Abstract
The study of educational innovations has attracted increasing attention from academics and researchers around the world. Educational innovation proposes the implementation of new approaches or practices that are beneficial and make an impact on individuals or academic communities. The current educational model of many higher education institutions (HEIs) was not designed for this generation of “digital natives”. For this reason, HEIs face the challenge of building teaching strategies that generate meaningful educational experiences. This research seeks to address this issue through a systematic mapping that includes empirical research papers from 2015 to 2020 that study innovations in educational practices using mobile devices. A qualitative and quantitative approach was applied using a four-stage research methodology to evidence innovation in higher education. After employing the selected methodology and applying all the exclusion criteria, 27 papers related to the research topic were identified. Mapping was also performed between the corpus of papers and five dimensions on educational innovation (the purpose of learning, the context of learning, the role of the teacher, the role of the learner, and the evidence of the outcome). The findings reveal that the role of the teacher is the dimension that is least analyzed in innovation initiatives, whereas the most analyzed dimension is the purpose of learning. The goal of this work was to explore and identify educational innovations and unveil uncovered fields of research to generate opportunities for new lines of research in educational innovation.
Highlights
Technological advances of today’s world provide inexpensive, fast, new, accessible, portable and digital technology for learners [1]
The first work is related to augmented reality (AR), the authors note that the intervention of creative and playful aspects can be transformative elements of educational interaction
Another research analyses innovation in higher education using a survey and a comparative study in three countries (USA, China, and Turkey) [60]. Their results indicate that mobile devices are widely used in informal learning, but there are very few mobile learning experiments guided by their teachers [60]
Summary
Technological advances of today’s world provide inexpensive, fast, new, accessible, portable and digital technology for learners [1]. All these tools, widgets and new technology allow students to create, own, transform, discuss, discard, share, store, and disseminate ideas, opinions, images, and information, and to create and transform identities and communities, all ubiquitously [1]. In its annual Internet Report (2018-2023) published in March 2020, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Laxmisha Rai. forecasts that smartphones will have very accelerated growth. Forecasts that smartphones will have very accelerated growth This means that more than 70 % of the world’s population will have a cell phone by 2023 [4]. The use of mobile devices and their features are transforming and improving current education [6]
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