Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 91, 15 December 2015, Pages 60-72
Computers & Education

Development of auditory design guidelines for improving learning on mobile phones

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.09.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A total of ten auditory guidelines were developed and validated for improving m-learning.

  • Three for auditory-only design, four for attention design, and three for personalization design were developed.

  • Auditory design guidelines were developed and revised using an iterative educational design research process.

  • The auditory design guidelines was validated using three methods: expert reviews, usability evaluation and field evaluation.

Abstract

Although auditory information in mobile learning (m-learning) can be an important resource for delivering knowledge and information, the importance of guidelines for designing auditory instructions has largely been overlooked. Therefore, this study considered the characteristics of m-learning, mobility and personalization, with the aim of developing and validating auditory design guidelines to improve learning on mobile phones. The present study covers m-learning with cellphones only. Auditory design guidelines were developed and revised using an iterative educational design research process. The auditory design guidelines were developed by analyzing previous studies related to m-learning and auditory interface design, and revised using three validation methods. The expert reviews and usability evaluations were conducted as an internal validation method, and a field evaluation was used as an external validation method to confirm the feasibility and educational effects. The results showed that the auditory design guidelines could be applied effectively to the design of audio instructions delivered on smart phones. Finally, a total of ten guidelines were developed, three for auditory-only design, four for attention design, and three for personalization design. This paper discusses the theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the design guidelines presented.

Introduction

The increasing popularity of mobile devices, such as smartphones and iPads, has increased the interest in mobile learning (McCrea, 2010). Students are provided with a learning environment, where they can search for information anytime and anywhere with their mobile phones because of their small device size and wireless internet capability (Hoppe et al., 2003, Kossen, 2001, Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler, 2005, Quinn, 2009). On the other hand, because the displays of mobile learning devices are relatively small compared to desktop or laptop computers and they can be used while walking around, most have limited capacity to display visual information. Consequently, learners may experience difficulties “maintaining” visual attention on the screen. Considering the mobile learning characteristics of portability and mobility, an auditory presentation of the instructional content might be the optimal means of obtaining information (Kim, 2012).

Despite auditory information in an instructional design field being an important design factor in conjunction with visual information, previous studies of auditory designs have only examined auditory interfaces and feedback in e-learning or m-learning environments in a restricted manner (Brewster, 2002, Leplatre and Brewster, 2000, Walker and Brewster, 2000). Many studies have evaluated general design guidelines for m-learning environments (Hayhoe, 2001, Parsons et al., 2007, Rainger, 2005, Trifonova, 2003, Vavoula et al., 2004). Despite this, practical guidelines on auditory information design are unavailable, leaving many instructional designers to rely on their experience when designing auditory information. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate auditory design guidelines to support a learner's self-directed learning in a mobile learning environment. Accordingly, educational design research was applied to achieve this research purpose (De Villiers and Harpur, 2013, Teras and Herrington, 2014). This paper provides useful auditory design guidelines that can help to address some of the limitations of the display size and stability in mobile learning environments.

Section snippets

M-learning and auditory information

M-learning, which emphasizes the features of “mobility” and the advantages of e-learning, can be defined as self-directed learning using portable mobile devices without tempo-spatial restrictions (Hoppe et al., 2003, Kukulska-Hulme and Shield, 2008, Quinn, 2009). Although m-learning generally covers all types of learning with mobile devices using wireless internet, such as notebooks, cellphones, iPads, and tablet PCs, the scope of this study is limited to learning from mobile devices with small

Research method: educational design research

Educational design research was chosen to guide this study because this study addressed an educational real-world problem for which there were no clear guidelines or solutions available (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012). An interactive process was used to design, validate, reflect on feedback, revise and redesign the set of auditory design guidelines. The research process carried out the stages of educational design research suggested by Reeves (2006) as shown in Fig. 1.

The initial auditory design

The initial auditory design guidelines

This section discusses the auditory design guidelines form-learning content. We have drawn on existing guidelines from e-learning to help us to develop a range of empirically-referenced auditory design guidelines considering the affordability and limitations of cell phones. A total of ten guidelines are suggested; four for auditory information design, three for auditory interaction design and three for auditory environment design. These ten guidelines were validated and tested, as reported in

Validations for auditory design guidelines

The initial auditory design guidelines were validated by an iterative process using three different methods. The specific sequence of validations are as shown in Table 2.

Discussion and conclusion

Although the auditory information in m-learning can be an important resource for delivering knowledge and information, there has been little research on how to design auditory instructions. In this respect, this study contributes to the auditory design research field in a little explored area. In particular, this study adds to the field by considering how the affordability and limitations of different devices affect the design. This study showed that the auditory design guidelines reflecting

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