Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation

 

Special Issue on: "Developing Themes in Mobile Learning"

Guest Editors: Dr. Hokyoung Ryu and Dr. David Parsons, Massey University, New Zealand

Rapid developments in mobile communication services provide new technical and customer (educators and learners) opportunities to experience novel learning activities. For instance, third generation (3G) handsets allow users of 3G services to view video content, including live streaming. Mobile TV phones have recently found great success in some gadget-loving countries (e.g., Korea and Japan), an opportunity, it seems, for the deployment of multimedia-based learning environments on mobile phones. Current mobile technologies hold out the promise of unlimited access to educational resources, amalgamating currently separated learning activities into one with an integrated technical platform. However, the editors personally believe that these promises are far away from being fulfilled in practice, which leads us to think that current m-learning experiences available thus far seem neither usable nor useful, nor markedly different from the traditional learning activities.

We believe that simply being driven by technical initiatives, with a narrow focus on the quality of mobile technologies themselves, does not capture the potential variety and emergent aspects of mobile learning activities. Practitioners as well as researchers should instead embrace the notion of learning experiences, for a better understanding of the important values that mobile learning can provide. Although this ‘experience’ or ‘learning theme’ has been widely used, there are still few available empirical, exploratory or large-scale success cases.

The objective of this special issue is to collect a series of original, high quality, empirical papers on various aspects of new learning experiences with mobile devices. We encourage submissions of both quantitative and qualitative research addressing or critically examining the link between aspects of interactive mobile learning services, use situations and resulting experiences.

Subject Coverage
This special issue aims at presenting a selection of papers addressing the topics indicated above, but is not limited to them. Work on the following topics is also equally welcome.

• Experiences on new mobile learning activities and themes
• Empirical studies of mobile learning implementation or deployment
• Enriched themes of mobile learning experiences
• Transformation of traditional learning experiences into mobile learning
• Learner needs beyond classroom learning activities; social, collaborative, challenge and so forth.
• Effects of m-learning applications on traditional learning environments: blended with e-learning systems

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Full paper deadline: 30 April, 2008

Notification of acceptance and Review results: 30 June, 2008

Revised submission deadline: 15 August, 2008

Camera-ready version deadline: 1 October, 2008