Teaching with Technology

Blog 7

They are everywhere and their numbers are growing. They are changing nations by changing the lives of their people. They provide access to economic opportunity even in some of the most remote places on the globe. And they are being mined for their educational possibilities as well. Mobile phones have dramatically expanded their reach and capabilities. In recent years, their prospects in the education arena are being explored. Chen et al’s, Effects of short-term memory and content representation type on mobile language learning examines ways to maximize mobile phone’s educational effectiveness as a language learning delivery system. 

If an upside of mobile learning is the availability of phones, the downsides include limitations due to small screen size and the fact that researchers have shown “that some learners cannot effectively use mobile devices for their learning (p. 93)” and there is agreement “that mobile devices such as PDA’s and mobile phones serve only as an extension for learning; they do not replace existing learning tools”. While the limits of mobile phones, as a learning delivery system, are being debated, they are a means of providing learners with access to education. 

To capitalize on mobile phone availability and to maximize some of their educational potential, the authors studied the effects that written and pictorial annotations displayed on mobile phone screens have on different types of learners.  These annotations serve to summarize the meaning of vocabulary words though pictures and written descriptions. The study considered past research regarding visual and verbal learners, people who respond well to processing and then retaining, in long term memory, information that has been provided in visual and verbal formats. Research in this study aimed to determine how well different combinations of visual and verbal annotations were received and retained by people various types of learning abilities, i.e., people with: higher visual learning abilities, higher verbal learning abilities, lower visual learning abilities, lower verbal learning abilities and all possible combinations. Also, examined was participants’ reception to the visual and verbal annotations. These results were correlated with each participant’s visual and verbal learning abilities.

These correlations revealed that “providing learning content with pictorial annotations can help learners with lower verbal and higher visual abilities” (p.106). The same was true of written annotations for learners with lower visual and higher verbal abilities. Learners with high abilities in both areas benefitted from both annotations. To some degree learners with a combination of learning abilities high in one area and low in another were helped by both annotations. However, learners with lower visual and verbal abilities “do not benefit from learning content containing both written and pictorial annotation” (p. 104) and  “more annotation causes a higher cognitive load … and prevents those learners from learning” (p. 105). Additionally, this cohort found the information provided to be irritating.

These findings are very interesting. They lead to further questions regarding possible customization of design features for mobile and other learning systems; such as a toggle feature that enables unwanted and potentially overwhelming inputs to be turned off.  But the most important find is that mobile phones, a resource that much of the world has access to, helped users to learn new vocabulary words. The possibility for mobile phones to benefit learners in other language learning applications and in other fields is promising. Even if the extent of their role as an educational delivery system is still being debated, mobile phones can provide access to education for busy professionals and for people in parts of the world who would not be able to have access otherwise.

Chen, N., et al (October 2008). Effects of short-term memory and content representation type on mobile language learning. Language Learning & Technology, (12) 3, p. 93-113. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol12num3/chenetal.pdf