scholarly journals Defining, Discussing and Evaluating Mobile Learning: The moving finger writes and having writ . . . .

Author(s):  
John Traxler

\Since the start of the current millennium, experience and expertise in the development and delivery of mobile learning have blossomed and a community of practice has evolved that is distinct from the established communities of 'tethered' e-Learning. This community is currently visible mainly through dedicated international conference series, of which MLEARN is the most prestigious, rather than through any dedicated journals. So far, these forms of development and delivery have focussed on short-term small-scale pilots and trials in the developed countries of Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim, and there is a taxonomy emerging from these pilots and trials that suggests tacit and pragmatic conceptualisations of mobile learning. What has, however, developed less confidently within this community is any theoretical conceptualisation of mobile learning and with it any evaluation methodologies specifically aligned to the unique attributes of mobile learning. Some advocates of mobile learning attempt to define and conceptualise it in terms of devices and technologies; other advocates define and conceptualise it in terms of the mobility of learners and the mobility of learning, and in terms of the learners’ experience of learning with mobile devices. The role of theory is, perhaps, a contested topic in a community that encompasses philosophical affiliations from empiricists to post-structuralists, each with different expectations about the scope and legitimacy of theory in their work. The mobile learning community may nevertheless need the authority and credibility of some conceptual base. Such a base would provide the starting point for evaluation methodologies grounded in the unique attributes of mobile learning. Attempts to develop the conceptualisations and evaluation of mobile learning, however, must recognise that mobile learning is essentially personal, contextual, and situated; this means it is 'noisy' and this is problematic both for definition and for evaluation. Furthermore, defining mobile learning can emphasise those unique attributes that position it within informal learning, rather than formal. These attributes place much mobile learning at odds with formal learning with its cohorts, courses, semesters, assessments, and campuses, and with its monitoring and evaluation regimes. This raises concerns for the nature of any large-scale and sustained deployment and the extent to which the unique attributes of mobile learning may be lost or compromised. Looking at mobile learning in a wider context, we have to recognise that mobile, personal, and wireless devices are now radically transforming societal notions of discourse and knowledge, and are responsible for new forms of art, employment, language, commerce, deprivation, and crime, as well as learning. With increased popular access to information and knowledge anywhere, anytime, the role of education, perhaps especially formal education, is challenged and the relationships between education, society, and technology are now more dynamic than ever. The paper explores and articulates these issues and the connections between them specifically in the context of the wider and sustained development of mobile learning.

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Marchioli ◽  
H. Bhatia ◽  
G. Sardina ◽  
L. Brandt ◽  
A. Soldati

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.


Significance Although large-scale social protest in Bahrain has been cowed over the ten years since the ‘Arab uprisings’, small-scale demonstrations recur, reflecting a base level of discontent. Mobilising issues include economic pressures, limited political representation (especially of the Shia majority) and, most recently, ties with Israel. Impacts Despite protests, Israel’s and Bahrain’s respective ambassadors will keep up high-profile activity and statements. The authorities are likely to exaggerate the role of Iranian interference in order to deepen the Sunni-Shia divide. If Riyadh manages to extricate itself from the Yemen war, that could partly reduce the pressure on Manama.


1992 ◽  
Vol 241 ◽  
pp. 443-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Neish ◽  
F. T. Smith

The basic model problem of separation as predicted by the time-mean boundary-layer equations is studied, with the Cebeci-Smith model for turbulent stresses. The changes between laminar and turbulent flow are investigated by means of a turbulence ‘factor’ which increases from zero for laminar flow to unity for the fully turbulent regime. With an attached-flow starting point, a small increase in the turbulence factor above zero is found to drive the separation singularity towards the trailing edge or rear stagnation point for flow past a circular cylinder, according to both computations and analysis. A separated-flow starting point is found to produce analogous behaviour for the separation point. These findings lead to the suggestion that large-scale separation need not occur at all in the fully turbulent regime at sufficiently high Reynolds number; instead, separation is of small scale, confined near the trailing edge. Comments on the generality of this suggestion are presented, along with some supporting evidence from other computations. Further, the small scale involved theoretically has values which seem reasonable in practical terms.


Jurnal AKTUAL ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Aisah Aisah

Rice Milling Company is rice industry’s oldest and largest classified in Indonesia, which is able to absorb more than 10 million workers, handles more than 40 million tons of grain.  Rice Milling Company agro-industy is the central point, because this is where the main product is obtained in the form of rice and raw materials for advanced processing of food and industrial products.  Rice Miling Unit in the district of OKU Timur there is some skala, ranging form small-scale, medium-scale to large-scale.  Fuctional benefits of each different scale milling is also different.  The average rice farmers often sell gabahnya to the rice milling unit closest to the place residence, whether it is large-scale, medium and small.  Rice produced by the milling-grinding different quality.  Usually when a large-scale millimg yield of rice is cleaner than the other scale.  But it does not become a reference for milling grain milling usually depends on consumer demand.  The purpose of the study are : 1.  To determine levels of volume (tonnage) and the retention time of each service fuctional rice storage (barns) wich carried a different scale rice milling unit.  2.  To determine differences in the bebefits of economic transactions received by farmers and rice millers of different scale of business, especially when seen from the level of the milling costs, the purchase price of rice by rice milling unit, and the quality of milling services and service scale.  The result show that : the fuctional role of each is different milling.  Large-scale milling has three fuctional roles are : Processing, storage and distribution.  Medium-scale miling functional has two roles, namely : processing and distribution.  While small-scale rice milling unit has only two functional roles are : processing and storage.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
PER NILSSON

This study examines informal hypothesis testing in the context of drawing inferences of underlying probability distributions. Through a small-scale teaching experiment of three lessons, the study explores how fifth-grade students distinguish a non-uniform probability distribution from uniform probability distributions in a data-rich learning environment, and what role processes of data production play in their investigations. The study outlines aspects of students’ informal understanding of hypothesis testing. It shows how students with no formal education can follow the logic that a small difference in samples can be the effect of randomness, while a large difference implies a real difference in the underlying process. The students distinguish the mode and the size of differences in frequencies as signals in data and used these signals to give data-based reasons in processes of informal hypothesis testing. The study also highlights the role of data production and points to a need for further research on the role of data production in an informal approach to the teaching and learning of statistical inference. First published December 2020 at Statistics Education Research Journal: Archives


This chapter extends the book’s insights about nature, technology, and nation to the larger history of the modern period. While the modern nation loses its grip as a locus of identity and analysis, attempts to understand the operation, disruption, and collapse of continental and global infrastructures continue to mix the natural and the machinic in ways that define them both. Those vulnerabilities emphasize large-scale catastrophe; historiographically, they mask the crucial role of small-scale failures in the experience and culture of late modernity, including its definition of nature. Historical actors turned the uneven geographical distribution of small-scale failures into a marker of distinctive local natures and an element of regional and national identity. Attending to those failures helps not only situate cold-war technologies in the larger modern history of natural and machinic orders; it helps provincialize the superpowers by casting problematic “other” natures as central and primary.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirleyana ◽  
Scott Hawken ◽  
Riza Yosia Sunindijo ◽  
David Sanderson

Purpose This paper aims to discuss what people perceive as risks and resilience factors, and how they build everyday resilience. Design/methodology/approach The study focuses on Kampung (literally “village”) Plampitan, a neighbourhood in the inner-city part of Surabaya. The research used field observation, in-depth interviews and workshops during community meetings to collect data. Findings The results show how people respond to daily risks and find the support necessary to survive. The problems and risks revealed in the study include crime and economic difficulties, such as unemployment and insufficient income. Coping strategies identified are classified into place-based adaption, people-based network and political network. These strategies can serve as a starting point for local communities to assess their resilience and assist them in enhancing “everyday” resilience. Originality/value The paper argues that the concept of resilience must go beyond top-down approaches to disaster risk management and integrate bottom-up understanding from the perspective of local people, especially among marginal and disadvantaged communities. The paper develops the emerging and overlooked concept of “everyday resilience” and suggests that it is essential in surviving both “everyday” or small-scale chronic risks and large-scale disasters.


1994 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 159-171
Author(s):  
Ester Antonucci

The coronal features observed in X-ray emission, varying from the small-scale, short-lived bright points to the large-scale, long-lived coronal holes, are closely associated with the coronal magnetic field and its topology, and their variability depends strongly on the solar cycle. Here we discuss the spatial distribution of the coronal structures, the frequency distribution of the brightness variations in active regions, and the role of magnetic reconnection in determining the variability of the coronal features, on the basis of the new observations of the soft X-ray emission recently obtained with the Yohkoh satellite and the NIXT experiment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Martiniello ◽  
Nicola Paparella

Abstract The great potential of mobile learning devices hooks up these new contexts that are, above all, cultural and social, but also organisational and relational, forcing us to reconsider fundamental themes of pedagogical discourse. Among these themes, the first must be the construction of the student’s identity and, connected to this, the issue of personalised education. Let us consider, for instance, the by-now familiar distinction between formal, informal and non-formal. Compared with formal learning, we have always considered the two conditions of informal and non-formal education as independent or at least parallel, but essentially distinct and fundamentally different. In the moment in which teaching is done through mobility, and therefore with the effects of interference in contexts completely different from those that are somewhat predictable by the designer of distance learning, can we still think of a "distinction" between formal and informal or, at least, should we not assume a sort of context cross-breeding? The question does not arise from considerations of quantitative, but instead arises from qualitative, evaluations. In our opinion, here exists a paradigm: the learning context not only escapes the teaching team’s realm of predictability, but somehow eludes even the predictability of the learner, and indeed, it is the very nature of the context that takes completely different characteristics and connotations. We are on the verge of justifying a major revision of some paradigms that relate to the nature of the context, the role of the teacher and the position (in the sociological sense) of the student, which also affect the nature of the message and, more generally, the “entire educational setting”. It means working in this direction.


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