Evaluating the Effectiveness and Motivational Impact of Replacing a Human Instructor by Mobile Devices for Teaching Network Services Configuration to Telecommunication Engineering Students

The introduction of mobile technologies in class provide instructors with tools for contextualized, active, situated, any-time any-where learning. In fact, the role of the instructor can be partially delegated to the student by the use of a mobile device. This paper assesses if this delegation can be brought to the limit of eliminating the need of the physical presence of the instructor in the particular context of a situated learning environment consisting of a server room where third year Telecommunication Engineering students learn how to configure network services such as DNS, SMTP and HTTP. The paper presents the results of two experiments inside the “advanced telematic applications” course at the Carlos III University of Madrid. Two groups of students participated in the experiments, one following traditional instructor based classes and the other using NFC enabled mobile phones. The paper analyzes both learning increments and motivational aspects.