oa Integrating mLearning Language Application into University Course Content

The idea that education can be considered as design science was brought up in the 1990s in order to bring the educational research from an experimental classroom into practice (Laurillard, 2012), at the time when the computers were introduced in educational settings. After that a number of theories focusing eLearning have arisen. Technologies are constantly changing, and new more pervasive mobile technologies increasingly influence individuals’ everyday lives. Among other things this influences humans’ social learning practices, and becomes an even more challenging task for educators. Design is critical to the successful development of any interactive learning environment (Mor & Winters, 2007). Mobile technology, as most other IT, is not primarily an educational phenomenon. It is a social phenomenon that happens in different parts of the world and in different ways. As emerging mobile technologies afford many advantages, such as flexibility and user-friendliness, researchers are exploring how to use them to support language learning (Huang et al., 2012). This paper presents a prototype for a cross-platform mobile language learning application developed for an online language course at Dalarna University in Sweden. The prototype is developed in order to support beginner second and foreign language learners in their vocabulary, listening and grammar learning. Considering mLearning to be a product of sociotechnical construction, the study applies a Design Science approach.