Design and Implementation of Repeatable and Short-spanned m-Learning Model for English Listening and Comprehension Mobile Digital Textbook Contents on Smartphone

As information society matures to an even higher level and as information technology becomes a necessity to our everyday lives, the needs to develop, support and satisfy personal and social needs without the limitation of time, space, and location have become a vital point to everyday lives. Smartphone users are increasing at a staggering rate but the research on mobile-Learning model and the implementation of m-Learning scenario are still behind the needs of the users. Therefore, this paper focuses on the design of 'repeatable and short-spanned m-Learning model' to meet the needs of the learners who are on the go and on the move with their smartphones. Smartphone users frequently reach out for their phones but compare to the frequencies, the actual span of time they spend per use are relatively and surprisingly short. One way to understand this phenomenon is that the users tend to immediately replace their smartphones with laptops or desktops whenever they are available. A leaning model was needed to reflect this short and frequent use, a use that is solely based on the smartphone environment. This proposed learning model first defines this particular setting and implements the model to real smartphone users over an 8 week period. To understand whether different learning backgrounds can influence this model, different schools with online and offline learning channels participated in the experiment. User survey was conducted after the experiment to get a better understanding of the smartphone users. Pretest and posttest were conducted before and after the experiment and the data were validated and analyzed using SPSS version 18.0 for PC. Preliminary descriptive statistics, multiple regression and cross validation was conducted for the analysis. The results showed that the proposed English Listening and Comprehension Mobile Digital Textbook (ELCMDT) had a positive effect on the learners in general and was more effective for learners who were already experienced with online learning.