Background

Prior to Hurrican Katrina, the Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) was a small brick-and-mortar satellite campus of Southern University at Baton Rouge.  To compare the two, SUBR currently has around 7,600 students.  Before Katrina, SUNO had nearly 3,700 and today has about 3,100 students.  It was a small college campus with limited technological resources.

After Katrina however, two major changes happened.  First, all universities decided to create a disaster recovery plan where none existed before.  Second, SUNO, practically destroyed and shut down for good, found that its students, faculty, and staff were disconnected from the university, the surrounding community, their instructors, their learning, and each other.  Through this disaster and its recovery efforts, SUNO was able to reinvent itself as a hybrid campus with strong distance and mobile learning programs.  These changes are related, as keeping students connected to the university a disaster had to be considered in any recovery or preemption plan.

While SUNO demonstrates how an entire university and its infrastructure can be converted to a hybrid university with mobile learning as a priority from the top-down, Gloucestershire College (GC) demonstrates a more bottom-up approach.  The momentum here is being driven by Rob Whitehouse, an enthusiastic Business Schools Leader at who was seeking ways to help students who were handicapped or suffered from different learning disorders.  His efforts, however, are applicable to all students.

People

While at first glance the SUNO and GC contexts are very different, we find that the motivation for the creation of mobile learning programs is similar.  After Katrina, SUNO realized that faculty and students were dispersed and had no means to contact the school, each other, or their coursework.  After Katrina, with repercussions still being felt around Louisiana, SUNO’s numbers dropped to 700 enrolled students.  In an attempt to reach those who could not get to campus due to relocation, evacuee status, displacement, etc., the Department of Mobile Learning was established and distance courses were formed.

Whitehouse had the same motivations.  He wanted to “utilise technology that would benefit his learners; who through illness or disability were unable to attend the college”. The initial programs were meant to help students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, or other physical disabilities.  His program also aimed to help those “mature learners” who also hold full-time jobs.  But, in essence, Whitehouse’s programs have the potential to help all students, as all students are, in one way or another, mobile: from home to campus to work and so on.

Needs

Both institutions were trying to reach populations that were not connected to the university – either through disability or disaster.  In order to support these students, new programs needed to be designed that considered their needs not only as a population, but as individual and mobile learners.  In order to support a student population with diverse reasons for being disconnected,
Whitehouse needed to develop a number of protocols to assist his diverse students.  This included not only alternative access to the school’s VLE (virtual learning environment), but consideration of different methods of accessing information, submitting information, learning tools, and in some cases access to the campus itself.

SUNO also needed to think about how to reconnect its population.  Many faculty members were shifted 75 miles away to Baton Rouge.  Students and families had been forced to move or otherwise relocated.  There were efforts to actually shut-down the university for good.  Beyond the needs of its population, there were important physical and infrastructural needs that also had to be addressed.  Obviously, SUNO was not in the safest of areas geographically, which was an important consideration if it were to build itself up again.  Considerations of technological security that would keep data online and people connected through any disaster were a priority.

In both cases, the educational and technolgical needs were about connection.  Students (and staff and faculty) needed to be able to access not only to campus, but their coursework and tools that would assist them in learning.  For GC, a number of relatively small-scale protocols for helping learners with diverse needs were implemented in order to provide greater connection and accessibility.  For SUNO, larger institutional changes were needed.

Solutions

Remarkably, SUNOs top-down change came abruptly.  According to Omar, Liu, and Koong (2008), “In the midst of adversity, administrators were wiling not only to allocate scarce resources to this initiative, but to also accept a paradigm shift and take on a leadership role as well” (p. 15).  A top-down change such as this is unprecedented.  As part of the disaster recovery plan, SUNO decided to use a centralized server located in Colorado to keep all vital data safe and online with 24/7 access.  This included the purchase of the Blackboard learning management system to support a new initiative of online courses.  Prior to Katrina, there were 11 online courses being offered; one year later, there were 88 (p. 13).  Computers throughout the campus were replaced and centralized Wi-Fi network was installed to give students access (via personal and checked-out laptops) access to the internet.  In addition, SUNO created the Department of Mobile Learning which was set up not only to help learners stay connected to the university, but to help SUNO compete in a university atmosphere were mobile education is experiencing “massification” (p. 5).

Whitehouse’s effort scan be seen as more grassroots, led by a single man, using different university departments and action research to help implement important programs from the ground up.  To reach his diverse learners, Whitehousecreated two programs: “Closing the Gap” and “Home Grown Enrichement”.  Closing the Gap aimed to help disconnected students access the university and resources in innovative ways that also acted as learning tools.  This included alternative access to the VLE, resources specifically designed for learners with special needs, USB access to all materials, and the use of videos and podcasted lessons.  Home Grown Enrichment was Whitehouse’s effort to integrate various technologies together and champion them as teaching and learning tools.  This included, for example, recording a debate and creating an online forum to continue discussion.  Other efforts include using iOS devices and PSPs as teaching tools, especially effective when connected to an interactive white board.  Whitehouse is also having students record learning diaries with their cameras or cellphones as a reflection tool for learning.

Pedagogy

Simply put, mobile learning considers the mobility of the user and how different technologies can help support their life-long learning.  Often times, mobile learning is conceptulized as learning via a specific device such as an iPad or PDA.  Mobile learning, however, is more about being connected – to instructors, learners, knowledge, and each other.  Both SUNO and GC embody this idea of connection.  The idea of connection can be placed within two distinct pedagogies: the 3 C’s of conversation theory and connectivism.  Conversation theory states that effective learning considers three important effective elements of education: control, construction, and conversation (Sharples, Corlett, and Westmancott, 2002, p. 224).  Conversation is taken to be the totality of connections between those involved in the learning process (i.e. learner, peer, instructor, and knowledge), or “conversations between different systems of knowledge” (p. 224).  The conversations are said to be important for negotiating and constructing meaning and are
essential to effective learning.

Similarly, connectivism posits that there are nodes of knowledge within a network.  These nodes include are learners, information, instructors, images, videos, feelings, and so on.   Learning occurs when connections are made between these nodes (Connectivism).  Connection, again, is a powerful force that helps establish links between the learner and a world of knowledge.  Its role, in a general and metaphorical sense, cannot be overestimated.

Therefore, the level of connectivity that these institutions offer otherwise disconnected students is important not only in terms of retaining numbers of students, but providing powerful and effective access to their own educations.  Whitehouse’s efforts fall in direct line with many mobile learning theories, especially since one of his goals is getting students “talking about their own learning objectives and lifelong learning”.  This reflection activity (a form of self-connection or self-communication) is important for not only taking control of one’s learning process, but for understanding how it is shaped, and shaping its future.

The Department of Mobile Learning at SUNO’s goal can itself be used as good definition of mobile learning.  Its goal is to:

“reach, recruit, retain and provide students with quality education attainable regardless of location, have uninterrupted access to technology, curriculum and activities that were meaningful to their lives and provide immediate feedback to maximize their achievements”.

(p. 9).

Like GC, SUNO feels that not only is connection important, but so is reflection.  Both institutions are dedicated to providing connectivity and life-long learning solutions to their students.  Where they differ is how they enact these solutions.  For SUNO, it is a top-down big scheme approach that wishes to get students as connected as possible through the means available.  At GC it is a bottom-up approach that tailors technology to specific uses as a means to get numerous students connected.  In either case, meeting student needs through enhanced connectivity is a part and parcel of helping students achieve the goal of life-long learning.

References

Omar, A., Liu, L.C., & Koong, K.S.   (2008).  From disaster recovery to mobile learning: A case study.  International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organization, 2(1), 4-17.

Sharples, M., Corlett, D., & Westmancott, O. (2002). The design and implementation of a mobile learning resource. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 6, pp. 220-234.

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