Chapter 4: Practical Concepts of Seamless Learning
Chapter 4: Practical Concepts of Seamless Learning
Maria José Sousa; Frelét de Villiers; and Willem Ellis
Introduction
According to Camilleri and Camilleri (2017), digital learning environments have the potential to change the nature of learning and provoke reflection upon the traditional role of learning. The digital learning platforms have allowed the diffusion of learning methodologies that have facilitated teaching and learning processes (Sousa et al., 2017), enabling students to: a) learn anytime, anywhere: since materials are available twenty-four hours and can be accessed from any location; b) benefit from time savings: there is no need to make trips to training, which cause so much inconvenience and become barriers to training/learning; c) learn at their own pace: the student becomes autonomous, responsible for his learning, can choose the content and marks his rhythm; d) to reuse of contents and experiences: the contents of the course can be reused in other courses partially or totally; e) have access to updated information. eLearning also presents a series of disadvantages such as: a) lower student/teacher interaction: student/teacher interaction becomes reduced since communication is made via the Internet, originating as such a physical and/or temporal remoteness; b) compromised motivation and rhythm: it implies a strong motivation and a proper rhythm on the part of the student, being denominated of solitary and little social learning; c) the need for more time and effort in the content development and modification: the teacher has to dedicate more time to produce content and involve specialists in several domains of knowledge; d) the costs of reliable Internet access: online learning systems depend upon the Internet as a crucial tool for communication and efficient transmission of content, which can be costly for some populations.
4.1 Mobile Data
Mobile data (also referred to as cellular data) enables a person to connect to the internet when they lack access to WiFi as long as they are connected to a cellular network (Ottoni, 2019). Measured in megabytes (MB) and gigabytes (GB), it is used whenever information is downloaded or uploaded. The Ethernet Project at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center was the beginning of wired networks in the early 1970s in the United States. These networks provided digital networking to computers through Local Area Networks (LANs) by using affordable hardware that functioned at a relatively high speed (Metcalfe & Boggs, 1976). We have come a long way since those early days; nowadays we cannot imagine a world without data and wireless access to data.
When considering online ways of presenting and transferring knowledge, necessary for seamless learning, one of the first issues that comes to mind is connectivity (access to data and/or WiFi) and hardware (devices). The affordability of data is a problem in many countries. For example, in South Africa, 33% of participants who took part in Research ICT Africa’s 2