Perspectives and Attitudes towards Self-directed MALL and Strategies to Facilitate Learning for Different Learner Groups

Abstract

Mobile learning emerged around 2005 and in the past 15 years, mobile computing devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets have become a reality with a strong presence in all fields, with education as no exception. In a quantitative study involving nearly 72,000 undergraduate students in 12 countries, Brooks (2016) found that 96% owned a smartphone and 93% had a laptop. 93%, 46%, and 41% of these students considered laptops, smartphones, and tablets as important or very important to their academic success respectively. However, studies on attitudes towards the use of mobile technologies for language learning have produced mixed results and were generally divided by the positive-negative line without looking at specific perspectives held by learners and how to facilitate learning for those with different attitudes. The current study adopted design-based research and collected data from 57 tertiary TESOL teachers from 46 Vietnamese universities over two years using a survey, interview, pre-test, and post-test as well as records of app uses to shed light on perspectives towards MALL(Mobile Assisted Language Learning). Findings revealed five different attitudes towards self-directed learning with mobile technologies and proposed various strategies to facilitate learner groups with different attitudes.