Leveraging Mobile Technology for m-Learning: 3rd Generation Threaded Discussions

Emerging mobile technologies hold great promise for educational institutions seeking to extend the learning experience to an increasingly nomadic and timechallenged student community, especially at urban campuses where both faculty and students typically commute to school and struggle to multi-processes work, study and family time and location demands. The ability to reach out and engage learners, unconstrained by physical location, enables true anytime/anyplace access, helping combat the out-of-site/out-of-mind effect and leverage time otherwise wasted sitting in traffic or standing in line. This paper proposes a “third generation” (3G) threaded discussion facility that exploits mobile technology to enhance collaborative learning by adding a real-time, location-independent “push” dimension to this valuable, but previously passive, pull-oriented, paradigm.