Involving Students in Mobile Learning Content Development: Successes and Challenges

The content of e-learning is at least as important as e-learning delivery systems, if not more important. In the past, e-learning content development was dominated by teachers and e-learning professionals while the major recipients of e-learning, i.e., students, were seldom included. In this study, we hypothesized that if e-learning content were developed by students, it would be a source of learning motivation for the students and would provide a source of material for a database of re-usable e-learning materials. Based on this idea, two universities in Japan started a mobile learning project in 2013 that involved students in developing materials for an English email magazine. In the first stage of the project, students were paid to write short essays, make grammar and vocabulary quizzes, and create learning animations. In the second stage, we are calling for volunteer contributions from current subscribers in the hope of sustaining a project by the students and for the students. Although the project is ongoing, the data collected has already highlighted several areas which may be helpful in guiding future stages of the project and in clarifying mobile learning practices in general: 1) Mobile learning materials are usually short and focused, making them suitable for development even by students. 2) The content developed by students is perceived to be as readable by their peer users as teacher-generated materials, and it invites as large, if not a larger, response from readers. 3) Without proper instruction and training, students tend to contribute e-learning content that needs substantial editing by teachers. 4) Even with an offer of payment, few students are motivated to contribute content. How to sustain student participation in content development continues to be a major challenge in the project.