The Impacts of Tablet Use for Eliminating the Time-Space Barriers in University Education: A Turkish Experience

Mobile learning applications are widely used in various levels of education. In developing and developed countries, educational institutions use tablets and personal computers for supporting learning processes. Mobile learning practices are generally used for overcoming time-space constraints in traditional learning. This study covers both a lecturer’s and his students’ tablet usage and the achievements of that usage on an Introduction to New Media Course in Kadir Has University undergraduate New Media program, including a comparison with traditional and online-blended lectures in previous years. Thanks to the development of a mobile course tablet application, students have been able to watch live broadcasts and video recordings of lectures, see lecture presentations and read e-materials submitted online, while also being able to submit their assignments, exams and response papers. Interaction between lecturer and students was shown to have been improved by tablet application, and lecture commentaries were followed online and archived. The mobile application was integrated with Facebook in order to improve students’ social interactions with the course materials and the lecturer, thus also paving the way for a concept of social learning. A course which has already been complemented by social networks and another online education software was chosen for the study. By using almost the same syllabus that had been used for the previous two years, it was possible to harvest comparative data about student and lecturer performances, and the study showed that on average class performance improved by 8% compared to previous years. Online interaction obviously increased, but so did average time spent on class-work and also 'mobilization': 3G was used more than Wifi technologies during the semester, demonstrating the mobility and time-space independence of the students.