Smartphone
Ongoing project

Innovative Mobile Pedagogies

Working together to define transformational learning using mobile technologies

Project summary

The Challenge

The practice of using mobile technologies as learning tools is limited. These technologies can potentially promote better inclusion.

The Approach

The partnership, including teachers and school leaders, designed and tested transformative mobile learning episodes using a bespoke mobile app.

The Outcome

Teachers are successfully using the project outputs and new evidence is available which identifies the key features of innovative mobile learning.

Lead academics

Funded by

Project partners

The Challenge

Despite their proven potential as learning tools, current practice with mobile technologies in schools tends to replicate – rather than transform or change – existing pedagogical practices and approaches. Many valuable opportunities are wasted as a result; especially in relation to engaging learners from diverse and marginalised backgrounds.

Where mobile technologies have been used in a transformative or innovative way, there is compelling evidence of greater engagement from learners. The results demonstrate greater social inclusion, motivation and community involvement – effectively transcending many of the boundaries and limitations of traditional schools and education.

This project advocates an innovative, developmental approach to widen the spread and reach of these isolated examples.

Designing & Evaluating Innovative Mobile Pedagogies
Where mobile technologies have been used in a transformative or innovative way, there is compelling evidence of greater engagement from learners.

The Approach

Since no single group of stakeholders is likely to be effective in tackling the problem, we developed a cross-sectoral and transnational partnership to challenge existing attitudes and practices.

This involved teacher educators in universities working with the next generation of teachers; teachers and leaders in schools; and policy makers who can legislate for sustainable change at scale. It also included an international network of schools that participated in and tested the project deliverables and outputs. The project demonstrates how the professional profile of educators across this spectrum can be strengthened to ensure that learning is responsive to the benefits and opportunities mobile technologies create.

The DEIMP project has defined what transformational learning with mobile technologies looks like, and helped stakeholders to design and evaluate transformative mobile learning episodes using a bespoke mobile app.

The app – which was developed iteratively over three design cycles – is now freely available for all schools and teachers.

The DEIMP researchers from University of Hull,  University of Technology, Sydney, National University of Ireland, Galway, PXL University of Applied Science and Arts, Belgium, InHolland University of Applied Science, Netherlands, Cardet Research and Develo
The DEIMP Research Team

Associated project publications/outputs

Burden, K., & Naylor, A. (2020). Mobile Technologies, Pedagogies and Futures. Transforming Teacher Education with Mobile Technologies, 201.

Hall, T., Connolly, C., Ó Grádaigh, S., Burden, K., Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Bottema, J., Cazemier, G., Hustinx, W., Evens, M., Koenraad, T., Makridou, E. and Kosmas, P. (2020), Education in precarious times: a comparative study across six countries to identify design priorities for mobile learning in a pandemic, Information and Learning Sciences.

Hall, T., Connolly, C. (2019) Mobile Learning in Teacher Education. TechTrends 63, pp. 644–646

Burden, K., Kearney, M., Schuck, S., & Hall, T. (2019). Investigating the use of innovative mobile pedagogies for school-aged students: A systematic literature review. Computers & Education, 138, 83-100.

Burden, K., Kearney, M., Schuck, S. & Burke, P. (2019). Principles underpinning innovative mobile learning: Stakeholders’ priorities. TechTrends 63(6), 659-668

Kearney, M., Burden, K., & Schuck, S. (2019). Disrupting education using smart mobile pedagogies. In L. Daniela (ed), Didactics of Smart Pedagogy: Smart pedagogy for technology-enhanced learning ( pp. 139-157) Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Séan Ó Grádaigh, Brendan Mac Mahon, Sinéad Ní Ghuidhir & Tony Hall (2020) Mobilising Teacher Education in Ireland: Infrastructuring the MiTE Ecosystem for Learning by Collaborative Design. In Burden, K., & Naylor, A. 2020, (Eds.) Transforming Teacher Education with Mobile Technologies. UK: Bloomsbury.

Kearney, M., Burden, K., & Schuck, S. (2020). Innovative mobile pedagogies with school-aged learners. In M. Kearney, K. Burden & S. Schuck (eds). Theorising and implementing mobile learning: Using the iPAC framework to inform research and teaching practice. Singapore: Springer.

Kearney, M., Burden, K., & Schuck, S. (2020). Designing personalised, authentic and collaborative learning with mobile devices: Confronting the challenges of remote teaching during a pandemic. In R. Ferdig, E. Baumgartner, R. Hartshorne, R. Kaplan-Rakowski, & C. Mouza (Eds). Teaching, Technology, and Teacher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Stories from the Field (pp. 661-666). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

The Impact

The project has impacted on teachers – including teacher educators in schools and universities – who have adopted and used the different project outputs.

Outputs include an original scoping study and a systematic literature review that identifies the key features of innovative mobile learning. The project also delivered a new mobile learning app, a series of case studies and an entirely new online course – where educators can find out and learn more about innovation in mobile learning.

The project has produced many academic publications and conference presentations delivering significant impact on the academic community around the world. For further details about the impact and project deliverables http://www.deimpeu.com/deliverables.html

Conferences

International DEIMP workshop at the EC-TEL Conference in Delft, The Netherlands in September 2019: http://www.deimpeu.com/ec-tel-workshop-delft-2019.html.

MiTE 2020 DEIMP papers: http://gratek.ie/mite2020/friday_conference_programme.php

Agnew, A., Mobile & Wired - Tweens in an interactive, mobile world

Kearney, M., Burden, K., Schuck,S., Using the iPAC framework to inform research and teaching practice

Flynn, P., Ó Grádaigh, S., Working in schools that have deployed tablets 1:1

Bottema, J., Marjan, F. and Marcella, P., Patterns Of Mobile Technology Use For Teaching And Learning In Five Primary Schools In The Netherlands

Koenraad, Ton. (2019). Pedagogical frameworks and principles for mobile (language) learning to support related teacher education. In Meunier, Fanny; Van de Vyver, Julie; Bradley, Linda; Thouësny, Sylvie (Eds), CALL and complexity – short papers from EUROCALL 2019 (pp. 229-235). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.38.1014

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