Mobile First: Trends in Virtual Learning Environments

Abstract

Although mobile learning has long been predicted to become a vital part of the educational reality, schools often seem reluctant to implement mobile teaching solutions. In order to assess the current preferences of learning modalities for school students (ages 9-15) and teachers, an e-learning environments traffic data was analyzed. We have detected two trends: The first is a total rise of mobile usage, especially in comparison to the usage of desktop PCs in the past four years. Second, we have detected that especially students aged 12-15 mostly prefer mobile devices. Hence platform design should be adapted for better use with mobile devices to meet the learners’ needs.