From your point of view, what are the advantages of mobile technologies over Internet-based models for SADC countries?

Jon Gregson: I think that the more recent smart phones and PDAs offer a lot of powerful features in a portable handheld device that can be used anytime and anywhere. One single device can support communication, image and video capture, sound recording, and viewing of multimedia files stored on memory cards that are becoming increasingly affordable.

The cost and coverage of 3G and GPRS services is still very expensive and this is a limitation, but this will change, and overall the rate of diffusion of mobile technologies is far more rapid than the diffusion of internet access on PCs, which require a reliable source of electricity.

Actually I don't see the eLearning and mLearning models as mutually exclusive, but as complementary and part of range of tools that can provide a blended solution to learners. The best blend will depend on the profile and preferences of the learner and the infrastructure and technologies available to them.

Could you please give us a brief overview on the outline of your mLearning project?

Jon Gregson: I am Programme Director for a global distance-learning programme, with over a thousand postgraduate students based in over one hundred countries. In recent years, we have been fortunate to get over one hundred Commonwealth scholarship awards for students based in the SADC region. Our students are studying courses such as 'Sustainable Development', 'Managing Rural Change', and 'Environmental Management', and we will soon be launching a course in 'Poverty Reduction'.

We supply the students with printed and CD-based study materials and have an online learning environment, but we wanted to consider ways to improve our tutoring and support to these students. We started with some face-to-face workshops in-country, but for practical reasons, we became increasingly interested in considering mLearning.

The students mainly have full-time jobs, but a lot of them spend 1-3 months each year doing field-based work, which could present a problem in regard to Internet access and the use of CD courseware. We are using this project to pilot how we could redesign course materials and learning activities for use on a handheld mobile device and explore options for tutoring in new ways.

Overall, we have more than fifty course modules, so we are also trying to look to the longer term, and as we update these modules, we can prepare for the situation in two to three years time when the coverage and costs of mobile technologies will probably have changed significantly.

What has been done so far?

Jon Gregson: The first step we took was to conduct a survey asking all our SADC-based students to tell us more about themselves, their context, and their level of ICT access and literacy. This was very informative. We discovered that all had mobile phones, most had email, and many had access to a PC linked to the Internet (usually at work or via a cybercafe). They also tended to travel a lot and rated themselves highly in terms of ICT literacy.

We then invited four students based in Malawi and Tanzania to help us as part of the project team. We visited and interviewed them to understand more about the context and get their perspective on the opportunities for mobile learning. They identified the Nokia N70 as a suitable phone to try out during the project, based on the features it has that can support education, and the opportunity for local maintenance.

They tested this phone for us in 2006 in a variety of ways, including sending SMSs to us, capturing video, images, and sound, and transferring them to a PC and emailing the files to us as attachments. During the project, we are communicating in this way mainly to keep data transfer costs down, though eventually we would hope that files can be sent affordably direct from the phone.

This encouraged us towards the opinion that our students don't need a lot of support to use some of the more powerful features of mobile phones. Obviously we are looking for an approach that would be scalable, so this support issue was a concern. Based on this success, we have now moved on to the next stage of our pilot which has involved developing materials for two course modules - 'Rural Development' and 'ICT for Development' - that can be used on the N70 phone.


Phones and materials for the initial units of these two modules have been supplied this year to twenty students based in developing countries, most of whom are in Southern Africa.

The students are now starting to make use of the mobile content alongside their traditional course packs of printed and CD-based materials. The module tutors were involved in the instructional design process, which focusses on the multimedia potential of the mobile device, since the screen is too small to support a lot of reading. We are currently working on three main issues.

The first is replacement content, where short audio or video could illustrate concepts instead of text. The next is the design of different types of learning activity that enable students to capture audio and video and submit a small work portfolio. Finally, we're seeking enhancements to the process of tutoring from a distance that make use of the mobile technology.

Which instructional design challenges underlie the recent developments of mobile learning?

Jon Gregson: Well to start with, the obvious ones. For example, the screen size imposes limitations that make an emphasis on text difficult. For our programme, where the subjects are typically social science students, this imposes a challenge, as it's not easy to represent concepts through graphics. However, we are learning rapidly about how to make simple videos and are making increasing use of audio. The compression formats (typically mp3 and 3gp) impose some constraints on quality, and we hope to learn from our pilot project what students find acceptable.

As time goes by, the cost of storage cards is decreasing rapidly, so file formats become less of an issue, but we are noticing that the speed of the phone in processing multimedia files slows down if they are large, so we have some similar stages to go through as happened with the evolution of the PC. However, I think that within a couple of years we will be able to do a lot of what we would like at a reasonably high standard of quality and performance.

In our situation, the instructional designer has to become skilled at thinking of how best to transform text-based material and indeed whether to do this at all. We are discovering that a lot depends on the subject matter. For example our 'rural development' module can be read, as it is essentially a narrative that progresses, so we are trying out audio alternatives to the unit text. We are also developing quick quizzes for this module, so that students can test their basic understanding in 'learning moments' when they have a few minutes to turn on the phone and do a quick review.

By contrast, the content of the 'ICT for Development' module is more technical and interactive, and the student needs to look at pictures and diagrams, so recording an audio version of the material does not work so well. We have considered our options here differently and have produced some video interviews with the author, and are thinking of producing some short videos with people from the ICT industry.

We are also developing an interesting series of activities actually using the mobile phone as an example of an ICT tool that can be used to contribute to development. The student is asked to work through the activities using the phone and then to reflect on some of the key learning in relation to the study material.

Either way the process is time consuming and potentially expensive, but I believe there is potential to involve the students in the process to everyone's benefit. So for example, students could record audio versions of units (using the phone) and share these with each other, and accessibility might even be helped by using local accents.

How do you see the future of mLearning in Africa?

Jon Gregson: I think a lot depends on the profile of the students as well as the context. Our programme is untypical insofar as it mainly has students employed in well-established organisations who can make use of the Internet. In this situation, mobile technologies provide an additional tool that can complement other approaches and make new ways of supporting teaching and learning possible.

I am personally very excited by the renewed emphasis on audio-visual content, for which mobile technologies provide ideal support. The mobile phone is also rapidly becoming ubiquitous, and when you have so much capability in one device, including voice communication and messaging services, you have a technology that is very flexible and convenient. Alongside this, the development of podcasting and mobile blogging add new ways of sharing information and publishing your thoughts globally from wherever you are.

This begins to transform distance learning and to make it something that can be part of everyday life. It creates a different paradigm and learning experience, and students can share materials (in the form of images, audio, and video) with each other and actually be involved in the creation of content from which other students can learn.

Mobile learning is ideal for mobile people who want to study while they travel or wherever they are at any given time. I believe it will become a mainstream approach within organisations for supporting professional development and lifelong learning. I am not really the one to make this claim, but I also have a strong feeling that it fits well with the oral traditions and immediacy of the African culture. Once the price of data services comes down and the infrastructure and coverage improve, this approach to supporting learning could become truly transformative in improving peoples lives and access to education.