Downtime Learning as a Complement of Institutional Education
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | New mobile technologies and the changing behaviour of human society, increasingly dependent on an Internet connection, evoke the question whether it is or it is not necessary to offer new teaching methods. These new mobile technologies must bring more effective education. At the same time we need to know how effective the classic institutional education system is. When looking at the current competencies of graduates of all school levels we must state that the society consider them as insufficient. We judge it based on the results of the research studies and by the experiences of students' self-education. Even in times of strong information expansion it is still the aim of education to equip pupils and students with such skills that enable them full-fledged personal and professional life. Contemporary mobile technologies can support teaching/learning process in the students' spare-time. The question is if today's students use these facilities themselves in this manner, i.e. in the so called "Downtime learning"? Training using mobile devices may not only take place at school or at a designated homework time, but also during the pupil's downtime, i.e. at the bus stop, waiting in a line, in the bus, train etc. Pupils/students mostly look for such resources that have few text and more multimedia content. Our investigation shows that students consider them more attractive. In this paper we present some results of the research study focused on basic elements and orientation of the downtime learning. Based on our research we can say that mobile technologies are currently implemented in the school, but the level of integration is not as perfect as the parents or their children/youngster might think. However, downtime learning materials need to be specially prepared for this purpose. |