Blurring time and place in higher education with bring your own device applications: a literature review

Marcus Sundgren

doi:10.1007/s10639-017-9576-3

Abstract

The use of mobile devices is increasing rapidly in society, and student device ownership is becoming more or less ubiquitous in many parts of the world. This might be an under-utilised resource that could benefit the educational practices of institutions of higher education. This review examines 91 journal articles from 28 countries published in the years of 2009–2015 with regards to the applications of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in higher education to take inventory of how it is applied where blurring of boundaries of time and place can be observed, and to observe problems or obstacles regarding these applications. Research interests do not seem to shift, as much as they are becoming more diverse. The five applications that were identified in 2009 were in discussion during all of the examined years, whereas the total number of applications in discussion increased to 12 in 2015. A methodological concern with regard to trend analysis is that more than half of the articles lack a stated year of data collection. As this can differ greatly from the year of publication, any trend analysis will be burdened with uncertainty. That said, a pattern that emerges is a shift away from distribution of content towards social networking applications. Much less focus has been placed on obstacles and problems in later years, but some areas that have been addressed are usability problems due to small screens and keyboards, with costs of devices and data plans making ownership unfeasible for certain activity types or groups of students.

Highlights

Regardless of how we feel about it, the use of personal and portable devices is increasing rapidly in society
The use of the Internet at large has moved from interaction with content towards communication between people, and the ability to support and maintain communication beyond the classroom through technology is transforming educational experience (Garrison 2016) This is a trend that is further strengthened by the ubiquitous access to mobile technology for educational purposes enabled by Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) practices
This paper has reviewed journal articles published in the years of 2009 through 2015 that discussed applications of BYOD in higher education to blur the boundaries of time and place

Summary

Introduction

Regardless of how we feel about it, the use of personal and portable devices is increasing rapidly in society This in itself is not an argument for its adoption for learning in higher education, but strong indications exist that educational practice can benefit from activities blurring the boundaries of time and place (e.g. Berge and Muilenburg 2013; Miller and Doering 2014; Shippee and Keengwe 2014; Traxler and Kukulska-Hulme 2016). A strong argument in favour of a BYOD philosophy is that an institution that decides to produce materials that are dependent on a specific brand of device will require students without this type of device to either purchase the specified device, or opt out This type of requirement placed on the student is not fiscally realistic for most public institutions (Caudill 2007; Koole et al 2010)

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