DMD Students Mobile Learning Survey Results

Inspired by Kathy’s Mobile Learning survey I decided to find out what Digital Media Design (DMD) students thinking about use of mobile and internet technology as a toll for learning.
Three groups of students were asked to answer the following questions:

Advanced Diploma in Screen Game Art II eyar 9 students

If available, which of the following resources would you use?  Circle the appropriate answer:
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Podcasts of Lectures	2	2	4	0
Vodcasts of Lectures (screen capture of demonstrations, DVD)	0	1	3	5
Internet based content	0	2	3	4
Web based content (to take home on a memory device)	0	1	2	5
Resources available for use On PDA	2	5	2	0
Learning resources available for use on mobile phones	5	3	1	0
Web based Learning Games	4	2	2	1

Advanced Diploma in Multi Media II eyar 4 students

If available, which of the following resources would you use?  Circle the appropriate answer:
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Podcasts of Lectures	0	3	1	0
Vodcasts of Lectures (screen capture of demonstrations, DVD)	0	0	2	2
Internet based content	0	0	1	3
Web based content (to take home on a memory device)	0	0	2	2
Resources available for use On PDA	3	1	0	0
Learning resources available for use on mobile phones	1	2	0	1
Web based Learning Games	0	1	2	1

Advanced Diploma in Screen CGI I eyar 10 students

If available, which of the following resources would you use?  Circle the appropriate answer:
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Podcasts of Lectures	3	3	1	2
Vodcasts of Lectures (screen capture of demonstrations, DVD)	0	2	4	4
Internet based content	1	0	4	5
Web based content (to take home on a memory device)	0	1	3	6
Resources available for use On PDA	5	2	2	1
Learning resources available for use on mobile phones	8	1	1	0
Web based Learning Games	3	5	1	1

From the above data I can clearly see that currently students value the information that accessible via PC more than content specifically optimised for mobile devices like PDA and mobile.
Currently main factors that prevent students from using mobile to actively access learning information are:
Cost of data. (Recently I was using Google Maps on my mobile on prepaid plan. The cost was $20 for approximately 20minutes of map browsing)
Limitations of Mobile devices both hardware and software (small screens bad internet browsers, low connection speed)

Does it mean that we can ignore mobile?

The statistics behind mobile industry are growing at lightening speed. Mobile phones have now greater penetration compare to PC. In 5-7 years half of humanity will have some kind of mobile device capable to connect to the internet none of any technology in the history was so pervasive.

UK and US mobile market are similarly developed: mobile market size in number of users is 19% out of the web pc market size.
Men under the age of 35 are the early adopters who are more likely to use mobile devices to access the Mobile Web Leading in the mobile web (January 07):

Popular pc internet sites Yahoo!, MSN and Google (both in the US and UK)
Popular in UK: BBC and SKY
Popular in the US: The Weather Channel and AOL

The trendspotting blog goes on to pose the question: Will social networks apps drive the mobile web?
Having the early adopters study in mind, and acknowledging the social networking sites success (55% of all of online American youths ages 12-17 use an online social networking sites, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project), where would you say a short messages social network as twitter mobile be in the next few months?

My questions about the study really centre on unique users. We deliver our courses in the well equipped comp. labs. Most of the project students currently working on require creating content for PC or high resolution screen. Hence our students currently don’t have need to use mobile for study related activities, or is it about to change?

The second part of the questionnaire was : Would you be interested to learn more about creating mobile content yourself? 

Advanced Diploma in Screen Game Art II eyar 9 students

Would you be interested to learn more about creating mobile content yourself?
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Mobile Graphic (Wallpapers Screensavers)	1	1	4	0
Mobile Video	1	4	3	1
Mobile Internet	1	6	2	0
Mobile Games	1	2	4	2

Advanced Diploma in Multi Media II eyar 4 students

Would you be interested to learn more about creating mobile content yourself?
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Mobile Graphic (Wallpapers Screensavers)	0	0	2	2
Mobile Video	0	0	2	2
Mobile Internet	0	1	1	2
Mobile Games	0	1	0	3

Advanced Diploma in Screen CGI I eyar 10 students

Would you be interested to learn more about creating mobile content yourself?
	Least likely to use		Most likely to use
	1	2	3	4
Mobile Graphic (Wallpapers Screensavers)	3	1	3	3
Mobile Video	3	1	3	3
Mobile Internet	4	2	2	2
Mobile Games	3	3	2	2

Frome the students responses evident that although they unlikely to prefer mobile device over PC to receive and communicate with learning content they quite keen to start developing different type of mobile content themselves!
From lecture point of view I can see great potential here. More projects related to the development of mobile content and use of mobile devices empowers our students to actively participate in the mobile revolution rather than just passively use it.
One thing is for certain: we have to change our curriculum to adopt more such kind of projects. We also need to start paying attention to the mobile web now.