What is Ubiquitous Learning?

The Ubiquitous Learning Institute (ULI) is a center for research and inquiry into the changing conditions and possibilities of learning, as well as a site for pedagogical redesign and innovation.

In an era when people can carry the Internet in their pocket, teaching and learning must obviously be reconsidered. The increased use of handheld and portable devices, along with pervasive wireless networking, means that structured learning opportunities are becoming an "any time, anywhere" enterprise. We talk about this shift in terms of ubiquity: the traditional divide between formal and informal contexts of learning is breaking down. Technological as well as social, cultural, and institutional changes mean that learning is a continuous possibility across spatial and temporal barriers. Learners of all ages expect, and often need, structured learning opportunities in a "just in time" mode; this puts new meaning and vitality into the traditional idea of "lifelong learning."

For formal educational institutions this means developing new e-learning pedagogies that match the changing styles and rhythms of learning for all students, on-campus and off-campus. It means developing blended courses and programs that bring these diverse student populations into close connection with each other, and using their diversity and distributed locations as an educational resource in the classroom. And it means developing new knowledge and new conceptual understandings of what this transformed learning environment will look like. Students can access course lectures, discussion forums, teaching assistants, and so on, in a variety of synchronous as well as asynchronous modes. What does this mean for rethinking the distinctive benefits of being in that particular space and time we call a "classroom" and "class period"? What can be done there that can't be done in other distributed venues; and, in turn, what can be done in those other venues as well or better than in classrooms?

This model also has many substantive implications for the possibilities of what is often called "situated" or "authentic" learning, linking classroom content with "real world" problems and contexts. What might it mean for a new set of relationships with employers, for students who work or for workers who want a structured program of study and professional development? How could this create a new system of relationships with high schools and community colleges? What might this mean for a different use of summers, weekends, and break periods?

The mobility of these devices, and how they are used, have two other important implications for student learning. Ubiquity influences, and interacts with, the content and styles of learning: first, the rise of an increasingly visual culture, and the particular ways in which handheld devices encourage increased interaction with video and multimedia; and second, how these devices have given rise to an increase in social networking technologies and practices, which support increasingly collaborative learning activities. How learning is changing in this new environment, and how teaching and course design need to change in response, raise a host of empirical questions that desperately need rigorous and systematic investigation. A critical part of ULI is a cross-campus and interdisciplinary research program that can create new knowledge and understandings of learning and pedagogy. We view this as a kind of "R&D initiative" that engages in rigorous research into these new patterns of student learning, and then feeds that knowledge back into the processes of faculty development and new course and program design.

We believe that the University of Illinois' e-learning effort should be oriented primarily around academic quality, innovation and experimentation. We are in the midst of a radical reinvention of higher education, and we need to study it as we go. This is not simply a matter of helping campus units "put their courses online," but engaging them collaboratively to rethink and redesign pedagogy in creating a new generation of on-campus, online, and blended courses and programs. These changes will not only help us better serve on-campus as well as "online" or "distance" students. They will also offer faculty a more interesting and forward-looking reason for incorporating e-learning technologies into their teaching - whether of an on-campus or online variety.

We begin with the assumption that the processes and the motivations of student learning are changing because of both technological as well as wider social and cultural trends. We need to understand those changes in order to develop a new set of approaches to higher education if we are to keep pace with where our students are going. That is a mission worthy of a great university.