Using mobile-based micro-learning to enhance students; retention of IT concepts and skills

The ability of students to retain information for future use is worthwhile in any subject. Specifically, it is essential in IT because concepts are built upon each other as a student progresses through a curriculum and courses. In this paper, we propose a mobile-based micro learning approach to help students to retain more knowledge and skills, and support classroom learning. The idea is to chunk the lecture content into multiple micro-content messages. Then, the scheduled messages are sent directly to students mobile devices at different times during a day. Using a well-defined case study, we investigate the influence of the proposed approach on IT students' outcomes. The results show a noticeable improvement in students' retention of IT concepts and problem-solving skills. Also, we propose the IT research challenges for developing a well solution for mobile micro-learning to support instructor in creating and preparing micro-content, and students to receive messages in appropriate time.