Ubiquitous learning happens when we fully integrate formal educational spaces and times with informal educational spaces and times. As a teacher of Italian Language and Culture in a US college, I try to reach out to the language-target community using devices both inside and outside the classroom. By doing this, I aim to expose students to authentic material and interactive/participatory computing (C. Cope, M. Kalantzis, 2009).

In 2007 I experimented networked learning co-creating an Online Tandem project with an English teacher in Italy. Looking back at this project, our online tandem included some ubiquitous learning characteristics - permanency,  interactivity, situated instructional activities, adaptability - excluding two characteristics, accessibility and immediacy (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis et al., 2002). At the time, accessibility was limited to the use of personal computers inside and outside the classroom; immediacy was restrained by the modality of asynchronous communications via forums on a wiki and personal emails.

Online Tandem Message Prompt for a Intermediate Language Level

Since 2014, I have also used mobile learning within active learning classrooms equipped with tablets. Embracing a task-based methodology, I used tablets for delivering information and recording students’ productions (written and visual/audio); I created and co-created multimodal e-books with my students. However, this project failed one of the classical ubiquitous learning characteristics, the “situated instructional activities”, because students only had access to tablets only in classrooms. Looking back at my mobile learning experiences, I mainly used tech tools for their technical specification and not for their "social affordances" (C. Cope, Mary Kalantzis, 2015). I now realize that I facilitated real u-learning activities a few times when students conducted video interviews with speakers of Italian outside and inside the classroom.

Thumbnails of a Students' e-Book Chapter

I think the main issue for implementing u-learning is assessment. My colleagues criticized the networked and mobile learning projects mainly because they did not align with our program pedagogy and evaluation tools: teacher-centered classrooms and traditional summative assessments. In particular, I did not know how to evaluate the collaborative process and “artifacts”. Until now I used the completion grading, but it fails to consider students efforts and progress. Is Scholar an answer? 

• Chen, Y.S., Kao, T.C., Sheu, J.P. & Chiang, C.Y. (2002). A Mobile Scaffolding-Aid-Based Bird -Watching Learning System, Proceedings of IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE'02), pp.15-22.
• C. Cope, Mary Kalantzis (2009). Ubiquitous Learning: An Agenda for Educational Transformation http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2008/abstracts/PDFs/Cope_576-582.pdf.
• C. Cope, Mary Kalantzis (2015). Assessment and Pedagogy in the Era of Machine-Mediated Learning, in Education as Social Construction, Taos Institute Publications/WorldShare Books, pp. 350-374
• Curtis, M., Luchini, K., Bobrowsky, W., Quintana, C., and Soloway, E. (2002). Handheld Use in K-12: A Descriptive Account, Proceedings of IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE'02), pp.23-30, IEEE Computer Society Press