Active Learning, Mentoring, and Mobile Technology

Educators are creating authentic settings that utilize active learning, mobile technology, and mentoring in efforts to promote students' success in developing 21st Century skills, motivation, and interest in STEM domains and STEM careers. Each of these approaches has been found to promote and transfer knowledge, as well as to develop problem-solving and communication skills in STEM. Little information, however, is available about the interactive effect of mobile technology and active learning in promoting learning in settings that use a hierarchical model of mentoring to promote the transfer of skills and knowledge. This chapter presents findings of a program that used mobile technology in active learning environments for five interrelated levels of an active, authentic environment, facilitated by mobile technology and hierarchical mentoring. Positive outcomes were documented at each level of participation; use of the mobile technology integrated within active learning settings supported by hierarchical mentoring increased learning in STEM content, skills, and affect.