Monday, 15 December 2008

Christmas Countdown


Well it’s the final working week before Christmas – time to wind down, tie up loose ends, and leave work with everything straight and ready for the New Year – YEAH RIGHT!! It may be the last working week before Christmas but it will hold no mercy...I've got a list as long as Santa's to complete before 5pm on Friday!

Over the last couple of days I have been busy analysing the results from the student surveys, writing an abstract for the M-Libraries conference and preparing for a presentation at the MmIT North West AGM tomorrow...and after tomorrow I will be submerging myself in the construction of a journal article for ALT-J. So any chance of an easy week was squashed many moons ago!

The first examination of the student survey results has produced some interesting findings, most prominently, of all the students surveyed, 75% were keen to see some form of mobile learning made available by the university. This is encouraging as it means that there is a want and need from the students and in fulfilling our role of providing resources and services that fulfil student requirements there is an obvious gap. It also provides encouragement for the planned student focus group as it gives us the chance to find out exactly what the students want and need to help them with their learning and study. Perhaps not surprisingly, 100% of students surveyed owned a mobile phone; however it is important to note that 10% of these students did not own internet enabled devices which raises future issues with inclusion – are these students going to be at a disadvantage by the introduction of an m-learning strategy? This again rolls over to other devices without a 100% positive response rate – 86% of students own a laptop, 77% own an audio listening device and 11% own handheld gaming devices. Quite excitingly (for me and him!) one student owned an iPhone, one student owned a netbook and one student owned a notebook – no one questioned owned a PDA, some not even knowing what a PDA was. This demonstrates the playing field in which we enter if we develop a strategy for m-learning over the coming years. More in-depth results will follow in the near future.

The abstract for the M-Libraries Conference 2009 in Vancouver is pretty much set for submission and preparation for the presentation is near complete – the ALT-J article – now where to begin...

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