The Utilities of Prominent Learning Theories for Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL) with Reference to WhatsApp and M-learning

Within the context of global pervasive mobile technologies and social media, education is not an exception. In particular, the social media application called “WhatsApp” was the third most popular app with about 1.5 billion active users world-wide at the end of 2018. Consequently, many students have invested significant amounts of time and resources into WhatsApp for collaborative learning. However, the problem was that the literature had not evaluated mobile collaborative learning (MCL), a core feature of WhatsApp, in relation to prominent learning theories. This lead to the following research question: What utilities do prominent learning theories have for MCL? The research objective was to review the literature on prominent learning theories and expose their utility for MCL. Thus, the study was theoretical and exploratory in nature and synthesized relevant and peer-reviewed literature that was obtained from a thorough literature search strategyThe study found that some of the prominent learning theories have better utilities for MCL than others, although all do have utilities for MCL. In particular, the learning theories of collaborative learning, communities of practice, connectivism, conversation theory and social learning theory appear to have directly relatable utilities for MCL and MCL on WhatsApp. Having a broad view of all these learning theories enables teachers to think holistically about learning and make better decisions about which learning theory or theories are most appropriate to guide teaching in any particular learning context, including MCL. As rapidly changing and pervasive technology has become a permanent part of education, it is vital that teachers are able to adapt their teaching with different learning theories to better fit the education landscape.