STEM Strategies
Teacher Educator’s Experiences of Integrating Mobile Devices into their Teaching: A Case Study of One University in South Africa View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Thuthukile Jita
The growing trend on the use of mobile devices in higher education institutions continues with many innovations being semi-institutionalised into teaching and learning policies and practices post the COVID-19 era. Much of the research on mobile devices addresses itself to course design and student experiences with limited research on the experiences of academic staff members. This qualitative, exploratory case study explores the experiences of teacher educators who work with preservice teachers in one university in South Africa. The paper adopts the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework as a guide for exploring teacher educators’ reflections about their integration of mobile devices in their teaching. Data collection included document analysis and semi-structured interviews with the four participants who had been part of a pilot project that deployed Tablets as mobile devices for teaching and learning. Findings show that the teacher educators perceived their use of mobile devices as an opportunity to shift from a traditional course design approach of the teacher educator as the lecturer to the mobile applications integration in the course design making them more of facilitators of learning in class. The paper discusses some of the lessons learned from the pilot project and some of the promise and challenges of mobile devices in helping to shift classroom pedagogies within a higher education environment.
Mobile Technologies in the Context of Teacher Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lilia Aparecida Costa Gonçalves
Digital technologies facilitate and optimize different activities, bringing significant impacts to individual and collective life. The use of devices connected to the Internet allows not only different forms of communication, but also relationships, work and teaching and learning. With the advent of mobile technologies, the reach of the network was boosted, since the portability and mobility offered by these devices, in addition to the convergence of resources and tools that they provide, allow different activities to be performed anytime, anywhere. This ubiquity of mobile technologies further influences interaction, communication and, consequently, the ways we teach and learn. Therefore, it is essential to think about the challenges of teacher education for the use of these devices in the pedagogical practices of these teachers. The present work considers the results of a study on the use of mobile technologies in teacher education for language teaching in order to identify how teachers who seek education for the use of mobile technologies already use these technologies in their teaching practices, when they use them and analyze the perception that teachers have in relation to the use of mobile technologies in the educational process. The methodology chosen was the case study and the data collection was conducted by questionnaires and records of online interactions.
