M-Learning: Lernen im mobilen Kontext an Hochschulen

A fundamental characteristic of human beings is the desire to start learning at the moment of birth. The rather formal learning process that learners have to deal with in school, on vocational training or in university, is currently subject to fundamental changes. The increasing technologization, overall existing mobile devices, the ubiquitous access to digital information, and students being early adaptors of all these technological innovations require reactions on the part of the educational system. This study examines such a reaction: The use of mobile learning in higher education. Examining the subject m-learning first requires an investigation of the educational model e-learning. Many universities already established e-learning as one of their educational segments, providing a wide range of methods to support this kind of teaching. This study includes an empirical acceptance analysis regarding the general learning behavior of students and their approval of e-learning methods. A survey on the approval of m-learning supplements the results. Mobile learning is characterized by both the mobility of the communication devices and the users. Both factors lead to new correlations, demonstrate the potential of today's mobile devices and the probability to increase the learning performance. The dissertation addresses these correlations and the use of mobile devices in the context of m-learning. M-learning and the usage of mobile devices not only require a reflection from a technological point of view. In addition to the technical features of such mobile devices, the usability of their applications plays an important role, especially with regard to the limited display size. For the purpose of evaluating mobile apps and browser-based applications, various analytical methods are suitable. The concluding heuristic evaluation points out the vulnerability of an established m-learning application, reveals the need for improvement, and shows an approach to rectify the shortcoming.