I rather quickly skimmed over this paper on “m-learning” after listening to a presentation on m-learning at a conference I recently attended. The concept certainly isn’t new to me. m-learning has been getting a lot of attention recently, so the authors’ review of definitions of the concept is much appreciated. But these authors are obviously not talking about “learning” as such. They go to great lengths to formalize the term “learning”, as in “formal education”. The cited definitions refer to “a form of education …” and “any educational provision …”, and the somewhat over-the-top, “the process of coming to know, by which learners in cooperation with their peers and teachers, construct transiently stable interpretations of their world.” So, basically, all of the definitions frame the concept of m-learning in the context of traditional education, involving a teacher and delivered instruction.
Definitions that overemphasize formal educational structures obscure a lot of the meaningful learning accomplished with casual use of mobile technologies. For example, if I come across a nice flower during a walk and use my smartphone to figure out what it is, I have undeniably learned something. This does not qualify as m-learning, however, because, according to the definitions provided in the paper, it was not in the context of “education” and did not involve a teacher. But, how is this learning any less significant for me, the learner, than if a teacher had been involved?
So, how would I define m-learning? Simple – it’s any and all learning that occurs through the use of mobile technologies. There’s no need for any conditionalities. Does this broad definition diminish the potential value of mobile technologies for purposive learning? Not at all. In fact, I think it provides a basis for developing a lot more effective and innovative ways to integrate technology into learning. Mobile technologies have the potential to facilitate experiential and informal learning in ways that we could only have dreamed of once.
If we can’t acknowledge those informal aspects of learning and find ways to accommodate them in formal educational contexts, we run the risk of ending up with a learning dichotomy (I think that a lot of high tech societies are already well on their way down that path). On the one hand we have learning that produces meaningful knowledge that is immediately useful in everyday situations. On the other hand we have learning that produces knowledge that serves specific purposes in the context of the educational system and related institutions (ex. taking tests). I find that a neither useful nor attractive future.