AbstractsEngineering

This thesis is concerned with the impact of mobile learning (mLearning) on the study of local culture at Malaysian universities. For convenience, the term Local Cultural Studies (LCS) is given to Humanities subjects related to the teaching and learning of Malay culture, for example: Local History, Local Culture and National Heritage, Malay Wood Craft, Malay Drum, Cooking, Batik Textile, Ceramic, and Local Drama. These subjects are not as popular as Science and Engineering and are often referred to as ‘dying traditional knowledge’ with an uncertain future. They have a lesser degree of significance in modern Malaysian society in achieving a ‘developed country’ status. One motivation for introducing mLearning into LCS subjects is to make them more interesting: the learning activities and the subjects should appear more modern by linking them to the latest technology. The fact that all students own mobile phones in Malaysian universities creates an opportunity to use mLearning for the benefit of LCS. In addition, mLearning could be used to create student-generated content to add richer multimedia learning resources as one of the major challenges for LCS is the limited availability of resources. An exploratory preliminary study with managers and content developers within mobile application companies confirmed there were limited local mobile content and little incentive to develop more. A major focus of this thesis was to investigate two approaches to overcoming this problem: (1) the development of culturally appropriate interface design guidelines that could be used to assist developers and academics in the production of local content; and (2) involving students in creating local content in student-generated mLearning activities. This largely qualitative study focused on gaining an understanding of mLearning’s contributions to the study of local culture from the perspective of academics and students at predominantly Malaysian public universities. The research was designed in two stages. In Stage 1, Nielsen’s user interface design guidelines were first adapted to include two cultural design principles based on local Malay cultural content and aesthetic values and then used as a probe to uncover academic and student views on culturally appropriate design during a heuristic evaluation of three mobile applications with a Malay cultural focus. The heuristic evaluation of the mLearning applications also served to raise awareness of mLearning and opened the way for interviews with academics and focus group discussions with students about their pre-existing experiences with mobile technologies and perspectives on mLearning. The interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed, translated, and analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Consequently at Stage 2, student-generated activities using mobile devices were introduced. These included students making videos, taking photographs and sound recording interviews in their LCS subjects using a mix of mobile devices such as mobile phones, laptops and…