Game of phones: Integrating mobile technology into science and engineering classrooms

Abstract

[EN] Mobile technologies are ubiquitous in the lives of our students. Rather than seeing the presence of these devices in the classroom as a hindrance or a distraction, educators should embrace the opportunities for greater student engagement, collaboration and useful feedback. This paper reports some uses of mobile technologies in classrooms at UTS Insearch and the responses of science and engineering students. We hope that our reflections will be a useful guide to other educators and suggest simple ways to integrate flipped learning and gamification into undergraduate classrooms. UTS Insearch has a blended learning approach to learning and teaching where students learn through seamless integration of technology-enhanced strategies and face-to-face activities. We focus on our experiences using learning tools, such as Kahoot! and Mentimeter, to demonstrate practical applications of gamification in science and engineering classrooms. The teaching style used in Australian universities incorporating student-centred flipped learning is foreign to many students, especially those from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds, but data from surveys and reflections allow us to conclude that a majority of students value the use of emerging technologies in learning and that they assist with motivation, formative assessment, collaborative learning and student engagement.