A Mobile Ecology of Resources for Covid-19 Learning
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Educators around the world have had to switch to emergency remote teaching in a matter of days, for some it happened overnight (Bozkurt et al, 2020). While students have always met the educators in their space that is equipped and set up for learning and teaching (e.g. computer labs, simulation rooms, tutorial spaces and lecture rooms), Covid-19 meant the educators now had to venture into spaces students dwelt in to facilitate learning, as they learnt from home. More so, a lot of what students did and how they learnt depended on the devices they owned, resources they had access to and internet connectivity. To ensure access and an equitable learning experience many universities created and supported learning using a virtual private network (VPN), in particular, for students in China. Many campuses closed completely, and staff and students were requested to teach and learn from home. The switch to emergency remote teaching made it clear, even to those that were already working online, that there were going to be an enormous number of challenges (Crawford et al, 2020). These challenges included the need for teachers to rethink their teaching approach, course design, assessment, strategies for facilitating learning (learning tasks and activities) and access to content, which would normally be delivered in a physical space through a lecture. In addition, for many, working at home would have been a challenge in itself with issues of Wi-Fi connectivity, privacy and the disruption caused by the blurring of work and home environments. The ASCILITE Mobile Learning SIG established in 2016 consists of a group of teacher-researchers specializing in mobile technology who meet online to discuss and research the opportunities that mobile learning offers (Cochrane & Narayan, 2018). The SIG responded to the Covid-19 situation by creating a number of collaborative documents over a six month period with the aim of supporting staff and students in higher education. The SIG has more than 70 members based in several countries, including New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Japan, who bring an international perspective to the affordances and limitations of mobile learning. One of these documents is a co-curated selection of mobile tools that can be used to respond to the challenges of emergency remote teaching. This paper will describe how this Ecology of Resources (EoR) (Luckin, 2008) was created, list the main tools that are included, and make a number of recommendations in terms of implementing mobile learning.