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An exploratory study of unsupervised mobile learning in rural India

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Cellphones have the potential to improve education for the millions of underprivileged users in the developing world. However, mobile learning in developing countries remains under-studied. In this paper, we argue that cellphones are a perfect vehicle for making educational opportunities accessible to rural children in places and times that are more convenient than formal schooling. We carried out participant observations to identify the opportunities in their everyday lives for mobile learning. We next conducted a 26-week study to investigate the extent to which rural children will voluntarily make use of cellphones to access educational content. Our results show a reasonable level of academic learning and motivation. We also report on the social context around these results. Our goal is to examine the feasibility of mobile learning in out-of-school settings in rural, underdeveloped areas, and to help more researchers learn how to undertake similarly difficult studies around mobile computing in the developing world.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2010
      2690 pages
      ISBN:9781605589299
      DOI:10.1145/1753326
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 10 April 2010

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      Author Tags

      1. cellphone
      2. developing countries
      3. india
      4. informal learning
      5. mobile learning
      6. out-of-school learning

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      • (2024)Investigating Demographics and Motivation in Engineering Education Using Radio and Phone-Based Educational TechnologiesProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642221(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2023)Sustainable ICT Hubs for Rural Schooling in Developing Countries. The Case of Makoni District, Zimbabwe2023 2nd Zimbabwe Conference of Information and Communication Technologies (ZCICT)10.1109/ZCICT59466.2023.10528526(1-5)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2023
      • (2022)Anatomi eğitiminde mobil öğrenmenin öğrencilerin öğrenme becerileri ve motivasyonuna etkisi: sistematik derlemeEuropean Journal of Science and Technology10.31590/ejosat.1174875Online publication date: 26-Oct-2022
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      • (2022)Critical agenda driving child–computer interaction research—Taking a stock of the past and envisioning the futureInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10040832:COnline publication date: 3-Jun-2022
      • (2021)ICT Integration in EducationHuman-Computer Interaction and Technology Integration in Modern Society10.4018/978-1-7998-5849-2.ch001(1-11)Online publication date: 2021
      • (2020)Gender and Technology: Social Context and IntersectionalityHandbook of Research in Educational Communications and Technology10.1007/978-3-030-36119-8_7(115-204)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2020
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