M-Learning ～ Cybertextual Travelling or a Herald of Post-Modern Education?
Seppo Tella (University of Helsinki)
http://www.seppotella.fi
Studying combines information handing and self-directedness. They both have direct links to an individual's cognitive strategies: to ways and modes of choosing and elaborating on one's learning, memory and thinking.
Two cognitive revolutions are sometimes referred to (tella 1997;based on Lin et al.1995,54). The first revolution embraces individual thinkers and learners, whose behavior is not characterised by emotions, contexts, culture or history;rather,it typifies human being's competition against each other, strongly growing self-directedness and certain indifference towards others to whom they pay hardly any attention. A typical representation of the first cognitive revolution is a traditional academic research seminar, in which one student after another presents his or her work. Students scarcely help each other and it would be difficult to speak of shared co-construction of knowledge. At worst, one person's merits are looked down upon and underrated with harsh criticism.
The second cognitive revolution takes account of social studying and learning contexts, which include both cognitive and motivational features. It also supports collaboration and communalism as well as communal studying. The second revolution is based on the idea that society holds firm with a collective conscience or a joint feeling of sharing values, norms and patterns of thinking we have in common. These different elements can be summarised with the notion of consensus and integration. Knowledge, experience and cognition are shared, other people are helped, and this way each member of the group gets more than he or she would get if working alone and on his or her own. The question is of processes of action that are triggered on communally and in which both individuals and teams interact in many different ways. At the same time, they learn and develop, as do the processes themselves.
Typical tools or technological environments for the second cognitive revolution can be exemplified by groupware programs or IDLEs (integrated distributed learning environments), such as BSCW, WebCT and Blackboard, that support shared expertise and communal learning(e.g., Tella et al.2001). In the second cognitive revolution are highlighted versatile relationships between teacher and students as well as between students. All this is conducive to creating a studying environment, in which cognition and motivation grow cognisant of the outer world and gather information of some object in focus. Cognition implies knowing and intellectual and transferable human action, as distinguished from subconscious or emotional processes.
When speaking of knowing and contextuality of learning, Poikela(1999,274) refers to "systems of action being holographic structures in which individuals and communities are effected on the one hand, while, on the other, they affect others via multidirectional and multidimensional processes of information and communication". This kind of interpretation clearly typifies the second cognitive revolution.
Lin et al.(1995) only talk of two cognitive revolutions. I would like to argue that mobile technologies and m-learning can be regarded as heralds of a third cognitive revolution.
Then mobile nomads can represent a studying situation, in which self-directedness becomes important again in a cyclic way, but essentially in a different fashion: cumulatively and constructively, but not in a competitive setting vis-a-vis the other students. The tools of m-learning can support, enhance and expand the cognition of their users. But how far does a human being's cognition reach when using information and communication technologies, such as mobile applications? In psychology, this question used to read: How far does a blind person's cognition extend when he uses a white cane? Does it extend to the tip of the cane, half-way to the tip or simply to the fingers of the blind person, who sticks to the cane? It is only natural to assume that cognition extends not only to the tip of the cane but to the perceptions that a blind person can receive with the cane and thus directing his or her own behaviour. A mobile application in the hands of a seeing person is bound to be at least as efficient and empowering. Using tools is an integral part of all human action, including cognitive action.
In the light of the third cognitive revolution, it is also important to reflect on how an individual's cognitive structure may change once access to information sources can take place almost in real time. Is it to be assumed that this will increase people's impatience? Can it also decrease the durability and sustainability of people's behaviour, because looking for different things need not be stored in one's memory or first gathered together until one tries to find answers to these questions, as immediate replies are accessible all the time? Is there a threat that all this could add to the apparent importance of fragmented and disjointed bits of information, as so many TV quizzes try to convince us?
In all this, I see a clear connection to the delaylessness of time, in other words to the fact that we expect from ourselves and from others answers and reactions faster than we have time to process the questions properly, and for the most part, because technology makes it possible for us and, in a way, pushes us to faster and faster performances. Is speed perhaps the function of impatience, in which what seems to count is the gathering of meaningless fragments of information, instead reflected answer to the others?
On the other hand, the third cognitive revolution, initiated partly by and represented with mobile applications can be seen in a more positive light, as it can also mean increased cognitive growth at individual level. Real life is always complex and context-specific and not all domains of knowledge have been structured into ready-made information packages like the ones in any encyclopaedia. Spiro et al.(1991,24;see Enqvist 1999)argue in favour of such studying processes that presume an perspectives. Enqvist(1999,35) contends that when information is used later, the ability of cognitive flexibility helps construct such a knowledge entity that corresponds to the requirements of understanding or bing able to solve the situation in question. According to Spiro et al.(1991)cognitive flexibility is expressly required by computer applications and multimedia and hypertextual systems. It is only natural to presume that mobile technologies would also require their users to have similar kind of cognitive flexibility and adaptability to rapidly changing situations. Furthermore, it is good to bear in mind that an individual's inner motivation is usually enhanced by discoveries and study-related findings one has made oneself, as well as one's own opportunities to research, study and experiment. All this has a positive influence on the learning itself. In this respect too, an individual's intellectual and cognitive tools and the technical tools at his or her disposal are deeply interrelated.