New Mobile Education Report of Interest

Earlier this month the GSMA, a membership organization representing the worldwide mobile communications industry, released several PDF reports on Mobile Education. The “Mobile Education in the United States” report covers the U.S. formal education sector, while “Mobile Education Landscape Report” is a global report. There are also separate reports for the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain and France.

The U.S. report examines the current adoption and uses of mobile education across primary, secondary, college, workplace, distance learning, and professional qualifications segments and explores their expected growth. A dozen use cases are examined.

The focus is on the “use of individual, portable devices (e.g. e-Readers, tablets, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and smartphones), which make use of the mobile network (i.e. are SIM-enabled).” Both learning (e.g. interactive learning), content (e.g. textbooks) and administration (e.g. school records, attendance, communications) are addressed.

Some statements of interest include:

• Mobile will increase access to up-to-date materials, will enable collaboration and strengthen learner engagement.
• An increasing number of institutions are making the shift to student’s own devices (called Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) projects in the report, but also commonly referred to as BYOD, Bring Your Own Device) and are now focusing on issues of protocol, security and addressing problems with bandwidth and network coverage so that more devices can be properly supported.
• In this atmosphere of reduced budgets, the U.S. views educational technology as a key vehicle for reducing expenditure.
• The expectation of access to a device, most typically a laptop, seems to be a given within higher education, but this year has seen many universities switching from laptops to tablets, especially iPads, or even offering both.
• Mobile Education projects are generally small and focused, certainly in the first instance, though once proven, they might extend to meet other educational needs.
• There is lots of evidence that Mobile Education can have a positive impact in these segments and there are high levels of mobile device penetration.
• There are high levels of demand from users, especially in college and higher education settings, where ownership of devices is ubiquitous and potential uses are constantly evolving.