Case Study Discussion - Comparison EHWL & Dewsbury, Danby, Burton

W505 Mobile Learning
Stage 2 – 2: Mobile Technology in Higher Education


Title: Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and Dewsbury College, Thomas Danby College and Bishop Burton College

General information
• Briefly describe any background information in both cases.

At HWLC it was important was to track students to provide support to maintain enrollment challenges such as staying in a class or program.

The target for Dewsbury College was to provide learners in outreach areas similar access to learning resources as their peers on the main college campus.

At Thomas Danby College a need to increase access to technology was identified

Both Dewsbury & Thomas Danby aimed to support a wider range of learners’ needs as part of developing personalized learning program.

At Bishop Burton College, challenges exist because learning activities take place in an outdoor environment as well as in the classroom.

Analysis


1. People
What were the characteristics of the target groups in each case? Can you see any difference or similarity between the two cases?
At HWLC the college offers over 500 courses to approximately 25,000 learners over four main campus sites. At Dewsbury, distance students at outreach centers were the target group. Learners of basic skills, especially ESOL were the target at Thomas Danby. At Bishop Burton College learners were advanced with the need to transfer and integrate classroom and field learning.

HWLC and Dewsbury have similar issues – connecting a geographically dispersed student body to the advantages of proximal learning (attendance support and resource access).

Thomas Danby and Bishop Burton seem to have two very different types of learners, yet their learning needs are similar – self-paced materials, irrespective of location of learning.



2. Needs or Objectives
What educational or administrative needs did the institutions have? Compare them.

HWLC wanted to improve enrollment and decrease drop out rates.
Dewsbury wanted to empower learners through improved resource (technology) access.
Thomas Danby wanted to free up the learning pace and for students to practice to their skill level independently.
Bishop Burton wanted a lightweight and portable system for use in fieldwork that would duplicate the power of a classroom desktop.

3. Solutions
What were the solutions? How did they combine different technologies to meet their needs? Can you see any difference or similarity between the two cases? Present your findings.
HWLC used a Tablet PC, Dewsbury & Thomas Dalby used iPAQ Pocket PCs, and Bishop Burton used HP Jornada 565s and Cassiopeia® EF 800s PDAs.

HWLC had staff use the tablet in class to take attendance and transmit it to administration who could contact students about their non-attendance and help support those students by giving attention to them.

Dewsbury, Thomas Dalby and Bishop Burton had specific Flash solutions for the mobile PDA which incorporated newly created materials as well as reworking existing materials into a mobilely accessible format.

All four colleges were able to use mobile technology to provide “just in time” information to staff and learners. Adminstrators, staff, faculty and learners were all connected to materials and information in a community of practice which provided support for educational objectives and also interpersonal support.



4. Pedagogical underpinnings
Describe any pedagogical underpinnings you can find from the cases. Can you find any difference or similarity between the two? Describe your findings and thought.
While much of adult learning expects the learner to be responsible to be “in class” and prepared for the learning goals, in fact, adult learners need a lot of side support in order to adjust to the prioritization of balancing life issues with academic issues. With HWLC they were able to show interest in the students who were missing out on in class activities, thus improving attendance overall, but also the rapport for a supporting a confident student regardless of mitigating life circumstances.
Additionally, equal access for learners at outreach centers provides more opportunity as less cost to the learner to educate themselves.
Self-paced learning is a key element with a negotiated learning pedagogy like constructivism and also helps cognitively to pace the learning to what the student can handle in their zone of proximity.
Fieldwork supplemented by calculations that can be run simultaneously on site is a collaboratively efficient and promotes a natural emergence of constructivist methodology.