From E-Learning to M-Learning

One of the paradigm shifts appearing in the literature on learning is the shift from e-learning to m-learning. I think this might be as critically important to university learning strategy as it is to individual learners, whether they are on a university course, or engaged in professional practice.

Where the 'e' stood for 'electronic' now we are witnessing the potential of 'm' for 'mobile' learning.

Regrettably, I think there is absolutely no hope for universities, locked as they are in conventions of teaching stuck in a classical mentality where information was so scarce you had to attend a lecture to gain access to that information. E - learning has hardly impacted on that paradigm and now things speeds up again, with mobile technology providing new ways to engage in information gathering, synthesising and codifying.

For learners at university (if that actually means anything anymore) or in professional practice, mobile technology offers the means to access and use information anywhere at any time. There are many significances to this, not least of which is that the hierarchical ‘approval’ of knowledge (by say a learned journal) is challenged by newly emerging criteria, for example, whether the information is current.

However slow universities move, the professional needs every edge he or she can find, and m-learning adds to this armoury.

Bryan Alexander's Educause article set out some of the principles a whopping 4 years ago ... ancient history now I guess!