The effects of integrating mobile devices with teaching and learning on students' learning performance: A meta-analysis and research synthesis

Abstract

Mobile devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants, and mobile phones have become a learning tool with great potential in both classrooms and outdoor learning. Although there have been qualitative analyses of the use of mobile devices in education, systematic quantitative analyses of the effects of mobile-integrated education are lacking. This study performed a meta-analysis and research synthesis of the effects of integrated mobile devices in teaching and learning, in which 110 experimental and quasi experimental journal articles published during the period 1993 e 2013 were coded and analyzed. Overall, there was a moderate mean effect size of 0.523 for the application of mobile devices to education. The effect sizes of moderator variables were analyzed and the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning in different levels of moderator variables were synthesized based on content analyses of individual studies. The results of this study and their implications for both research and practice are discussed.

1. Introduction 1

1. Integrating mobile devices with learning and instruction Mobile computers have gradually been introduced into educational contexts over the past 2 decades. Mobile technology has led to most people to carry their own individual small computers that contain exceptional computing power, such as laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet personal computers (PCs), cell phones, and e-book readers. This large amount of computing power and portability, combined with the wireless communication and context sensitivity tools, makes one-to-one computing a learning tool of great potential in both traditional classrooms and outdoor informal learning. With regard to access to computers, large-scale one-to-one computing programs have been implemented in many countries globally (Bebell & O'Dwyer, 2010; Fleischer, 2012; Zucker & Light, 2009), such that elementary- and middle-school students and their teachers have their own mobile devices. In addition, in terms of promoting innovation in education via information technology, not only does mobile computing support traditional lecture-style teaching, but through convenient information gathering and sharing it can also promote innovative teaching methods such as cooperative learning (Lan, Sung, & Chang, 2007; Roschelle et al., 2010), exploratory learning outside the classroom (Liu, Lin, Tsai, & Paas, 2012), and gamebased learning (Klopfer, Sheldon, Perry, & Chen, 2012). Therefore, mobile technologies have great potential for facilitating more innovative educational methods. Simultaneously, these patterns in educational methods will likely not only help subject content learning, but may also facilitate the development of communication, problem-solving, creativity, and other high-level skills among students (Warschauer, 2007). However, despite the proposed advantages of using mobile computing devices for increasing computer accessibility, diverse teaching styles, and academic performance, currently researchers found mixed results regarding the effects of mobiledevices (e.g., Warschauer, Zheng, Niiya, Cotten, & Farkas, 2014), and very few studies have addressed how best to use mobile devices, and the effectiveness of doing so.

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