ICTlogy

mLearning in Africa: Lessons from the m4Lit project

Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation, Cape Town

m4Lit project is about mobiles for literacy, a project set out to explore the viability of using mobile phones to support reading and writing by youth in South Africa.

South Africa has an excellent mobile infrastructure, with good mobile coverage and relatively cheap mobile data plans.

Most people in South Africa do their reading at school, but 51% of homes have no books at home, there is no leisure in reading. Thus, reading activity is really low, which has a negative impact in literacy as a whole.

The project created Kontax, a mobile novel (m-novel) was written and published in September 2009 on a mobisite and on MXit. The story, called Kontax, was published in English and in isiXhosa. Readers were invited to interact with it as it unfolded – teens could discuss the unfolding plot, vote in polls, leave comments, and finally submit a written piece as part of a competition for story sequel ideas.

The project got more than 63,000 subscribers, +28,000 aged 11-18 and 27,000 aged 19-24. That is a lot of youngsters, but not all of them where. On the other hand, not everyone read the whole story, but only 17,200 did, of which +7,000 teens. Nevertheless, this are astonishingly high reading figures for South Africa.

Findings

Most digital writing takes place on mobile phones, but it tend to be short, like SMS.

Most reading took place on mobile phones or on paper.

Word-of-mouth was the main channel by which people came to know about the project.

The isiXhosa became very popular, especially in relationship with the presence of the language in written literature in South Africa.

The pilot project became Kontax 2, Kontax 3, Kontax 4 and then Yoza, a mobisite that brings content (literature) to mobile phones. Even Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, on the public domain) has been uploaded to the site for it to be read on a mobile phone.

Some topics (youngs, romance) work better than others on mobile phones. And we find that people do comment on the works and even enter in a “dialogue” with the characters of the novels.

Lessons learnt:

• Mobile is a content monster. People wait for more content to read.
• Mobile content is instant. And people will participate, comment, engage in conversations.
• The readers never sleep, they connect at any time to the website. Content is read anytime, anywhere.
• The platform matters: to create one’s own platform is hard. It is better to use someone else’s platform that has already caught in the market.
• Interest is difficult to maintain.
• Audience is fickle, fans are loyal. Fans left lots of comments and spent many time on the stories.
• When reading becomes “snacky”, it is hard to make it sticky. You’re waiting for the bus, you read; when the bus comes, you quit reading: you have to take this context into account.
• You might end up with something you didn’t expect.

The economic sustainability of the project is definitely an issue. Either you partner with a funder, or you embed your project in the educational system so that, in mainstreaming it, diffusion becomes more easy and straightforward.

South Africa is book poor, but it is mobile rich: Africa’s e-readers use mobiles as their Kindle.

Open questions:

• What are the effects on non-English mother-tongue speakers?
• To what extent will teens allow “us” to occupy “their” space?
• Who is excluded from the mobile Internet?
• When reading becomes “snacky”, what does it do to concentration abilities?
• There is a distance and conflict between mobile literacies and school literacies. This needs to be explored and better understood because mobile literacies are so pervasive in young peoples’ lives (Walton, 2010). What do we do with this?

Discussion

Q: Was there any criticism for having people with their eyes stuck on a small screen? A: Not at all.

Emma Kiselyova: When the project is over, what’ll be next? A: The main goal now is looking at sustainability options. These options range from other sponsors, ads in the stories, etc.

Gardner Campbell: What is going to happen with the generated content? A: Everything is online and it is available for everyone and under an open license.

Q: Wasn’t it possible to stablish agreements with book publishers? A: It seemed that their tempos were really slow. Q: But, nevertheless, now that the project has shown success, a second contact may be advisable. A: Maybe, but there still is the issue of affordability of content. For now, content has been freely available on the net. If it’s put behind a paywall, audience may decrease dramatically, and the goals were not making money, but contributing to increase literacy.

Interesting round of comments on “texting literacy” here. On the one hand, some people state that young people underestimate their own literacy or their own language skills. On the other hand, there is also the debate whether “texting” can be applied anywhere and whether there is a need to teach the critical skills to be able to tell when this text-speak is appropriate. Personally, I’ve always thought that e-mail and SMS is not written language, but transcribed oral language. We should address the issue from this standpoint of view.

Mobilising technology for learning – lessons from MoLeNET
Jill Attewell, LSN Research Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning, UK

MoLeNET is a deliberate attempt to move mobile learning from research and development and small scale pilots to major implementation. MoLeNET has sponsored 104 projects with 40,000 learners.

A definition of mobile learning: The exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning. So, it’s not only about mobile phones, or small PCs, but a much broader concept. And it is not also about improving teaching, but also about improving learning, learning outcomes, the learning experience itself.

The project was mainly addressed to adult learners, which have it difficult to be trained at the workspace (money and time costs, availability of courses, etc.) but have a dire need to be trained. Mobile learning could provide better access to technology at work, quicker completion of theory elements, a more enjoyable assessment, better tutor/learner communication, higher levels of student engagement, etc.

Another main target of the project was young people, with high unemployment rates, dropped out of the educational system, NEET (not in education, employment and training). Potentially, mobile technologies are mastered by youngsters and can thus be a tool to help approachability to NEETs. Indeed, learners feel better supported and more part of a community, though this would not mean overcoming the worse attitudes towards learning.

Measuring impact

The project performed several assessments in order to gather evidence on impact: practitioner-led action research, project manager reports, surveys, etc.

Mobile learning can improve:

• Attendance, retention and achievement.
• Teaching and learning and assessment processes.
• Flexibility, relevance, realism, personalization.
• Learner engagement, quantity and quality of work.
• Support of work-based learners.
• Support of learners with disabilities and/or learning difficulties.
• Encourages self and peer assessment.
• Improve and maintain focus and attention.
• Anywhere, anytime.
• Just in time, just what I want.
• Quick reference to check information on the net, to access online applications.
• Individual and collaborative learning.
• Creating, sharing and using multimedia.

Impact on teaching

• Learners work more together.
• Learners are more independent.
• More learners led activities (and less teacher led activities).
• Visual and aural learning becomes more important.
• Kinaesthetic learning becomes more important.
• More learning outside of the classroom.
• More learning outside of the college building.
• Deeper learning.

What made the programme successful?

• Capital investment.
• Shared cost funding.
• Online knowledge and resource sharing.
• Staff development.
• Mentoring.
• Practitioner led action research.
• Supported project.
• Local champions, that work along with the teachers.

Discussion.

Steve Vosloo: How can the project work without the local champions? What if the project is rolled out top-down? A: Information and support for the teachers is crucial. It is also very important that people (i.e. teachers) have resources (not only money, but also time and other kind of resources) to experiment, to try things, to do things “wrong”, etc. Teacher education is crucial for m-learning adoption.

Q: Was it easy to engage big telcos? A: No, it was not. Big mobile operators did not seem to share neither the approach nor the “thrill” of the programme. They may like it, but they would not get involved. Maybe because of the failure to see how to monetize the project. This may be changing though.

Ismael Peña-López: We have been presented many positive impacts of m-learning. I wonder what is the marginal contribution of the m- over the e-(learning). All things equal, what is the difference between m- and e-learning? A: Flexibility and immediacy, not being rooted in the place, are doubtless the most important ones.. The student can respond to situations very quickly. Indeed, desktop technologies do not fit very well in some specific workplaces (e.g. a fast-food restaurant, a mine). And it is not only about responding, but about acting too: sometimes taking a snapshot or a short video footage may be part of an assignment and this can be done just-in-time with mobile technologies, and much more easily than with desktop technologies.

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: What are the best topics that can be used in m-learning? A: Mobile devices track everything and everywhere. Any educational methodology that implies recording, taping, gathering data all around is one that will make an intensive usage of mobile technologies and thus leverage all the (specific, singular) possibilities of the device.

The UNESCO Chair in e-Learning of the Open University of Catalonia is organizing on October 6-7 its VII International Seminar, this year about Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development.

The programme and very much in the line of the UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Fifth International Seminar: Fighting the Digital Divide through Education which I had the chance to attend. The scheduled speakers are:

Keynotes:

• Miguel Nussbaum, Universidad Católica de Chile: Integrating technology and pedagogy in the classroom.
• Jill Attewell, LSN Research Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning, UK: Mobilising technology for learning – lessons from MoLeNET.
• Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation, Cape Town: mLearning in Africa: Lessons from the m4Lit project.
• Carolina Jeux, Fundación Telefónica, Spain: Analysis of the m-learning practices in Telefónica regarding its different stakeholders: Employees and Families, Customers and Society.
• Matthew Kam, Carnegie Mellon University, USA: Mobile Phones and Language Literacy in Rural Developing Regions.
• Magí Almirall, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain: Learning technologies in mobile scenarios.
• John Traxler, University of Wolverhampton, UK: Mobiles for Learning in Africa…. Too Good to be True?.

Demos:

• Dolors Reig, Consultant & editor-in-chief at the ICT – educational weblog El Caparazón, Spain: Mobile Learning in rural environments and development countries.
• Fernando Moreira, Associated Professor at the Universidade Portucalense, Portugal: A Blended Mobile Learning Model-Context Oriented (BML-CO).
• Thomas Putz, Project manager at Evolaris Next Level, Austria: The Project “Mobile Game Based Learning”.
• Claudia Aparicio, Fundación Telefónica, Colombia: Requirements and opportunities for the development of a mobile learning strategy in emergent countries.

Plenary Debate:

• Social and Ethical Issues in Education Technologies, moderated by Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3, UOC).

More information

• Official website of the UNESCO Chair in e-Learning VII International Seminar: Mobile Technologies for Learning and Development
• UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning blog.
• Liveblogging notes from previous UOC UNESCO Chair International Seminars.
• #eLChair10 Twitter hashtag.