Toward Educational Requirements Model for Mobile Learning Development and Adoption in Higher Education

Mobile learning (M-learning) is a learning paradigm that utilizes the advantages of mobility and wireless technologies in the learning and education process. It can be characterized by the ability to support and provide strong interaction between learners and instructors, offering high levels of learning motivation, collaboration, and flexibility to the learning activities. Despite the increased popularity of M-learning, there is no complete and well-defined set of educational requirements for M-learning in higher education which considers both instructional design and M-learning design. Therefore, this paper proposes a new educational requirements model for M-learning development and adoption in higher education. This set of requirements has been built from a literature study with focus on standards for learning and mobile application software quality and guidelines. This work presents the results of applying the proposed set of educational requirements on three different M-learning systems. Instructional designers and educational software developers may find the requirements useful in the development of M-learning systems. The effort described is part of an Omani-funded research project investigating the development, adoption and dissemination of M-learning in Oman.