Here’s a sample in stream of consciousness order of results I want from a Children’s Research Center on Mobile Learning. These questions come from watching people use Tablet PCs, MID (mobile internet device), Ultra Mobile PCs, and other mobile PCs in most social institutions and organizations to acquire new information and skills, sometimes on-the-fly, sometimes by schedule and discipline.
About Learning Principles.
1. What learning principles people use to acquire new information and skills with mobile PCs. To what extent these principles correspond to those identified in experimental empirical laboratory studies, e.g., dimensions of learning? What is unique about mobile PC learning principles. What learning principles exist, but mobile learners do not use them, and why. To what extent do mobile learning principles rely on hardware, on software, and on human choice at time of learning.
2. What information and skills do people use mobile learning to acquire. Which of this learning can they acquire without the aid of mobile communications, e.g., in schools, libraries, on-the-job, and why do they use mobile learning instead. Do people learn more with mobile learning than without it?
3. What contribution does traditional schooling make to mobile learning. What affect mobile learning have on student learning rates in traditional schooling.
4. What mobile learning contribute to traditional schooling.
About an Emerging Mass Market of Independent Learning.
1. What is a mass market of independent learning. Why it exists. Where it exists, e.g., in homes, stores, employment, schools, religious centers, entertainment. How many of these markets exist. Who constitutes it/them.
2. What relationships exist between mass markets of independent learners and traditional academic schooling. What proportion of learning exists independently and in schools.gh How are these mass markets changing traditional school learning, such as children’s TV influenced entering skill levels of students.
3. Who are the most successful mobile learners and why. Are they techies, academics, financial investors, justice system operatives, politicians, students, criminals, … ? What they do differently from other learners that yields more successes.
Financing Mobile Learning.
1. What financing, e.g., personal, school budget, employer, mobile learners use to support their acquisition of new information and skills. What costs they pay and what unique and other benefits they receive with mobile learning. How they acquired that financing, and what priority that financing had in their total budget.
2. What competitive advantage mobile learners have with this financing. What financial, time, timing, and other trade-offs they make to acquire this advantage.
What results would you want to review from research on mobile learning? What’s missing from this list that would assist you?