by Kirsten K. Meymaris
Kirsten K. Meymaris is a math educator at Purdue University Global (PG) with over 20 years of experience in online education, including course content development; managing and maintaining online courseware; and direct facilitation of online courses. Kirsten’s degrees in mathematics and computer science pair together well, allowing her to use technology for teaching students deeper mathematical understanding and interpretation of data.
Do you read on an e-reader? Do you communicate with your family via text? Do you stay connected with peers via social media? How often do you reach for, and research on, your phone when pondering a question? These are just a few of the trends that you see in the changing landscape of education. In the 1990s, online education broke into mainstream education with fully online programs becoming a viable alternative educational path. Yet now, in 2020s, students are not just learning online, rather they are learning on the go, self-pacing their educational path, accessing learning content through various mediums and screen sizes, and communicating with their teachers and peers, around the world, in a variety of ways.
Online education has shifted, catapulted forward by the COVID19 pandemic, trending towards what is called, mobile learning, broadly defined as education through means of mobile or portable computer devices (i.e. smartphones or tablets) to access learning materials through multiple contexts. At our online institution, the Math Department has encountered and experienced this shift observing a change in the ways students want to communicate with their peers and instructors, how they are completing their learning activities, and their expectations on accessing the math instruction. The ideas shared in this presentation will allow faculty and curriculum specialists to experience:
- Best practices for mobile communication,
- Tips and tricks for micro-learning videos, and
- Insight into how students are learning mobile.