Distance Education

New study challenges conventional wisdom that where you live doesn’t matter when you are enrolled online.

Since the start of the current millennium, experience and expertise in the development and delivery of mobile learning have blossomed and a community of practice has evolved that is distinct from the established communities of 'tethered' e-Learning. This community is currently visible mainly through dedicated international conference series, of which MLEARN is the most prestigious, rather than through any dedicated journals. So far, these forms of development and delivery have focussed on short-term small-scale pilots and trials in the developed countries of Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim, and there is a taxonomy emerging from these pilots and trials that suggests tacit and pragmatic conceptualisations of mobile learning.

What has, however, developed less confidently within this community is any theoretical conceptualisation of mobile learning and with it any evaluation methodologies specifically aligned to the unique attributes of mobile learning.

This entire issue of The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 8, No 2 (2007), is focused on mobile learning. This special issue addresses some of the issues and challenges of mobile learning, and provides suggestions and recommendations for mobile learning and for research on mobile learning.