DUBAI WOMEN’S COLLEGE-PRACTICING THE FUTURE AWARDS

E-Learning Innovation
Michelle Housley, Rosalind Irving & Andy Steele
Anytime Anywhere: a Mobile Education Project
Planned Results
The desired outcome of the our mobile education project was to increase the amount of time students’
voluntarily devoted to reviewing English tasks; specifically, reading comprehension and grammar based
activities. The project was also created with Dubai Women’s College strategic goal to enhance HCT’s
current offerings in mind with the objective of producing innovative pedagogical methodologies.
Delivered through their mobile devices, it encouraged students to review incorrect answers to tasks
due to the immediate feedback inherent in this technology. Specifically, the desired result of the
project was to increase independent reading and reflection of associated tasks through easily
downloadable quizzes ( which provided immediate feedback) conducted on mobile devices .
Approach
The first step in the mobile education project was to acknowledge that our students are not reading or
studying enough of their own volition. Since the new degree program at HCT requires students to be
avid readers and possess a solid understanding of English language, we recognised that we needed to
provide our students with more stimulating activities than traditionally offered. The sudden growth and
advancement recently in mobile technologies has allowed us to expand the learning enviroment
outside of the traditonal classroom or teaching paradigm.
The process was as follows:
 Determine whether or not the mobile technology worked efficiently with student mobile
platforms – this was accomplished by the students downloading 1 test quiz and attempting to
answer it.
 The instructor created a quiz that focused on current problem areas found in recent English
grammar classes and made this available to students’ mobiles.
 Students completed this and gave feedback on various issues e.g. ease of use, usefulness,
academic benefit, enjoyment, motivation etc.
 Students tested their understanding of the concepts by creating their own grammar quizzes
which were then downloaded by their peers. Another feedback session followed.
 This elementary use of the technologies worked well and received positive feedback.
 The next step was to introduce reading comprehension which would require application of
previously learned reading skills and further analysis of the text if the answer was incorrect. This
reflection was one of our main objectives.
 We also introduced the innovative Quick Response Code (QR Code)) technology to aid in ease of
distribution. Here, students were able to point their mobile devices at QR codes which then
automatically downloaded the relevant quizzes. This is an example of a QR Code.

 After completing instructor-made quizzes, students worked together to create their own
comprehension quizzes from the same reading text and shared these with their peers.
 Finally feedback was gathered after a suitable reflection period ( 1 week) through discussion
and completion of an anonymous survey (see Results Achieved below).

Acknowledgement: DQA RADAR logic adapted for application to submit for DWC Practicing
the Future Awards, April 2008.
Deployment of Approach
The mobile education project is groundbreaking in a number of ways. Firstly, we were able to
systematically link two technologies that appeared to exist independently of each other and which were
currently used by our students daily i.e. Blackboard Vista and 3G mobile phone technology. Secondly,
since the students were guided through a systematic and well thought out series of steps for
downloading quizzes and receiving feedback, they were able to focus on learning and not
technology. This was a good example of technology acting as it should: a tool for learning and student
achievement. It also develops good independent study skills in that while there is immediate feedback
to answers, these answers are not tracked or collated in any way and thus the student is encouraged to
take responsibility for their own learning.
The same steps that we took to create this project can be easily implemented in other disciplines or
other campuses. Also, content can easily be shared and modified to local conditions via system-wide
Blackboard Vista Learning modules.

Basically the only problem we encountered with this project was that a few mobile devices did not have
default QR Code readers installed. This was anticipated as we were using a number of different mobile
platforms and operating systems. Students were directed to download free QR readers directly to their
phones. These are widely available on the internet.

Assessment and Review

Initially, we were unsure of the compatibilty of the different operating systems in different phones and
so we took a step-by-step approach solving any technical issues with simple grammar quizzes before
going ahead with the reading tasks as we were keen to associate ease of use and convenience with
reading. We quickly found that some mobiles did not have inbuilt QR readers but solved this after
trialing various free universal readers and that keeping the quizzes as mostly text produced quizzes in
the order of 20 – 30k. This allowed almost instant download due to the very small size.

Through this project, we have found that the software needed is produced by a number of companies
and is both free and readily available. This will allow a rapid expansion of this project as a vast majority
of our current reading comprehension activities can be quickly adapted to a mobile format.

Results Achieved
The data collected via the survey indicates that the desired result of increasing students’ independent
reading and reflection was achieved. The vast majority of students (79%) stated that they redid the
English quizzes until they answered all of the questions correctly. This suggests that students
voluntarily reread the material several times. Increasing the frequency that our students read is a key
goal at DWC and each year a great amount of effort is directed towards this goal. This project has found
one method to do just that. 95% of the students also stated that they enjoyed using their mobiles for
learning and the majority also commented that they preferred using their mobiles over their textbooks
for learning. Students remarked through our online Learning Zone community on the convenience and
ease of use of the mobile to learn and that they were taking the reading and grammar quizzes on their
mobiles while commuting, before bed, in waiting rooms and one even mentioned the bathtub!
Ultimately, our goal is an increase in student reading ability and since there is a strong correlation
between the amount of reading and one’s reading ability (Cirocki, 2011), this project, if developed
further, can be a valuable tool in helping students achieve better reading skills and all the benefits that
this brings.

Acknowledgement: DQA RADAR logic adapted for application to submit for DWC Practicing
the Future Awards, April 2008.
 References

Cirocki, A. (2011). Extensive Reading in English Language Teaching. ELT J 65: 99-101.

Acknowledgement: DQA RADAR logic adapted for application to submit for DWC Practicing
the Future Awards, April 2008.