skip to main content
10.1145/3098279.3098565acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesmobilehciConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Public Access

Language learning on-the-go: opportune moments and design of mobile microlearning sessions

Published: 04 September 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Learning a foreign language is a daunting and time-consuming task. People often lack the time or motivation to sit down and engage with learning content on a regular basis. We present an investigation of microlearning sessions on mobile phones, in which we focus on session triggers, presentation methods, and user context. Therefore, we built an Android app that prompts users to review foreign language vocabulary directly through notifications or through app usage across the day. We present results from a controlled and an in-the-wild study, in which we explore engagement and user context. In-app sessions lasted longer, but notifications added a significant number of "quick" learning sessions. 37.6% of sessions were completed in transit, hence learning-on-the-go was well received. Neither the use of boredom as trigger nor the presentation (flashcard and multiple-choice) had a significant effect. We conclude with implications for the design of mobile microlearning applications with context-awareness.

References

[1]
Daniel Lee Ashbrook. 2010. Enabling mobile microinteractions. (2010).
[2]
Harry P Bahrick and Elizabeth Phelphs. 1987. Retention of Spanish vocabulary over 8 years. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 13, 2 (1987), 344.
[3]
Emrah Baki Basoglu and Omur Akdemir. 2010. A Comparison of Undergraduate Students' English Vocabulary Learning: Using Mobile Phones and Flash Cards. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology - TOJET 9, 3 (July 2010), 1--7. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ898010http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ898010.pdf
[4]
Jennifer S. Beaudin, Stephen S. Intille, Emmanuel Munguia Tapia, Randy Rockinson, and Margaret E. Morris. 2007. Context-Sensitive Microlearning of Foreign Language Vocabulary on a Mobile Device. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 55--72. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-76652-0_4
[5]
Chihab BenMoussa. 2003. Workers on the move: New opportunities through mobile commerce. Stockholm mobility roundtable (2003), 22--23.
[6]
Peter A. Bruck, Luvai Motiwalla, and Florian Foerster. 2012. Mobile Learning with Micro-content: A Framework and Evaluation. Bled, Slovenia. http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=bled2012
[7]
Carrie J. Cai, Philip J. Guo, James Glass, and Robert C. Miller. 2014. Wait-learning: Leveraging Conversational Dead Time for Second Language Education (CHI EA '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2239--2244.
[8]
Shana K. Carpenter and Edward L. DeLosh. 2005. Application of the testing and spacing effects to name learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology 19, 5 (2005), 619--636.
[9]
Nadire Cavus and Dogan Ibrahim. 2009. m-Learning: An experiment in using SMS to support learning new English language words. British Journal of Educational Technology 40, 1 (Jan. 2009), 78--91.
[10]
Chih-Ming Chen and Ching-Ju Chung. 2008. Personalized mobile English vocabulary learning system based on item response theory and learning memory cycle. Computers & Education 51, 2 (Sept. 2008), 624--645.
[11]
T. Chen and C. Guestrin. 2016. XGBoost: a scalable tree boosting system. In Proc. of the ACM SIGKDD Int. Conf. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). 785--794.
[12]
William L Cull and others. 2000. Untangling the benefits of multiple study opportunities and repeated testing for cued recall. Applied Cognitive Psychology 14, 3 (2000), 215--235.
[13]
David Dearman and Khai Truong. 2012. Evaluating the Implicit Acquisition of Second Language Vocabulary Using a Live Wallpaper (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1391--1400.
[14]
Frank N Dempster. 1987. Effects of variable encoding and spaced presentations on vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology 79, 2 (1987), 162.
[15]
Anind K. Dey, Katarzyna Wac, Denzil Ferreira, Kevin Tassini, Jin-Hyuk Hong, and Julian Ramos. 2011. Getting Closer: An Empirical Investigation of the Proximity of User to Their Smart Phones. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 163--172.
[16]
Tilman Dingler and Martin Pielot. 2015. I'L1 Be There for You: Quantifying Attentiveness Towards Mobile Messaging. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1--5.
[17]
John D. Eastwood, Alexandra Frischen, Mark J. Fenske, and Daniel Smilek. 2012. The Unengaged Mind: Defining Boredom in Terms of Attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, 5 (2012), 482--495.
[18]
Hermann Ebbinghaus. 1913. Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology. Number 3. University Microfilms.
[19]
Darren Edge, Stephen Fitchett, Michael Whitney, and James Landay. 2012. MemReflex: Adaptive Flashcards for Mobile Microlearning (MobileHCI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 431--440.
[20]
Darren Edge, Elly Searle, Kevin Chiu, Jing Zhao, and James A. Landay. 2011. MicroMandarin: Mobile Language Learning in Context (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3169--3178.
[21]
Joel E. Fischer, Chris Greenhalgh, and Steve Benford. Investigating Episodes of Mobile Phone Activity As Indicators of Opportune Moments to Deliver Notifications. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (2011) (MobileHCI '11). ACM, 181--190.
[22]
Robert Godwin-Jones. 2010. Emerging technologies from memory palaces to spacing algorithms: approaches to secondlanguage vocabulary learning. Language, Learning & Technology 14, 2 (2010), 4.
[23]
Alexis Hiniker, Shwetak N. Patel, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Julie A. Kientz. 2016. Why Would You Do That? Predicting the Uses and Gratifications Behind Smartphone-usage Behaviors. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 634--645.
[24]
Shamsi T. Iqbal and Brian P. Bailey. Effects of Intelligent Notification Management on Users and Their Tasks. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2008) (CHI '08). ACM, 93--102.
[25]
Agah Tugrul Korucu and Ayse Alkan. 2011. Differences between m-learning (mobile learning) and e-learning, basic terminology and usage of m-learning in education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (2011), 1925--1930.
[26]
William E Nagy and Patricia A Herman. 1987. Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Implications for acquisition and instruction. The nature of vocabulary acquisition 19 (1987), 35.
[27]
Tatsuya Nakata. 2008. English vocabulary learning with word lists, word cards and computers: Implications from cognitive psychology research for optimal spaced learning. ReCALL 20, 01 (2008), 3--20.
[28]
Martin Pielot, Tilman Dingler, Jose San Pedro, and Nuria Oliver. 2015. When Attention is Not Scarce - Detecting Boredom from Mobile Phone Usage. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 825--836.
[29]
B. Poppinga, W. Heuten, and S. Boll. 2014. Sensor-Based Identification of Opportune Moments for Triggering Notifications. IEEE Pervasive Computing 13, 1 (Jan. 2014), 22--29.
[30]
John Read. 2000. Assessing vocabulary. Cambridge university press Cambridge.
[31]
Patricia Thornton and Chris Houser. 2005. Using mobile phones in English education in Japan. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 21, 3 (June 2005), 217--228.
[32]
Andrew Trusty and Khai N. Truong. 2011. Augmenting the Web for Second Language Vocabulary Learning. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3179--3188.
[33]
Maria Virvou and Eythimios Alepis. 2005. Mobile educational features in authoring tools for personalised tutoring. Computers & Education 44, 1 (2005), 53--68.
[34]
Stuart Webb. The Effects of Repetition on Vocabulary Knowledge. Applied Linguistics 28, 1 (????), 46--65.
[35]
SungHyuk Yoon, Sang-su Lee, Jae-myung Lee, and KunPyo Lee. 2014. Understanding notification stress of smartphone messenger app. In Proceedings of the extended abstracts of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '14 (CHI EA '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1735--1740.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Microlearning as an Effective Way to Manage Students’ Attention in a Foreign Language LessonLinguistics & Polyglot Studies10.24833/2410-2423-2024-4-41-101-11310:4(101-113)Online publication date: 26-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Peer-Awareness to Support Learning: An In-the-wild Study on Notification TimingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3677576(14-18)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
  • (2024)mobiCHAI - 1st International Workshop on Mobile Cognition-Altering Technologies (CAT) using Human-Centered AIAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680462(1-5)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Language learning on-the-go: opportune moments and design of mobile microlearning sessions

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    MobileHCI '17: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
    September 2017
    874 pages
    ISBN:9781450350754
    DOI:10.1145/3098279
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 04 September 2017

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. attention
    2. language learning
    3. microinteractions
    4. microlearning
    5. mobile device
    6. prediction

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Funding Sources

    • 7th Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission
    • NSF

    Conference

    MobileHCI '17
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    MobileHCI '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 45 of 224 submissions, 20%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)324
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)58
    Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Microlearning as an Effective Way to Manage Students’ Attention in a Foreign Language LessonLinguistics & Polyglot Studies10.24833/2410-2423-2024-4-41-101-11310:4(101-113)Online publication date: 26-Dec-2024
    • (2024)Peer-Awareness to Support Learning: An In-the-wild Study on Notification TimingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3677576(14-18)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
    • (2024)mobiCHAI - 1st International Workshop on Mobile Cognition-Altering Technologies (CAT) using Human-Centered AIAdjunct Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3640471.3680462(1-5)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2024
    • (2024)Interrupting for Microlearning: Understanding Perceptions and Interruptibility of Proactive Conversational Microlearning ServicesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642778(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Micro-Learning (ML): A Comprehensive Survey2024 1st International Conference on Emerging Technologies for Dependable Internet of Things (ICETI)10.1109/ICETI63946.2024.10777206(1-15)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2024
    • (2024)Enhancing learning and attitude toward statistics with a microlearning approach using an animated videoJournal of Research on Technology in Education10.1080/15391523.2024.2363197(1-26)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Learning in the wild – exploring interactive notifications to foster organic retention of everyday media contentBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2366985(1-21)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Using AI for Adaptive Learning and Adaptive AssessmentArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-981-97-9350-1_3(341-466)Online publication date: 31-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Implementation of Microlearning Along with Problem Based Learning to Improve Students Performance: A ReviewProceedings of the International Conference on Advancing and Redesigning Education 202310.1007/978-981-97-4507-4_67(600-606)Online publication date: 14-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Implementing Mobile-First Strategies in Online EducationCreative Approaches to Technology-Enhanced Learning for the Workplace and Higher Education10.1007/978-3-031-72430-5_14(157-182)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2024
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Login options

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media