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Background: This paper examines the use of augmented reality (AR) as a concept‐association tool in schools, with the aim of enhancing primary school students' learning outcomes and engagement. Conflicting findings exist in previous studies regarding the cognitive load of AR‐enriched learning, with some reporting reduced load and others indicating increased demand and poorer performance. Understanding these implications is essential for effectively leveraging AR in education. The study offers a fresh perspective on the potential of AR technology in improving educational experiences. Objectives: The primary goal of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of an AR‐assisted concept‐association strategy for improving essential knowledge acquisition and skills outcomes, increasing cognitive load, and increasing self‐efficacy and learning motivation among primary school students. Methods: A quasi‐experimental design with a control group was employed to investigate the effectiveness of the intervention. Results and Conclusions: The results demonstrate that the implementation of the AR‐assisted concept‐association strategy effectively enhanced essential knowledge acquisition and skills outcomes, increased cognitive load, and increased self‐efficacy and learning motivation among primary school students. These findings highlight the potential of AR technology to improve the learning experience and engagement of primary school students. The study contributes to the existing literature on the effectiveness of AR technology in education, suggesting future research directions. Ultimately, it offers a practical solution for improving the learning experience by presenting a new approach for teaching using AR technology. Lay Description: What is currently known about this topic: Augmented reality (AR) technology has been increasingly explored in educational settings.Previous research has shown that AR can enhance learning outcomes and engagement among students.AR applications have the potential to serve as concept‐association tools to improve the learning experience. What this paper adds: This paper investigates the effectiveness of using an AR application as a mobile concept‐association tool in school settings.The study demonstrates that the AR‐assisted concept‐association strategy effectively enhances knowledge acquisition, skills outcomes, cognitive load, self‐efficacy, and learning motivation among primary school students.The findings highlight the potential of AR technology in improving learning experiences and engagement for primary school students.The study offers practical implications for integrating AR technology into educational settings, and suggests avenues for future research in this area. Implications for practice and/or policy: Incorporating AR applications as concept‐association tools can enhance learning outcomes and engagement in primary school settings.AR technology can be used to increase cognitive load, and to increase self‐efficacy and motivation among students.Educators and policymakers should consider integrating AR technology into teaching practices to improve the overall learning experience.Future research and exploration should be conducted to understand the full potential and limitations of AR technology in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One main objective of art education is to foster students' art evaluation as well as their creative thinking ability. Engaging students in artwork sharing and peer feedback is a frequently adopted approach in school settings. However, most students have difficulties providing constructive comments during the peer-feedback process. To address this issue, a mobile-based progressive peer feedback approach was proposed to facilitate primary school students' creative thinking performance, metacognitive awareness, and learning attitude. A quasi-experiment was implemented with two intact classes in a primary school in northern Taiwan to investigate the effect of the proposed approach. One class was assigned to be the experimental group (n = 20) which learned with the proposed progressive peer-feedback scaffolding approach, and the other was the control group (n = 20) which learned with the conventional feedback approach. The findings indicated that the proposed progressive peer feedback approach had a positive effect on the primary school students' creative art thinking. The experimental group students' metacognitive awareness was also significantly enhanced. Besides, the students from the experimental group considered that the proposed progressive peer feedback approach was beneficial to helping them critically reflect on their drawings, and facilitated their understanding of how to improve the integrity of their drawings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, collaborative game-based learning has been used to facilitate students' learning in authentic learning contexts. Although several previous studies have reported the potential of this approach for students' learning performance and motivation, unequal participation could negatively influence the learning effectiveness of collaborative learning. To this end, this study developed a mandatory contribution-based collaborative gaming approach (MCCG) to enhance the competencies for conducting practical solutions related to environmental issues during a cross-field learning activity between a school and a museum. MCCG and a conventional collaborative gaming approach (CCG) were implemented to investigate the effects of individual contributions on collaborative learning. Both individual learning achievements and collaborative learning outcomes were assessed. The results showed that game-based collaboration supports can support competency-based education to enhance students' competencies, such as problem-solving and critical thinking competencies. Those students who learned with the mandatory contribution approach had better collaborative learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a peer assessment-based mobile learning approach was implemented and evaluated in a vocational design certification course. A quasi-experiment was conducted to explore the impact of the proposed approach on the learning achievements and motivations of the students with active and reflective styles. It was found that the students using the peer assessment-based mobile learning approach generally learned better than those using the conventional mobile learning approach. It was also found that there were interactive effects between learning approaches and learning styles on intrinsic motivation. The students with an active learning style outperformed those with a reflective style in intrinsic motivation when conducting the peer assessment-based mobile learning. Active learning style students also had higher extrinsic motivation than those with a reflective learning style when conducting mobile learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In professional training, it is important to provide students with opportunities to make judgments on practical cases. However, most training courses are conducted in a one-to-many teaching mode, and it is not easy to consider the needs of individual students. In this study, a technology-supported Decision, Reflection, and Interaction (DRI)-based professional training approach is proposed to cope with this problem for those courses aiming at fostering students' competence in making correct judgments when facing real cases. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an experiment was conducted. Two classes of 38 students from a nursing school were the participants. One class was an experimental group using the DRI-based professional training approach, and the other class was the control group using the conventional technology-assisted training approach. The experimental results showed that applying the proposed approach significantly improved the students' learning achievement and self-efficacy more than the conventional technology-assisted approach. In addition, based on the interview results, the students generally believed that learning through the DRI-based professional training approach benefited them from several perspectives, including "increasing the value of activities", "enhancing the planning and expensive capacity of conspicuous approaches", "promoting decision-making", "improving learning reflection", and "providing students with personalized interaction". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project-based learning (PBL) aims to foster students' problem-solving ability and collaboration by engaging them in completing a project in teams. Researchers have indicated the importance of guiding students to make comparisons and reflection during the process of project-based learning. Therefore, the present research proposed a peer assessment-based PBL (PA-PBL) approach to boost students' PBL performances. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted for 3 weeks. A total of 110 secondary students were divided into an experimental group learning with the PA-PBL approach and a control group learning with the conventional PBL (C-PBL) approach. The students' problem-solving tendency, learning achievement, and collaboration tendency were evaluated. The experimental results indicated that the PA-PBL approach improved the students' learning achievement, especially for those students with higher problem-solving tendency. In terms of collaboration tendency, it was found that the PA-PBL approach benefited the lower problem-solving tendency students more than the C-PBL approach, while there was no difference between the higher problem-solving tendency students in the two groups. The experimental results also indicated that the PA-PBL approach could better enhance students' problem-solving tendencies than the C-PBL approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fostering students' competence in applying interdisciplinary knowledge to solve problems has been recognized as an important and challenging issue globally. This is why STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education has been emphasized at all levels in schools. Meanwhile, the use of robotics has played an important role in STEM learning design. The purpose of this study was to fill a gap in the current review of research on Robotics-based STEM (R-STEM) education by systematically reviewing existing research in this area. This systematic review examined the role of robotics and research trends in STEM education. A total of 39 articles published between 2012 and 2021 were analyzed. The review indicated that R-STEM education studies were mostly conducted in the United States and mainly in K-12 schools. Learner and teacher perceptions were the most popular research focus in these studies which applied robots. LEGO was the most used tool to accomplish the learning objectives. In terms of application, Technology (programming) was the predominant robotics-based STEM discipline in the R-STEM studies. Moreover, project-based learning (PBL) was the most frequently employed learning strategy in robotics-related STEM research. In addition, STEM learning and transferable skills were the most popular educational goals when applying robotics. Based on the findings, several implications and recommendations to researchers and practitioners are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators have indicated the need to foster students' ability to solve problems by acquiring up‐to‐date knowledge as well as promoting their competences for making decisions from diverse perspectives based on the acquired knowledge. Traditional courses mainly use lecture‐based instruction without providing sufficient opportunities for students to practice and interact with the teacher; therefore, it is difficult to deliver such up‐to‐date knowledge via traditional instruction, not to mention fostering students' critical thinking. In this study, the Mobile technology–supported Decision, Reflection and Exercise (MDRE) model is proposed to address this problem. Moreover, a learning system is developed based on the proposed approach. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a quasi‐experiment was conducted in a university with a two‐group pretest posttest design to assess participants' learning achievement, critical thinking and learning satisfaction. The participants were two classes of undergraduate students. One class with 37 students was the experimental group learning with the MDRE learning approach, whereas the other class with 37 students was the control group learning with the conventional technology‐based learning approach. Analysis of covariance was performed to evaluate the effect of the intervention on the target outcomes. It was found that the experimental group showed better learning achievement, critical thinking and learning satisfaction than the control group. This implies that the MDRE approach has good potential in helping learners think from diverse perspectives and promoting their learning performance and engagement, which is important in higher education aimed at fostering students' competence of acquiring up‐to‐date knowledge for solving problems. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Fostering students' problem‐solving competence is an important educational objective.The advancement of mobile and wireless communication technologies provides opportunities for students to acquire up‐to‐date information for solving problems.In the conventional technology‐enhanced professional learning mode, instructors generally use computers to present learning content and exemplary cases. In such a learning mode, learners have few opportunities to think in depth.What this paper adds A Mobile technology–supported Decision, Reflection and Exercise (MDRE) approach is proposed to guide students to make decisions and think from diverse perspectives via acquiring up‐to‐date information using a mobile application.An experiment was conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.The experimental results showed that the MDRE approach is able to boost students' creative thinking tendency and learning satisfaction as well as promoting their learning achievement.Implications for practice and/or policy The MDRE approach has great potential for professional training aiming to foster students' learning achievement, critical thinking and learning satisfaction.It is suggested that researchers and school teachers can apply the MDRE approach to other professional courses, such as nursing training programs and business planning courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile learning strategies have been employed for social learning activities, including library- and museum-supported learning. Previous studies have reviewed the literature from the technological aspect. However, a retrospective study from the perspective of bibliometric and network structure has not yet been provided. The aim of this study was therefore to systematically review journal papers on library-supported mobile learning (LibML). A coding framework including library types, mobile learning strategies, and research issues was adopted based on the literature and was used to screen and categorize the research papers. A co-citation network analysis was then adopted to analyze and visualize the structural relationships among the papers. A total of 53 eligible articles with 1370 citations in follow-up studies were collected from the Scopus database. The results showed that two main research streams of LibML were identified from the overall network structure, including library- and museum-supported mobile learning. In terms of the mobile learning strategy, library-supported research mainly focused on self-directed learning, whereas museum-supported research emphasized inquiry-based learning. In terms of research issues, most library-supported research focused on patrons' affective engagement, whereas museum-supported research emphasized learning performance. This study provides a citation-based approach to reveal the research trends and mainstream LibML research. The main contribution of combining co-citation and social network analysis is to provide a visualized network diagram of LibML research. Limitations of the methodological approach are noted. Discussion and future directions from the follow-up study are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) is reported to be beneficial for improving English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' language learning skills. Although some studies have concentrated on utilising a MALL application's (app) affordances for improving EFL learners' overall speaking performance, there is as yet little empirical evidence of its effectiveness in terms of developing EFL learners' speaking skills and motivation-relevant factors. To tackle this knowledge gap, the current study adopted a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the utilisation of a MALL app's affordances for developing EFL learners' speaking skills (including fluency and coherence, lexicon, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation), foreign language enjoyment (FLE), and language-specific grit (LSG). With this aim in mind, we used blocked randomisation applying computer-generated random numbers to equally distribute 66 EFL learners across two groups. Corroborating the adequacy of the sample size via power analysis, the two groups were randomly assigned to a MALL group (33 EFL learners) and a face-to-face group (33 EFL learners). The MALL learners had interactive speaking activities inside the class and utilised the MALL app for their out-of-class interactive speaking activities. On the other hand, the face-to-face learners had interactive speaking activities both inside the class and in a language learning laboratory in addition to the class time serving as supplementary interactive speaking activities. An IELTS speaking test, an FLE scale, and an LSG scale were used to collect the required quantitative data, and an individual semi-structured interview was conducted to gather the qualitative data. Running one-way ANCOVA to analyse the quantitative data, the findings indicated that both MALL and face-to-face instruction developed the EFL learners' overall speaking performance, speaking skills, FLE, and LSG; however, the MALL learners outperformed their face-to-face counterparts on all measures. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis uncovered several themes and categories addressing the MALL learners' positive and negative attitudes towards and perceptions of the utilisation of the MALL app's affordances, which could explain the quantitative findings. The findings are useful for EFL learners and instructors interested in utilising MALL apps' affordances in their interactive speaking courses. • Mobile app affordances help develop EFL learners' speaking skills. • Mobile app affordances enhance EFL learners' foreign language enjoyment. • Mobile app affordances improve EFL learners' language-specific grit. • Learners hold positive perceptions towards the affordances of mobile apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Analects of Confucius has been identified as an important and influential philosophy around the globe. However, in traditional instruction, it is difficult to express the spirit of this philosophy. Therefore, many students consider it as a big challenge to study the Analects of Confucius. To cope with this problem, in this study, an interactive e-book system has been developed based on the contextual learning model to interpret the Analects of Confucius in an interactive way. A quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The participants were 38 fifth graders from 2 classes in an elementary school located in northern Taiwan, who were divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group used an interactive e-book learning mode to learn the Analects of Confucius course while the control group used a conventional technology enhanced teaching mode. The results showed that adopting the interactive e-book teaching mode to study the Analects of Confucius in the elementary school course can promote students' learning achievement and motive. It was also found that the interactive e-book learning mode can trigger learners' deep motive, and hence promote their learning achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of nursing training include not only mastering skills but also fostering the competence to make decisions for problem solving. In prenatal education, cultivating nurses' knowledge and competence of vaccine administration is a crucial issue for protecting pregnant women and newborns from infection. Therefore, obstetric vaccination knowledge has become a basic and essential training program for nursing students. However, most of these training programs are given via the lecture‐based teaching approach with skills practice, providing students with few opportunities to think deeply about the relevant issues owing to the lack of interaction and context. This could have a negative impact on their learning effectiveness and clinical judgment. To address this problem, a mobile chatbot‐based learning approach is proposed in this study to enable students to learn and think deeply in the contexts of handling obstetric vaccine cases via interacting with the chatbot. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was implemented. Two classes of 36 students from a university in northern Taiwan were recruited as participants. One class was the experimental group learning with the proposed approach, while the other class was the control group learning with the conventional approach (ie, giving lectures to explain the instructional content and training cases). The results indicate that applying a mobile chatbot for learning can enhance nursing students' learning achievement and self‐efficacy. In addition, based on the analysis of the interview results, students generally believed that learning through the mobile chatbot was able to promote their self‐efficacy as well as their learning engagement and performance. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Issues relevant to AI technology in education have been extensively discussed and explored around the world.Among the various AI systems, the potential of chatbots has been highlighted by researchers owing to the user‐friendly interface developed using the natural language processing (NLP) technology.Few studies using AI chatbots in professional training have been conducted.What this paper adds In this study, a mobile chatbot was used in a nursing training program to enhance students' learning achievement and self‐efficacy for handling vaccine cases.The mobile chatbot significantly improved the students' learning achievement and self‐efficacy in comparison with the conventional learning approach in the vaccine training program.From the interview results, it was found that the students generally believed that the mobile chatbot was able to promote their self‐efficacy as well as learning engagement and performances in the vaccine training program.Implications for practice and/or policy Mobile chatbots have great potential for professional training owing to their convenient and user‐friendly features.It would be worth applying mobile chatbots as well as other NLP‐based applications to other professional training programs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancements in technology networks, mobile learning has been extensively applied in teaching contexts, enabling closer interaction between students and authentic environments. Previous studies have indicated that, when learning in real‐world contexts, students need to interact with real learning targets and peers as well as the digital learning content; thus, effective learning strategies or tools are generally required for helping them organize knowledge and for promoting peer interactions. As a result, the present study developed a bi‐directional peer‐assessment‐based concept mapping system, which not only engages students in assessing peers' concept maps, but also encourages them to evaluate or respond to peers' ratings and comments. To explore the effectiveness of this learning system, the study conducted an experiment in elementary science classes. A total of 101 fifth graders from four classes were recruited to participate in the study. Two classes were assigned to the experimental group and two to the control group. The experimental group adopted the bi‐directional peer‐assessment approach, while the control group adopted the conventional peer assessment approach for concept mapping. The results reveal that the bi‐directional peer‐assessment‐based concept mapping system can not only increase students' learning achievement and the completeness of their concept mapping, but can also enhance their critical thinking tendency and the feedback quality of their peer assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to investigate the trends of mobile learning in physical education by reviewing the journal publications from the Scopus database. Several dimensions, including application domains, adopted mobile devices, research methods, research subjects, adopted teaching strategies, research issues, and learning locations are taken into account. The results show that the number of mobile learning papers in physical education has increased year after year, and that the integration of new mobile technologies into physical education activities is becoming much more common. The adoption of mobile devices in physical education and professional training, especially for the development of smartphones and wearable devices, facilitates the abundance of physical education and the growth of social physical education; however, the overall usage of such high-tech devices as wearable technologies is still limited. Most attention has been paid to communities on university campuses, but more focus should be placed on junior and senior high school and elementary school students. Currently, the types of sports involved in mobile learning are comparatively few; most focus on dynamic physical education. The application of mainstream teaching strategies of mobile learning in physical education is also limited. Accordingly, several research issues for mobile technologies in physical education are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Technology-based Learning model, the present study reviews the published papers on mobile technologies in Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism (HLST) education in the Scopus database from 2002 to 2017. Various dimensions, including application domains, research issues, research sample groups, research methods, adopted technologies, and learning strategies are taken into account. It was found that, since 2010, the research issues of mobile technology-supported HLST education have become increasingly diverse. Most of the studies investigated learners' affect issues, while there was also a focus on learners' attitudes, motivation and learning experiences. Moreover, wireless Internet locating (e.g. Bluetooth or Zigbee) was adopted more frequently in mobile technology-supported HLST education, while sensing technologies were seldom adopted. As for mobile devices, with the development of technologies, smart phones and tablet computers became the main devices. In addition, such extensively adopted mobile learning strategies as synchronous sharing, issue-based discussion, computers as mindtools, and game-based learning were not adopted in the studies, indicating that most previous studies focused more on learners' learning perceptions, knowledge delivery and skills training, while less effort has been made to cultivate learners' higher order thinking, such as problem solving, critical thinking and collaborative competences. Accordingly, potential research issues and practitioner notes of mobile technology-supported HLST education are proposed as a reference for researchers, teachers and decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several previous studies have emphasized the importance of situating students in authentic learning or problem‐solving contexts to enhance their learning performances. However, some challenges of situated learning have been stated, such as the lack of effective learning support or concrete objective design to improve students' learning engagement, problem‐solving competences and their active thinking. In this study, a mobile technology‐supported experiential learning system was developed to improve students' problem‐solving competences as well as their learning performances, attitudes and collective efficacy. Moreover, an experiment was conducted on an environmental science course in an elementary school to compare the effects of this method with those of the conventional situated mobile learning approach on students' learning effectiveness. The experimental results display that the implemented approach can significantly enhance students' learning achievements, environmental attitudes and collective efficacy; furthermore, the students who learned with the implemented approach showed higher problem‐solving competence than those who learned with the conventional situated mobile learning approach, implying a noticeable reference for conducting experiential learning activities in environmental science education. Furthermore, the promotion of students' active thinking in the mobile technology‐supported experiential learning is discussed. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic The importance of situating students in authentic learning or problem‐solving contexts to enhance their learning performances has been emphasized.Some challenges of situated learning have been stated, such as the lack of effective learning support or concrete objective design to improve students' learning engagement, problem‐solving competences and active thinking.Properly integrating technology into instruction is most effective in an authentic learning context.What this paper adds A mobile technology‐supported experiential learning system was designed to conduct an authentic learning activity.The proposed approach can significantly enhance students' learning achievements, environmental attitudes and collective efficacy.The students who learned with the proposed approach showed higher problem‐solving competence than those who learned with the conventional situated mobile learning approach.The promotion of students' active thinking while learning with the mobile technology‐supported experiential learning system is discussed.Implications for practice and/or policy The mobile technology‐supported experiential learning system is beneficial to students in an authentic learning environment as it triggers their active thinking.Such an approach can be designed with authentic learning activities in other courses by replacing the authentic objects and learning materials.It would be interesting to probe students' social interactions and learning patterns in an experiential collective learning activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reviewed the mobile technology-assisted language learning studies published from 2007 to 2016 in selected journals. Several critical issues were investigated, such as research methods, research issues, language and learner types, and learning outcomes. It was found that English as a foreign/second language was the most common target language; few studies have been conducted on native language learning. Early studies mainly focused on fostering learners' individual language skills, while in the recent 5 years, researchers started to consider the issue of delivering multiple language skills in authentic learning environments. In addition, an increasing number of studies have involved mixed methods and longer treatment periods. Moreover, the effectiveness of mobile learning in terms of speaking, writing, vocabulary, and pronunciation was generally identified by most of the studies. On the other hand, more evidence is needed to further confirm its impacts on listening, reading, grammar, and integrated/whole language learning. Finally, some suggestions are provided to researchers or practitioners to facilitate their future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the popularity of tablet computers and smart phones, e-books have become an important medium for both formal and informal learning. However, conventional e-books are mainly designed to provide information in the form of multimedia, implying that students spend most of their time memorizing and comprehending what they read from e-books, while seldom engaging in higher order thinking. In this study, a problem-posing framework is proposed for developing an interactive e-book for guiding students to observe and pose questions. An experiment on an elementary school natural science course was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The participants were 46 fourth-grade students. From the experimental results, it was found that the problem-posing-guiding interactive e-book can significantly improve the students' learning achievements, critical thinking tendency, and deep motive. It was also found that the proposed approach did not increase the students' cognitive load owing to the provision of proper supports during the problem-posing process, which has generally been identified as a challenging task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One form of educational inequality is the disparity that exists between urban and rural settings. Equal distribution of quality education is a challenge for developing countries due to the unavailability of resources. Various approaches to equal distribution are distance learning, telecast learning and e‐learning; however, these approaches cannot achieve the desired objectives due to their limitations. This research aimed to investigate the interesting question of whether mobile technology can bring urban and rural settings closer together. A mobile application for learning Urdu grammar was designed to measure the learning gains of fourth‐grade students at two different schools from urban and rural settings. A quantitative technique, the quasi‐experimental pre‐test and post‐test method, was used to measure the effectiveness of the mobile application. The comparison of the students' performances at the urban and rural schools illustrated the role of mobile technology in mitigating the educational gap. The present study provides evidence that children from different social backgrounds may benefit equally from mobile technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this study, we systematically reviewed the experimental mobile learning studies published in 2010–2016. Moreover, the activity theory framework was adopted to investigate the insights and trends of mobile learning. That is, the dimensions of context, tools, control, communication, subjects and objectives were employed to analyze the studies. It was found that most experimental mobile learning studies engaged students in real-world contexts, and the activities were conducted based on the existing school curriculums. This means that researchers and school teachers noted the value of situating students in meaningful learning by helping them link what they had learned from the textbooks to real-world scenarios or daily life environments. In the meantime, the studies frequently involved the students in actively using mobile systems with communication facilities to acquire knowledge via interacting with peers, events, and specified real-world learning targets in the environment. On one hand, many researchers proposed to raise students' motivation; on the other hand, they expected to observe more of what the learners, particularly novices and low-achievement students, had done when observing their past interactions. Even so, it was found that mobile devices were considered a main way of allowing students to acquire self-learning materials rather than only mediation learning across contexts. As the current studies can be considered to contain blended rather than purely self-paced learning, there is still a large space for mobile learning progress and development. Highlights • A review on experimental m-learning was done based on the activity theory framework. • The studies published in 2010–2016 were investigated to find the trends of m-learning. • The context, tool, control, communication, subject and objective aspects were analyzed. • The phenomena of the m-learning activities conducted in the studies were reported. • Possible research issues of m-learning in the future were proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have pointed out that interactive e-books have rich content and interactive features which can promote students’ learning interest. However, researchers have also indicated the need to integrate effective learning supports or tools to help students organize what they have learned so as to increase their learning performance, in particular, for abstract and complex learning content such as that in law courses. In this study, a concept-mapping-based interactive e-book learning mode was proposed. To understand the learning effects, a quasi-experimental design was used to compare the learning achievement and motivation of the students learning with the proposed approach (experimental group) and those learning with conventional interactive e-books (control group) in a junior high school fundamental law course. Meanwhile, the learning achievement and motivation of the students with different learning styles were also explored. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach significantly improved the students’ learning achievement, especially for the active-style students; moreover, it was found that the lead-in of concept mapping did not affect the students’ learning motivation. Factors that might affect the students’ learning achievement and motivation with the concept-mapping-based interactive e-book approach are discussed accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Augmented reality (AR) has been recognized as a potential technology to help students link what they are observing in the real world to their prior knowledge. One of the most challenging issues of AR-based learning is the provision of effective strategy to help students focus on what they need to observe in the field. In this study, a competitive gaming approach is proposed to support AR-based learning activities conducted in real-world contexts. An experiment has been conducted on an elementary school ecology course to explore the effectiveness of the proposed approach in comparison with the conventional AR-based mobile learning approach in field trips. The experimental results show that the AR-based gaming approach can improve not only students' learning attitudes, but also their learning performance on the field trip. Accordingly, discussions and some suggestions for future work are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a problem-posing strategy is proposed for supporting collaborative mobile learning activities. Accordingly, a mobile learning environment has been developed, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Three classes of an elementary school in southern Taiwan participated in the experiment. One class was the experimental group who learned with the problem-posing-based mobile learning approach, while the other two classes were the control groups who learned with the conventional mobile learning approach and the traditional problem-posing approach, respectively. The experimental results show that the new approach not only improved the students' learning achievement, but also promoted their local culture identity and group learning self-efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, an augmented reality-based mobile learning system is proposed for conducting inquiry-based learning activities. An experiment has been conducted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of learning achievements and motivations. The subjects were 57 fourth graders from two classes taught by the same teacher in an elementary school in northern Taiwan. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach is able to improve the students' learning achievements. Moreover, it was found that the students who learned with the augmented reality-based mobile learning approach showed significantly higher motivations in the attention, confidence, and relevance dimensions than those who learned with the conventional inquiry-based mobile learning approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this study, a prompt-based annotation approach is proposed for developing mobile learning systems for architecture design courses. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted by assigning 56 freshmen randomly to an experimental group and a control group. The students in the experimental group adopted the mobile learning approach with a prompt-based annotation strategy, while those in the control group learned with the conventional in-field instruction and annotations. From the experimental results, it was found that the proposed prompt-based annotation strategy not only promoted the students' self-efficacy, but also improved their learning achievements. In the meantime, it is interesting to find that the experimental group students had medium cognitive load during the field trip, while the control group had rather low cognitive load. This implies that the prompt-based annotation approach engaged the students in mobile learning tasks with reasonable challenges and efforts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article describes the design and development of a context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) system for users to increase fitness-related reading comprehension in a fitness centre. With the use of mobile devices and sensing technologies, practitioners and researchers of ICT and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) are paying attention to the planning and use of u-learning components to provide users more interactions with authentic learning objects in a real context. Meanwhile, English for specific purposes (ESP) with interaction design has been a focus in recent years; however, few ESP practitioners and researchers have explored fitness-related English with ubicomp. All of the users were satisfied with the use of the smart phones and scanning of QR codes on the machines in the fitness centre to develop their reading comprehension of fitness-related English. Finally, a learning design model for Fitness English reading with u-learning components was developed and elaborated from designers' perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mobile computing offers potential opportunities for students' learning especially when it combines a sensing device such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Researchers have indicated that a key feature of in-field learning supported by mobile devices and technology is context awareness, with which context and functionality provided by the learning system are adapted to the user's situation. However, the design of context-aware mobile learning systems provides the authors with major challenges in terms of both defining use context as well as developing appropriate concepts relevant to the design of contextual information on the systems. Educators have highlighted the role of activity in science development and learning, implying that activity theory can be used to design a mobile learning environment. This paper presents the use of activity theory as a framework for describing the design of a context aware mobile learning application. A case study for the design of a mobile learning application for science learning is described using activity theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a personalized recommendation-based mobile language learning approach is proposed. A mobile learning system has been developed based on the approach by providing a reading material recommendation mechanism for guiding EFL (English as Foreign Language) students to read articles that match their preferences and knowledge levels, and a reading annotation module that enables students to take notes of English vocabulary translations for the reading content in individual or shared annotation mode. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted on a senior high school English course by assigning three classes of students to two experimental groups and a control group. One experimental group learned with the recommendation system with the individual annotation function, the other experimental group learned with the recommendation system with the shared annotation function, while the students in the control group learned with the individual annotation function, but without the recommendation system. The experimental results show that both experimental groups outperformed the control group, but there was no difference in learning outcome between the two experimental groups in terms of learning achievements. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The aim of nursing education is to foster in students the competence of applying integrated knowledge with clinical skills to the application domains. In the traditional approach, in-class knowledge learning and clinical skills training are usually conducted separately, such that the students might not be able to integrate the knowledge and the skills in performing standard nursing procedures. Therefore, it is important to develop an integrated curriculum for teaching standard operating procedures in physical assessment courses. In this study, a context-aware mobile learning system is developed for nursing training courses. During the learning activities, each student is equipped with a mobile device; moreover, sensing devices are used to detect whether the student has conducted the operations on the correct location of the dummy patient's body for assessing the physical status of the specified disease. The learning system not only guides individual students to perform each operation of the physical assessment procedure on dummy patients, but also provides instant feedback and supplementary materials to them if the operations or the operating sequence is incorrect. The experimental results show that the students' learning outcomes are notably improved by utilizing the mobile learning system for nursing training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile and wireless communication technologies not only enable anytime and anywhere learning, but also provide the opportunity to develop learning environments that combine real-world and digital-world resources. Nevertheless, researchers have indicated that, without effective tools for helping students organize their observations in the field, the mobile learning performance could be disappointing. To cope with this problem, this study proposes an interactive concept map-oriented approach for supporting mobile learning activities. An experiment has been conducted on an elementary school natural science course to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only enhances learning attitudes, but also improves the learning achievements of the students. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The popularity of mobile devices has encouraged the advance of ubiquitous learning, in which students are situated in a real-world learning environment with support from the digital world via the use of mobile, wireless communications, or even sensing technologies. Most of the ubiquitous learning systems are implemented with high-cost sensing devices for detecting the locations or behaviours of learners; moreover, these systems mainly focus on providing learning guidance or learning materials, while facilities for supporting mutual help among students are usually ignored. In this study, we propose a context-aware ubiquitous learning platform (CULP) which uses low-cost cell phones with embedded cameras and Internet service to support ubiquitous learning. CULP is able to provide instant support for learners in the ubiquitous learning activity; that is, learners can receive help from the right people via the hints given by the learning system when they encounter problems during their learning activities. The experimental results of a Personal Computer-Assembling course show that, with the assistance of the new learning platform, both the learning efficiency and the learning achievement of the students were significantly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This study proposes a mobile learning model that employs digital libraries to support investigative learning activities. A student-centered mobile learning activity with self-guided exploration for physical ecology observation has been conducted to demonstrate the benefits of using digital libraries to support investigation-based ecology learning activities. Design/methodology/approach – An investigation-based mobile learning model is proposed and an experiment is designed to show the effectiveness of the learning model, in which the students are asked to answer a series of questions by observing the real-world learning objects and searching for supplemental materials from a digital library. Findings – The instructional experiment conducted in an elementary school with 64 sixth grade students shows that the innovative approach is able to improve the learning achievement, learning effectiveness, as well as the learning attitudes of the students. Practical implications – The findings of this paper imply that the use of the investigative learning model will significantly promote the utilization rate of digital libraries. Originality/value – An investigative model for using digital libraries to support mobile learning is proposed in this paper. It provides good guidance to teachers for designing learning activities with digital libraries, and a good way for students to learn, utilizing the materials in digital libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a literature review concerning the advancement of mobile and ubiquitous learning research between 2001 and 2010. It states the literature review examined articles published in six major research journals that are related to technology-enhanced learning that are recognized to have a high impact factor. It comments on the distribution of research sample groups and found that the major samples of mobile and ubiquitous learning research were students from higher education and elementary schools.

The advancement of mobile and wireless communication technologies has encouraged an increasing number of studies concerning mobile learning, in which students are able to learn via mobile devices without being limited by space and time; in particular, the students can be situated in a real-world scenario associated with the learning content. Although such an approach seems interesting to the students, researchers have emphasized the need for well-designed learning support in order to improve the students’ learning achievements. Therefore, it has become an important issue to develop methodologies or tools to assist the students to learn in a mobile learning environment. Based on this perspective, this study proposes a formative assessment-based approach for improving the learning achievements of students in a mobile learning environment. A mobile learning environment has been developed based on this approach, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted in southern Taiwan to evaluate its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only promotes the students’ learning interest and attitude, but also improves their learning achievement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent years, digital learning has been converting from e-learning to m-learning because of the significant growth of wireless and mobile computing technologies. Students can learn any time and any where with mobile devices. Consequently, context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) is emerging as a new research area. It integrates wireless, mobile and context awareness technologies in order to detect the situation of the learners and provide more seamless adaptive support in the learning process. In this paper, a context-aware u-learning environment is developed for learning about campus vegetation in elementary schools based on an innovative approach by employing repertory grid method in designing learning content. In addition, we probe the feasibility of context-aware u-learning in courses by soliciting feedback from the students and teachers through interviews and questionnaires. The findings reveal that the environment is capable of enhancing students' motivation and learning effectiveness. Moreover, it is also capable of reducing the teaching load while enabling better control of class order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The advancement of wireless and mobile technologies has enabled students to learn in an environment that combines learning resources from both the real world and the digital world. Although such an approach has been recognized as being innovative and important, several problems have been revealed in practical learning activities. One major problem is owing to the lack of proper learning strategies or tools for assisting the students to acquire knowledge in such a complex learning scenario. Students might feel excited or engaged when using the mobile devices to learn in the real context; nevertheless, their learning achievements could be disappointing. To deal with this problem, this study presents a mobile learning system that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to detect and examine real-world learning behaviors of students. This study also utilizes each student’s responses from a two-tier test (i.e., multiple-choice questions in a two-level format) to provide personalized learning guidance (called two-tier test guiding, T3G). The experimental results from a natural science course of an elementary school show that this innovative approach is able to improve the learning achievements of students as well as enhance their learning motivation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]