing systems are not as fundamental as one may think.
Related URLs
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/WMTE.2006.261366
Other Identification Number merlin-id:2596
PDF File Download from ZORA
Export BibTeX
EP3 XML (ZORA)