Perspectives on the application experience and ubiquitous learning process

There were a total of 54% learners who had a previous experience of using mobile

pedagogy (as seen in appendix A question 20) prior to the research. Evidently the

urban school (school A) had the highest number of learners who had previous

experience of using mobile educational applications or games with more than half of

these only available in English.

The next step was to identify how many learners found that the application allowed

them to spend more time on their studies (through appendix A question 35). 89% of

learners felt that having education material on their mobile phones motivated them

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When considering additional usability concerns of mobile learning devices (through

appendix A question 28 and question 29), only 11% of learners had trouble inputting

through a mobile phone keypad, while only 25% of the learners were uncomfortable

with reading content on a mobile screen. These learners did however feel that the

font could have been increased giving better visual content.

Even though learners expressed differences during the interview process, the

majority of the learners were open to bilingual content. All of the learners felt that

mobile content allowed them to read beyond the classroom. All learners were also

able to use the application despite their lack of technology experiences.

The learners in school A which is the well-resourced school, had many views about

their application learning experience. Learner S felt that, ‘The application was easy to use and helpful. But I would suggest having audio content available as learning

while listening is often easier than having to read the content.’ The learner’s views depicted their firm background and experience in technology. All learners were keen

on using the application at home even though the use of the system was meant for

formal classroom or school based learning. Some of the learners felt that it would be

even more useful if all the offered subjects in the school had a similar supportive

application as M-Thuto. They suggested that M-Thuto should include other subjects

in it. Learner E suggested that, ‘It would have been nice if you had created a chatroom where learners can interact and talk about maths and other subjects’. The learners supported collaborative learning and felt it would also improve their

learning process. All learners found the application to be a tool that would be helpful

in not just having access to learning material but would help them in preparing for

exams. Learner F felt that, ‘The application was very involving because you would answer questions and get the step by step solution after attempting the question. I

would suggest that we could have more illustrated ways of getting to the answers of

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correct yourself afterwards.’ The learners also felt that they wanted to use the M- Thuto at home on their own mobile phones.

Some learners during the interview process felt that mobile phones would cause a

distraction to their learning process.

However when questioned (in appendix A question 36) about their motivation

towards mobile learning in the questionnaires, 94% of learners felt that having

mobile material motivates them to learn regularly on their mobile phones.

The quiz test results

In this study not all participating learners managed to complete the quiz. The results

of the quiz carried an average test result of 52% with a sample of 40 learners. As

this was a short study, the purpose of the test was not to measure their performance

but instead to hear their opinion on being able to learn through mobile phones using

all aspects of learning including the assessment part of learning. Furthermore this

study was not a longitudinal intervention study, as a result of limited resources. The

test monitoring was instead an approach of viewing the interaction between learners

and multilingual learning content as the data collection process occurred in a short

space of time which made it difficult to monitor the learner’s performance before and after the introduction of the tool. With a longitudinal study results can be observed

that can measure the performance of learners through an intervention process

following an action research method as oppose to an interpretive method.

4.7.4 Perspectives on the availability of ubiquitous bilingual learning

in mainstream education

All of the participating learners felt that having ubiquitous content would help them

improve their performance by giving them the opportunity to learn as and when they

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to ask their teachers questions in real time through the mobile learning application

even though this system did not provide the platform to do so. Throughout the study

students also verbally interacted with their teachers asking them questions related

to the tasks.

The amount of times a learner would alternate between the same content viewing it

in English and then in Setswana was also monitored. The result mentioned in the

study will only evaluate the notes pages as they hold the significant amount of

bilingual learning content. When evaluating the average learner’s interaction with the mobile application the following results were observed:

The average observations for one learner:

There were 10 pages of notes in English and equally 10 pages of notes in

Setswana. Over one week on average one learner spent 46 views on the English

pages and only 38 views on the Setswana pages.

The pattern of viewership differs per school. The rural based schools (school C and

D) had the highest percentages of views on their Setswana pages per day followed

by the township school (school B) and the urban based school (school A).

4.7.5 Perspectives on the user interface and usability of the