Towards mobile-centered authentic, personalized and collaborative assignments in engineering education

The last decade has seen a significant rise in the use of mobiles devices, such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops in all areas of society. Professionally, engineers collaborate with partners all over the world and this is made possible by mobile technology. In tertiary education, students learn in different settings, in and out of campus, in the train or at a café. Researchers have identified new possibilities for teaching and learning, afforded by the use of mobile technologies (and termed ‘mobile learning’; ML). They claim that ML may (1) facilitate learning, formally or informally, in a place, at a time, and in a way preferred by students, (2) help students to become engaged in tasks that resemble authentic tasks in the workplace, and (3) facilitate student cooperation and collaboration. In this paper we present the first results of an ongoing project which aims to design and evaluate – for different engineering disciplines – prototypical ML assignments. We report on the results of a survey carried out at a Dutch University on the current use of and attitudes towards ML from both the instructors’ and the students’ perspectives. The results show that in various faculties at the university ML initiatives have been introduced in education and that there is a basis to create further opportunities for active student learning. We also present an outlook on the next stage of the project: the design of prototypical student activities from the respective engineering disciplines of the project partners: Mathematics, Physics and Built-Environment.