Mobile Learning as the Key to Higher Education Innovation: A systematic mapping

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.