Mobile 3.0 is a free app created to provide students at
the University of Maryland, College Park, with ways to produce and post
multimedia content in journalism classes taught by Ronald Yaros. The app
includes built-in tools for photos, audio, and video, along with a way for the
instructor to send push text notifications to students without their phone
number.
Yaros,
associate professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, designed the
app for his students as a way to prepare them for a future where technological
skills are paramount.
“While we know that any device can distract from
learning, we don’t know how to change the way a device can be used for
sustained engagement and more effective learning,” Yaros said in an interview for Campus Technology. “That’s why we need a mindset shift to adapt a tool’s
use to class meetings, assignments, and activities that require technology.”
Laptops were a distraction to Yaros, so he banned them
in favor of tablets and smartphones that use his interactive app. The app
provides students with instant polls, open-ended questions for discussion, live
web sites and Twitter feeds, and quizzes that send scores back to Yaros. All
course-related content is viewed on the students’ devices.
“From week one, they are repeatedly reading,
researching, interpreting, writing, posting, and discussing the content
produced by me and by their peers,” Yaros said. “I scaffold these skills so
that students constantly build on and improve their previously learned
techniques for effectively communicating digital content on the web and on
mobile devices.”
Students have to apply all those skills to produce and
post multimedia reports related to their major for their final project. Yaros
has found his classes have improved attendance and participation, along with better
evaluations by students.
“The bottom line is not the technology itself but how
the technology is used—and there are countless ways to use it,” Yaros said. “My
hope is that students leave my course with the professional skills they can
apply in their field of work and not think Twitter or Blogger is useful only in
social circles.”
