Umera Imtinan

This study was conducted to explore education delivery formats aligned with Pakistan’s Vision 2030 for education. Data were obtained from focus group discussions conducted with 31 students (10 female, 21 male) from three mainstream Pakistani universities. Qualitative data were analysed thematically. The authors’ findings show that students were excited about the flexibility offered by mobile learning and the opportunity to collaborate with peers and teachers from home and other locations at various times. However, they also reported a number of challenges, such as cost, a lack of awareness, and universities’ failure to invest in mobile learning course design. The study’s findings and implications for practice are presented in order to help facilitate the implementation of mobile learning in developing countries, both in higher education and in other sectors, such as training, workplace learning and educational outreach to serve remote and disadvantaged communities (e.g. out-of-school children).

In recent years, “sustainability education” in Higher Education has become an increasingly popular topic among researchers driven by the constant calls for the research community to contribute novel research that can aid in building a sustainable world. The objective of this paper was to explore how sustainability concepts have been integrated in Information Systems (IS) curricula, to determine the state of knowledge in this area and provide guidance for future research. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage scoping review process, the current landscape of sustainability in IS classrooms is mapped and key themes and factors which were found to influence sustainability education in IS are identified. Eight databases were searched for relevant papers published on this topic. Fifteen articles were selected and deemed high quality for a thematic analysis. As a result, nine themes emerged from the thematic analysis, and key research gaps and directions for future research are presented. The findings show that there is currently no unified approach to sustainability education in IS. This paper presents the themes in a novel conceptual research framework which can guide the incorporation of sustainability concepts in IS education. In addition, the framework can be used as the basis for future research in this area.

Recently, nodes cooperation has emerged as a popular means for improving the quality of multimedia delivery over fifth-generation cellular networks. However, in the conventional relaying scheme such as amplify-and-forward (AaF), there is a higher probability of duplicate packets at the receiver node which affect the decoding probability and consequently deteriorate the quality of multimedia transmission. In this study, the authors propose a cooperative multimedia transmission protocol based on a novel merge-and-forward relaying and the best relay selection (RS) schemes. Their best RS scheme is based on two important parameters: (i) two-hop link distances and (ii) minimum block error rate value. Moreover, to combat the packet loss for enhanced and reliable video delivery, they adopt application layer forward error correction scheme which is based on the most improved and advanced version of fountain codes (i.e. RaptorQ codes). They evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme under different time-sharing scenarios between the direct and best indirect transmission links in terms of decoding failure probability, decoding overhead, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and mean opinion score. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional AaF relaying scheme.

This study investigates students’ perceptions of the role of the teacher in a proposed mobile learning environment in a developing country. The research is based on an exploratory case study at selected Pakistani universities using a qualitative data collection approach, such as focus groups. The paper aims to highlight one of the key issues, the teacher’s role in the domain of mobile learning, given that mobile learning has been suggested as tending to making students more independent learners since they learn on the move or at work. It was found that students did need a lot of teachers’ input throughout the learning process and wanted the teacher to control the learning process, with the exception of a few students who did show interest to be independent learners.

This paper examines and reviews the current literature on mobile learning in developing countries. Mobile device is becoming a more popular interface for connecting with the world and mode of digital presence than the desktop computing devices. Mobile technologies in the developing world enable people to connect to the Internet, become more conversant with the digital world, and network globally via social networking forums. Mobile technologies in developing countries such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kenya and South Africa have significantly increased and advanced. In spite of limited Information and Communications Technology (ICT) resources and an unstable infrastructure, good telecom services exist in the form of cellular networks which provide a favourable environment for mobile learning. The literature suggests that there is pervasive use of mobile devices that would facilitate the uptake of mobile learning in developing countries. However, few researchers have looked into the potential use of mobile devices in learning environments in developing countries. To ascertain the extent of mobile leaning in developing countries, this paper examines the current literature on mobile learning research in developing countries including projects, implementations, theories and conceptualizations of mobile learning for these countries.