M-learning infographic: smartphone usage

Via: STUDYBLUE.com

This interesting infographic shows the results of a StudyBlue survey of nearly 1m students in the autumn semester 2011 and is combined with information from the University of Colorado.

Interestingly, it states that learners using an m-learning device check their progress 3 times as often as other learners. Could this suggest they rely on quick feedback to make decisions about their learning path?

It is also interesting to see where users are accessing learning, from bed or bathroom to commute or waiting in a queue. The study found most users (75%) were accessing learning on their commute.

Further, the study of 517 smartphone users at the University of Colorado (Dean 2010) found that "when students choose to consume different types of media on their smartphones, they tend to do so in small amounts".  Their statistics show that the majority of users accessed less than 1 minute of a video news report or read less than the first 3 paragraphs of text based news articles, suggesting that users are 'dipping in and out' of smartphone media. Dean's analysis of this concludes that while short attention span consumption of data is also seen in other platforms, such as PC internet use, further study is needed to evaluate the user's interest in a topic and their consumption of smartphone data. 

Dean (2010) also found that users are often multi-tasking and accessing data from smartphones while listening to music, shopping or when they are idle. It is suggested that these short periods could be used for scanning news or for bookmarking content to look at later on, when the user can focus more.

The most popular types of information access were email and text messaging, the least popular being audio podcasts and e-readers/ online book content.

A study of social media usage on m-devices (Bloch 2010) is shown below:

This study also showed that in 2010 there were 100 million active users of facebook who were accessing the site through an m-device. It is interesting to note that the study found that the largest percentages of users networking on social sites vie their mobile were aged between 25-34 and 35-55 years old.

Further, it showed that more users are socialising using their m-device than are using a a non-mobile device (such as a PC).

Those accessing Twitter from an m-device, for example, increased between 2009 and 2010 by approximately 3,600. Twitter, which was apparently based on the idea of a text message, is therefore already  familiar in content to the user.

Bloch. E (2010) How are mobile phones changing social media? http://www.flowtown.com/blog/how-are-mobile-phones-changing-social-media

Dean. J (2010) Smartphone User Survey: A glimpse into the mobile lives of college students http://testkitchen.colorado.edu/projects/reports/smartphone/smartphone-survey/

Klundt. C (2011) Infographic: Studying Online Flashcards in Smartphones: http://www.studyblue.com/about/2011/11/infographic-studying-online-flashcards-on-smartphones/