In this research, a dual-purpose application of NTNU campus guide and science education which was called NTNU Campus Tour application and an outdoor mobile learning activity were developed. Participant students were pre-service teachers and totally 31 participants in this research. After experiencing the NTNU Campus Tour application and activity, participant students’ learning achievements of scientific knowledge which included in the application and activity had improved. Besides, participant students agreed that this NTNU Campus Tour application and activity was useful in learning and they will be willing to use mobile learnng.
According to the results, students considered that the NTNU Campus Tour application helped their learning. The NTNU Campus Tour application had four functions: (1) Map, (2) Guide, (3) Recognition and (4) Record. Those functions played deferent roles in the outdoor mobile learning activity. The map function helped users to find out the location of stations in NTNU Campus, and the guide function introduced NTNU to users. Participant students in this research were NTNU students; they did not need to find the stations by using the map function and the guide function. The practicabilities of map and guide were not apparent in this research. But this does not mean that the map is useless. When students explore a new environment, the map and guide are essential. The recognition function provided students with the scientific knowledge. AR technology was applied in this function. After students successfully recognized target item (the marker in the AR technology), the scientific knowledge of the target item would show up. From the open-ended questions in questionnaire, students felt that it was an innovative, interesting and convenience way to obtain scientific knowledge. AR used in mobile device has opened a new door in information
achievement (Johnson & Witchey, 2011). The record function exhibited pass certification and recorded the scientific knowledge. From the questionnaire, some participant students replied that they extremely wanted to collect all the pass certifications. Pass certifications which act as reinforcement might increase students’
learning motivation. In brief, participant students considered that the NTNU Campus Tour application helped their learning.
During the NTNU Campus Tour activity, students utilized the functions of mobile device to complete challenge activity at every station such as taking notes, taking pictures, captureing picture and so on. Weather those functions were helpful in learning or not were estimated by participant students. Students considered that internet search and digital capture were the most helpful functions in learning. They both got 4.21 point of mean scores of students agreement. It conformed to the urgency of learning need and the initiative of knowledge acquisition (Chen et al., 2003). At present, there is a lot of information on the Internet, people are getting used to surf the Internet to obtain useful informaion. Digital capture was also a benefic function for students. In the past, taking a picture needed to carry out many steps, such as develop films. Today, digital camera enables people to check the photographs on the display right away after pressing the shutter release button and allow us to send photographs to cyberspace. Also, image resolution becomes much higher with the advanced with display technology. Students can record what they saw more real and check the pictures in more convenient way than before. In the NTNU Campus Tour activity, students used the digital capture to record their experiment results. Participant students thought digital capture was helpful in learning because they could record experiment results by one shoot and did not have to spend much time on writing or painting. On the contrary, students held the lowest agreement with take notes which was 3.50 points of mean scores of students agreement.
From questionnaire, many students referred that the buttons of iPod were too small to press, and they needed to spend a lot of time on taking notes. Sound recording function and screen capture function are common in the mobile device. Those functions can be used to take notes and take the place of typing. Video and audio solve the problem of slow typing on mobile devices (Wang, Wu, & Wang, 2009). If students use video and audio functions to take notes or record something, it may be improve their will to take notes.
The NTNU Campus Tour activity developed in this research was an outdoor group mobile learning. There are still other types of mobile learning (Chang et al., 2003).
Situating of instructional activity is one of the unique characteristics of mobile learning (Chen et al., 2003). To conform with the unique characteristic, the NTNU campus was chosen as outdoor learning environment, students used the NTNU Campus application to explore the campus environment and to learn the scientific knowledge. From the open-ended questions in questionnaire, students mentioned that even though scientific knowledge stated the appearance of hoop pine but it was too abstract for them. However in the NTNU Campus Tour activity, they actually saw the hoop pine, observed its height as well as the feature of its seeds, and speculated about the mode of seed dispersal in accordance with the feature of seeds. This kind of learning experience was interesting and close to real life. Students considered that they had profound impression on scientific knowledge because of their personal experience on seeing the authentic objects and observing the phenomenon. Learning environment is no longer restricted to classroom because of the mobility of mobile devices, learning occurs in everyday life (Shih, Chu, Hwang, & Kinshuk, 2011). Using mobile learning allows students to verify what they learned in authentic environment.
Overall, students used the NTNU Campus Tour application to explore the campus
and complete the activities at each station. In the process of experiencing mobile learning, students observed the real objects, interacted with peers, did experiments and accessed to scientific knowledge by recognizition and AR technology. Students’
performance in learning achievement test had significantly improved after experiencing the NTNU Campus Tour activity. Seven weeks later, students still remained learning retention. Students’ learning benefited from the mobile learning. Besides, students were willing to use mobile learning in the furture. To achieve the specific learning and teaching goals is needed to understand the advantages and disadvantages of one particular technology and at the same time to develope one appropriate learning activity (Motiwalla, 2007).
In this reserch, the NTNU Campus Tour application included the introductions of several sites in the Gongguan campus of National Taiwan Normal University. It was just a pilot application. Resercher hope that this dual purpose of NTNU campus guide as well as outdoor mobile science education application will be extended to the all campuses of National Taiwan Normal University. Visitors or freshmen of NTNU are able to use the NTNU Campus Tour application to explore all campuses and also learn more scientific knowledge in the NTNU campus .