Researching mobile learning

A summary of the research I have done so far into mobile learning has just been published in the University of Hamburg's "Hamburger eLearning Magazin". This publication gave me reason to review my past research and reflect on the research method used; an online questionnaire.

As I discussed in a previous post, creating an online questionnaire, in my case using google docs, was a very quick and simple process. Asking students to participate either in person or in a message on a university website discussion forum also required very little effort. On the other hand, the response rate for my questionnaire was not high. Out of over 1,000 full-time students, only 90 chose to participate in my second study, a return rate of less than ten percent. However it has to be noted that not all thousand students would have been aware that the study was taking place. Students are not required to use the message board where I posted the participation request and I certainly didn't speak to each individual directly asking for their help.

Obviously it would be folly to suggest that the results from less than ten percent of the total population are in any way representative. In order to make future results more reliable a way must therefore be found to increase participation. I believe one way to achieve this is to reduce the population size. Rather than attempt to survey the entire student population, my new research project will focus on second semester students of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. This will mean to total population of less than two hundred students. As these students are also required to attend a compulsory English module that I teach, reaching them to request their participation should also be easier.

My next research project will also use a combination of research methods, namely a questionnaire and semi-sturctured interviews. There seem to be several problems with the online questionnaire used previously which the next research should address:

• Closed questions don't allow any room for participants to explain their answers.
• The empirical data gathered reveals what people might think but not why.
• The respondents were limited by the questions set by the researcher.
• Completing the survey online meant there was no possibility to clarify ambiguities.
• The results offered only a snapshot of the facts at that moment in time.

I hope that redesigning the questionnaire and reconsidering how it is promoted and how students participate may address these issues. In addition, semi-structured interviews, although more time consuming, will give the opportunity to discuss the students' attitudes and experiences with mobile learning. Time allowing, I think the most successful approach would be to conduct interviews at the beginning of the research project in April, hold shorter update interviews midway through in late May or early June and then hold final interviews to discuss the results in July.

This approach will hopefully offer a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data which should ensure reliable results.

Neil


Sources.

Davie, N. & Heß, M-T. (2012) Studierende nehmen Mobile Learning selbst in die Hand:
Ergebnisse einer Umfrage an der Fachhochschule Südwestfalen in Meschede.
http://www.uni-hamburg.de/eLearning/eCommunity/Hamburger_eLearning_Magazin/eLearningMagazin_09.pdf (Accessed 30.12.2012)

Hannan, A. (2007) Questionnaires in Education Research.
http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/QUESTS/index.htm (Accessed 30.12.2012)