Physical Isolation Versus Virtual Connection

Another prominent aspect of a M-learning environment is that there is a tendency for a higher degree of physical isolation accompanied with a higher degree of virtual connection amongst learners. Trainees may look isolated, alone, and unsocial most of the time; however, they can really be active online at various levels. They can be active interacting with online materials or communicating and collaborating with others (trainees, instructors, other online instructors, and in online groups and communities). They exchange ideas, files, and feedback, and perhaps have fun joking and interacting virtually in the same way as they used to do face-to-face, but it is in text this time, and over the distances. Instructor 7 from the PCSTU shared the following example:

It is true that trainees look isolated and only engaged with their devices, but, actually, they share a lot of information and files via the iPad. I also share with them various problems to solve in teams on their iPads, and we discuss lots of things on the iMessenger.

The importance of interaction, conversation, and collaboration in the learning process - and the role of technology in mediating it - has been grounded in the pedagogical

research. Wang and Hwang (2012) reported that “computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) plays an important role in learners’ performance. For example, it has been suggested that CSCL helps students to facilitate high order cognitive processes and to create new knowledge” (p. 679). Similarly, Kearney, Schuck, Burden, and Aubusson (2012) emphasized that social interaction, conversation, dialogue, and collaboration are essential to learning from a socio-cultural perspective as people engage in negotiating meaning. The affordances of mobile technologies highly support this argument.

M-learners can enjoy a high degree of collaboration by making rich connections to other people and resources mediated by a mobile device. This often-reported high level of networking creates shared, socially interactive environments so m-learners can readily communicate multi-modally with peers, teachers and other experts, and exchange information. (Kearney et al., 2012, p. 10)

However, learners’ heavy involvement online may be due to other reasons than social interaction, conversation, dialogue, and collaboration. Some trainees are not satisfied with the level of teaching/learning they receive at the training centre, and they tend to look for extra tutorials online. They watch other people teaching and providing more information about various topics, machines, and equipment. They become eager to listen to those ‘alternative’ instructors. A questionnaire respondent (Trainee) commented: “I spend more time watching videos explaining topics and machines that we learn about at the ITC. Sometimes, I find it more compressive and introduced in a better way.”

In this context, it is worth mentioning that mobile devices still do not stop trainees from interacting and communicating face-to-face. Features of portability and unobtrusiveness allow face-to-face communication and interaction to happen spontaneously. In fact, mobile devices facilitate additional types of interaction and communication. A questionnaire respondent (instructor) wrote:

Of course, some trainees need to chat, talk, and discuss the content to understand it. The iPad helps in both ways. If you would like to chat with classmates, you can do that whether face-to-face or online, and if you want to continue by yourself, you can go ahead, and you will find all resources to illustrate more on the content available online.

According to other studies, mobile technologies have become truly pervasive and ubiquitous (Marinagi, Skourlas, and Belsis (2013), and their ability to mediate various face-to-face and on-line forms of interaction, conversation, and collaboration results from the distinguishing feature of portability - as well as other features and multimedia capabilities - that traditional stationary technologies lacked. These

features and capabilities can enable new possibilities for learning. They can support different types of social activities and “integrate old with new learning tools: book, paper, pencil, camera, video camera, radio, computer, and telephone, to support learning that is personal, contextualised, and controlled by the learner” (Marinagi et al., 2013, p. 489). They can also facilitate distributed cognition through their ubiquity. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) argued that a characteristic of ubiquitous learning is to “connect one’s own thinking into the social mind of distributed cognition” (p. 581). Cognition has always been distributed through libraries and experts, but “today there is an immediacy, vastness and navigability of the knowledge that is on hand and accessible to the devices that have become more directly an extension of our minds” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 581).

However, instructors need to be aware of the level of face-to-face disconnection inside the classroom and at the workshops. They have to push trainees to utilize their presence for more face-to-face social interaction. In light of this, Instructor 14 from the Academic Section shared this example:

If you walk around, you may see trainees sitting in groups, but they are all looking at their own devices and not talking to each other. They may be sharing things with each other. However, I think the instructor has to push the trainees and remind them to talk to each other, ask each other questions, and compare answers and feedback.

In conclusion, instructors’ perceptions that learners are interacting less, the thing which they base on their perception that trainees are more isolated and mostly silent, is not very accurate. Trainees are actually doing a lot of synchronous or asynchronous forms of interaction and communication. Hence, it can be argued that mobile devices change the physical ways of interaction; and thus, instructors not only need to change their perceptions of what interaction is, but also revise their curriculum to adopt these changes. Conversely, educators have to investigate how these alternative types of interaction and communication impact learners’ engagement and what role they play in developing independent and lifelong learning.