A study of learner experience design and learning efficacy of mobile microlearning in journalism education

Abstract

With the increasing number of mobile technologies, people rely on smartphones to connect with the world and obtain news and information. The emergent use of mobile technologies changes the way journalists produce and disseminate news. It is important for journalism educators to know how to support journalists' digital skills development, particularly digital skills of mobile technologies, and understand which new forms of learning are suitable and feasible for those learners in the journalism sector. Previous research has shown that mobile microlearning (MML) can be a promising learning approach for specific learning needs. Mobile microlearning basically means learning no more than five minutes of lessons that are distributed on the smartphone. However, there is only a little evidence on the design and effects of MML in the context of journalism education research. Hence, this dissertation aims to examine whether MML can be a useful approach to facilitate mobile journalists' digital skills learning with smartphones. Adapting a sociotechnical-pedagogical learner experience framework with a usercentered design process, a four-phase formative research cycle was conducted in this dissertation: Phase 1, a systematic literature review of mobile microlearning (Study 1), Phase 2, a needs assessment for an understanding of mobile journalists' learning needs and requirements (Study 2), Phase 3, an iterative design and development of a mobile microcourse and studying its usability and user experience (Study 3), and Phase 4, an examination of the learning efficacy (i.e., effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal) and learner experience of the developed mobile microcourse (Study 4). A mixed-method data collection and analysis approach was applied throughout this dissertation. The results in this research provided evidence-based findings and indicated that MML is a feasible and effective approach to support mobile journalists' just-in-time learning when the MML designs follow four sequential design principles: (a) an aha moment to help with the learners connecting their previous experiences to the importance of current learning topics, (b) interactive content, (c) short exercises, and (d) instant automated feedback. Lastly, the dissertation discussed the results and addressed insights and implications of the MML design to improve learner experience and learning efficacy.