Mobile Learning: Transforming the delivery of education and training

Context. Devices and mobile accessibility are a fundamental part of today’s life and work of knowledge workers and university students. The adoption of mobile technologies to support training processes is a powerful tool to develop pathways that can significantly increase the efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of these processes through digital innovation. Gartner (Gartner, 2014) predicts that “by 2018 more than 50 percent of users will go to a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities”. Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices will become increasingly important, with particular reference to the training sector. This is true of lifelong learning in business but even more so in universities where students, almost all digital natives, make mobile technology something they... wear on a daily basis. The most complex challenge for universities’ organizations is to develop solid training strategies that have a concrete impact on the learners. Many universities, in fact, fail to design, develop and deliver effective training programs that can improve individual performance. Objectives. This research work describes the experimentation carried out at the Jonian Department of the University of Bari with the aim of improving students' performance through the integration of mobile technologies in the e-learning environment redesigned for the occasion and put online in September 2016. Method. In order to identify the most stringent need for students concerning the use of mobile technologies for the fruition of contents delivered in e-learning, a preliminary survey was conducted for all students enrolled in the e-learning platform adopted by the Jonian Department of the University of Bari. A pilot course on basic computer science has thus been held to enable the use of mobile learning objects. At the end of the course, a second survey was carried out to measure students' grading rating in relation to technologies and methodologies used in the course. Results. The results show that a university-based e-learning project must take into account that students are increasingly using a mobile device to study. Conclusions. The mobile has enormous native potentials in all areas of business performance, including training and development. From this analysis emerges that the mobile is an extremely precious resource for the training sector, intended to become more and more relevant in the future