Mobile learning in Hong Kong teacher education: Pilot implementation and evaluation

To align with the international trend on using information and communications technology in education, the Hong Kong government has recently announced a policy to broadly implement e-learning in schools through a more pervasive use of mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) and electronic textbooks to support classroom teaching and students’ self-regulated learning. However, many local schools and their teachers are not yet ready and confident enough (in terms of their teaching methods, strategies, and approaches) to adopt mobile devices in their classroom activities. The present chapter reports a few case studies showing how a team of teacher educators initiated a pioneer e-learning project to support the education sector, by offering relevant training to pre-service student-teachers and in-service teachers. The team designed, developed, and applied a number of innovative mobile learning activities in five different classes of undergraduate teacher education courses. A total of 364 undergraduate students completed a survey collecting information on their prior experiences, attitudes, and views on mobile learning, in order to evaluate their learning effectiveness in technology-enhanced lessons. To illustrate the educational implications of the present study, selected qualitative and quantitative findings will be presented together with some examples on the implementation of innovative mobile learning activities in some classes of teacher education courses. Copyright © 2016 inScience Press.