Mobile-Mindful Teaching and Learning

This book provides faculty and instructors with an introductory guide to integrating mobile learning in their courses.

Recognizing that a smartphone is the first and main piece of technology anyone owns, with ownership exceeding 95% for those aged 18-29, with a sizable minority of these being smartphone-dependent; and that instructors are relying on technology for teaching and learning more than ever; this book addresses the imperative that course materials and interactions be increasingly available through the technology that students use most often.

Dispelling the notion that mobile learning is for the tech-savvy and adventurous, mobile-mindful teaching offers teachers a way to take a few steps at a time, share options with students, and progressively develop ideas and practices. The book invites you to explore your own way into mobile learning.

Christina Moore stresses two principles as you engage with mobile learning--intention and fluidity. This begins with mindfully implementing mobile learning opportunities so that students see the usefulness of learning via phone; and recognizing the fluid learning environments in which students learn so you can offer online modalities and functions appropriate to purpose and situations.

The book opens with a “start with self” section on How to Be a Mobile Mindful Learner, offering ideas on exploring the almost infinite available online resources in your discipline to curate a rich and ever-expanding compilation of ideas for use in your scholarly work and teaching; and identifying different types of learning (digital reading, audio and visual learning, and social learning) across multiple devices and contexts to consider as you develop your course.

The section “Toward Mobile-Mindful Teaching” explores ways to add mobile options to existing learning materials and how they and the LMS functions you use are rendered on a phone by taking a mobile test drive through your course.

Christina Moore shows how, by building up your mobile learning skills to be a more productive scholar and developing habits that feed your curiosity and creativity, you can start planning how you can create fluid learning opportunities for your students they can access across devices, time, and space, and take advantage of found moments of time and informal spaces.

Christina Moore, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Prior to her current role, she was a special lecturer of writing and rhetoric. While she is tech-reserved and limits screen time, her world is continually expanded by learning with others online, and she works to bring faculty together online. She researches how faculty use online spaces to expand their teaching practices and develop their teaching identities. Her work in online learning, universal design for learning, and educational development has been published in Tech Trends, EDUCAUSE, Faculty Focus, and other journals and books. She is the editor and regular contributor to her center’s Weekly Teaching Tips Series. She enjoys feeding people and taking excursions into sci-fi.