Mobile Learning in Classrooms: Benefits of m-Learning

Colleges and universities are using M-Learning to help students perform tasks by providing information, guidance, and learning experiences when and where required.

   1. Puts training and performance support where the actual work takes place.
   2. Allows students new skills or knowledge to be immediately applied
   3. Enables student training when it is needed
   4. Allows use of rich media when appropriate
   5. Builds a community of practice
   6. Connecting and continuously sync training to back-end systems

Some of the examples of colleges using Mobile learning to thrived in educational environments

   1. Hastings College used ipods with construction students
   2. Leeds College of Building used netbooks and mobile phones with construction learners
   3. St Helens College used Sony PSP’s with electrical engineering students
   4. Walsall College used Nintendo DS games handhelds with some disaffected and disengaged learners where they reported: This programme has seen learners enjoying education again and the number of exclusions is down by 65 per cent.

One of the better ways to find out the value of training in financial terms is to measure the return on investment (ROI) of your training programs. Mobile based training using iPad and other smart phones have proved to be very effective devices for future and have already made several significant claims: Saves time without decaying learning benefits; minimizes travel costs; minimizes time away from work; cost effective; can meet the needs of a geographically disperse employees; provides consistent course delivery or research materials; offer more individualized instruction; and consistently higher learning results can be achieved over traditional training.

Studies over the past few years show the following results: better learning curve as compared to traditional instruction; students had doubled higher content retention for e-learning over traditional classroom instruction; students demonstrated greater gains in learning than did students who were taught by traditional instruction.

While the most obvious impact of m-learning on ROI is the significant time and cost savings it can produce over traditional training, more significant impact on ROI can be achieved as a consequence of m-learning. Well constructed and develop m-learning tools is not only faster than classroom training but also more effective in general. Numerous studies have shown that people learn faster with such trainings; student using iPad and similar smart phones can have easy access to materials and can use the time to accurately recall what they learned over a longer period of time, and are better able to transfer what they learned to actual performance.