Survey Results Continued: Barriers to Mobile Learning

As a class, we decided that it is important for us to not only discuss the advantages to mobile learning but the disadvantages and barriers as well. 

In our survey,  How Do You Use Your Mobile Device(s)?, we asked our 61 participants this question:

Again, we provided our respondants with a variety of choices based on our class' own barriers to using mobile devices to communicate with others and access information for education, work, and personal life.

When comparing our findings to those found in Chapter 7 of Ally' book, Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, I learned that we discovered some similiar issues. And of course, other issues that we did not include in our survey.

Below is a list of their findings of the 'disadvantages' to using mobile devices:

• Battery problems, lost files
• Device is unreliable, it jams, speakers are poor
• Lack of WiFi in many locations
• Fiddly small screen, tasking on the eyes; best used as audio devices
• Interaction issues were also signaled:
• Easy to get distracted
• Text-based message lacks inflection
• Lacking interactive multimedia
• Interaction can be clumpy and stilted
• Everything has to be short and small making meaningful interaction difficult
• Limit to the depth of thinking and learning

The main similiarities between the two surveys are being distracted, poor design, issue with access to the internet (WiFi and connectivity/bandwidth).

While the researchers in Chapter 7 didn't include percentages, we discovered that 58% of the issue for our respondants is Poor Bandwith/Connectivity. 

In Manitoba, this concern is an ongoing challenge that needs to be addressed, especially for those who live outside the major cities.

On another note, we asked our respondants to tell us the type of supports they needed to facilitate mobile learning, since mobile devices are changing the way we learn, interact with others, and do business!

We felt that this question should be open-ended in order to allow respondants to respond freely.

Here are the comments that came up over and over again:

• Financial support
• Mobile friendly website/ education apps
• Training and development—How to use it? When to use it?
• Connectivity/Bandwidth—Too slow

As you can see, the connectivity/banwidth issue comes into play again!

Do you know what the bandwith is of your mobile device or even your home computer?

Well, if you don't, there is a site where you can go to find out this information for free! It's called Speed Test. 

(Thanks for the link Leslie).

I encourage you to check it out; you might be surprised with your results!

The Survey Results Are In!!

Mobile devices have also become commonplace tools serving a wide array of purposes that may include teaching and learning alongside work and leisure, in both formal and informal settings. Consequently learners, too, are often able to contribute more actively to developing innovative educational uses of the technology as they interweave them with other aspects of their lives.
 

This quote comes from chapter seven of a book titled, Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training by Mohammed Ally.

Chapter7: Practitioners as Innovators: Emergent Practice in Personal Mobile. Teaching,Learning, Work, and Leisure, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and John Pettit. The OpenUniversity, United Kingdom

In week seven of my Mobile Learning course, we began our journey looking at current research related to the future of mobile learning in education, the workplace and everyday life. Our group project was to create a survey via SurveyMonkey which we called :

How Do You Use Your Mobile Device(s)?

Now in week 10, we are analyzing the results from our 61 respondants and comparing them with those found in Chapter 7. (NB. We created our survey before reading the chapter)

In Ally's book, the researchers sent their Questionnaire to 150 participants (alumni) and 57 individuals responded. The questionnaire inquired about how the respondents used their mobile devices (E.g. mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, MP3 players) within five activity categories:

1. Teaching (includes informal)
2. Learning (includes informal)
3. Work
4. Social Interaction
5. Entertainment (including quizzes and games)

Since SurveyMonkey's free survey builder limits you to 10 questions, we did not ask our respondants about their age, gender, or socio-econimic class as the researchers did in Chapter 7. Instead, we inquired about their place of work and the type of position they held there.

 

Below are a couple charts that illustrate this information. 

 

As you can see, the majority of our respondents work in a university setting (44%) and the non-profit sector (26%).  Additionally, most work in a library (40%) or in a administrative role (28%).

 

In  Chapter 7, their respondants were alumni of the university conducting the survey. Thus, we both have a high number of respondants with post-secondary education and access to technology, especially mobile devices.

Looking at the results for how the survey respondants used their 'mobile phones', the researchers in Chapter 7 discovered that they were used in the following ways:

96% for social interaction;

78% for work;

30% for teaching;

19% for entertainment/quizzes/games; and

17% for their own learning.
 

When we polled our respondants about the type of content/resources they accessed with their mobile device, we find a similar trend emerging.

 

As you can see in the chart below, we provided our participants with a multitude of possible responses.

 

In my opinion, I am going to group our top five areas of activity as follows:

1. Social interaction (areas over 40%)
2. Entertainment (most areas between 30% - 40%; Blogs could be included heere too!)
3. Work (library services are high, 39%, due to high number of librarians surveyed; Synching Notes/ Documents 26%; and Downloading PDFs 33%)
4. News (35%)
5. Accessing Information (Cloud Computing 39%; Blogs 32%)

I was happy to learn that work related activities, such as Synching Notes/ Documents 26% and Downloading PDFs 33% were higher than I figured, but again it could be due to our particular group of respondants--librarians and administrators.

Interestingly, activity related to online banking at 21% was surprising. I suppose people are becoming more comfortable with performing banking functions this way, despite potential security risks. 

And finally, the biggest surprise was the results for mobile learning, such as Online Courses, 23%, and Linking to Educational Websites, 17%.

Personally, I find these numbers a bit surprising given the type of respondants of our survey... However, in my next post, I will continue this conversation and briefly examine and compare our findings to the potential barriers and disadvantages of using mobile devices for common place activities.