No one should be surprised to find that students learn more in an environment rich with engagement, interaction, and additional resources. That’s what researcher Song has shown, albeit with only 28 study participants. Here’s what these students in a Hong Kong primary school had going for them in learning about fish anatomy: a seamless learning environment (in and away from school) through bring your own device (BYOD) mobile technology; an inquiry-based learning pedagogy supported by this technology; enriched experiences via the Internet; a field trip to examine fish at a wet market; and a collaborative environment for student sharing of their learning artifacts, with software tools to facilitate this sharing.
In such an environment, Song reports, “students advanced their understanding of the anatomy of fish well beyond what was available in the textbook.” Fair enough. But what can we learn from this study beyond the obvious lesson that richer learning environments produce more learning? At the risk of summarizing too frugally, two points seem relevant:
- BYOD approaches to provisioning technology certainly can be successful educationally. This success, however, requires more than technology integration. It requires authentic technology-enabled learning rooted in a sound pedagogy such as inquiry-based learning.
- In tandem with sound pedagogical design, careful choices must be made for the technological affordances (capabilities or tools) that will enhance mobile learning. For students to achieve specific goals, one must determine specifically what is needed vis-à-vis multimedia access and collection, communication, representation, information sharing, knowledge construction, connectivity, reference, and analysis.
The study clearly shows that if one plans thoroughly with a sound pedagogy supported by appropriate mobile capabilities, one can achieve superior learning results.
