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Though universities are eager to leverage the potential of mobile learning to provide learning flexibly, most balk at the cost of providing students with mobile hardware. The practice of "bring your own device" (BYOD) is often mooted as a cost-effective alternative. This paper provides a snapshot of student ownership of mobile devices at a regional Australian university. Our research shows that students do have access to and use a wide range of devices. However, the delivery of learning is challenged when students try to access materials and activities using these devices. Course materials are rarely optimised for use on smartphones, navigating websites and learning management systems becomes a scrolling nightmare, and interacting with other students is often impractical using prescribed systems. Most concerning is that none of the students surveyed were participating in educator-led mobile learning initiatives. The paper concludes with the proposal of some practical, low-cost tactics that educators could potentially employ to begin engaging with mobile learning, leveraging what students already do.

While incarcerated students have always faced many obstacles to full and effective participation in university study, the global shift toward paperless e-learning environments has created new challenges for prisoners without direct internet access. Based on prison focus groups with Australian incarcerated students and direct participant observation while tutoring tertiary students within four Queensland correctional centres, this paper explores the obstacles and constraints faced by incarcerated students in light of the increasing digitisation of materials and methods in higher education. This paper also reviews the outcomes, limitations and challenges of recent Australian projects trialling new internet-independent technologies developed to improve access for incarcerated tertiary students. This paper argues that technology-centred approaches alone will not adequately address the challenges of access for incarcerated students unless such interventions are also informed by an understanding of the sociocultural nature of learning and teaching within correctional centres.

Mobile technologies and platforms that facilitate communication across different languages are increasingly relevant in a world characterised by the global flows of diverse populations and disparate digital environments. This qualitative study explores communication between native and non-native speakers of Korean, mediated through mobile instant messaging in the sophisticated digital environment of South Korea. This article reports on two studies that examined the experiences of English-speaking language instructors (Study 1) and international students (Study 2) in a private university situated in South Korea during 2012 and 2015, respectively. This is done by focusing on face-to-face and screen-to-screen communication, and the co-dependencies arising between language instructors and international students. Between 2012 and 2015, large upgrades in the local digital environment saw the emergence of ubiquitous low cost or free high-speed Wi-Fi coverage and a near universal national adoption of a local mobile instant messaging service. The participants in Study 2 were widely found to be digitally literate and demonstrated an acuity with mobile instant messaging. They developed creative solutions for communication and language learning by blending sociolinguistic and linguistic competencies within mobile instant messaging chat rooms. This article highlights the changes that have occurred between 2012 and 2015 and demonstrates the need for further research into how mobile instant messaging services support communication between people from different language and culture backgrounds, particularly for people without access to formal language instruction.

AbstractWorking in the criminal justice sector can be psychologically challenging. It is important that students seeking to join this workforce are adequately prepared for the psychological rigours that they will invariably be exposed to. This paper presents findings from a scoping review examining whether there are mental health-related or psychological well-being issues specific to criminal justice and criminology students and what universities and colleges have done to respond to, or prevent, such issues. Only 15 eligible studies were identified within the published literature with the majority examining potential trauma to criminal justice and criminology students. Only six studies explicitly examined any response to mental health or psychological well-being issues. This paper reflects on the implications of these findings and highlights future directions notably that more attention must be paid to the mental health and overall well-being of criminal justice and criminology students. Despite this recognition, research in this area remains limited, highlighting a critical gap in our understanding of how to support these students effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space, time and movement have particular meanings and significance for Australian prisoners attempting higher education while incarcerated. In a sense, the prison is another "world" or "country" with its own spatial and temporal arrangements and constraints for incarcerated university students. The contemporary digital university typically presupposes a level of mobility and access to mobile communication technologies which most Australian prisoners cannot access. This article examines the immobility of incarcerated students and their attempts to complete tertiary and pre-tertiary distance education courses without direct internet access. Drawing on critical mobilities theory, this article also explores attempts to address this digital disconnection of incarcerated students and where such interventions have been frustrated by movement issues within the prison. Prison focus group data suggest the use of modified digital learning technologies in prisons needs to be informed by a critical approach to the institutional processes and practices of this unique and challenging learning environment. This article also highlights the limitations and contradictions of painful immobilisation as a core strategy of Australia's modern, expanding penal state, which encourages rehabilitation through education, while effectively cutting prisoners off from the wider digital world.

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds have been used for more than a decade in higher education for teaching and learning. Since the 1980s, academics began using virtual worlds as an exciting and innovative new technology to provide their students with new learning experiences that were difficult to provide any other way. But since that time, virtual worlds have failed to maintain their popularity as learning spaces; many builds falling into disuse and many disappearing altogether. The aim of this article is not only to determine why virtual worlds have not become a mainstream teaching tool, but to ascertain why they have even failed to maintain their popularity. In order to do this, the research team surveyed over 200 academics about the barriers and enablers to the use and perceived affordances of virtual worlds in teaching and learning. These responses are examined in relation to academics' past, present and future use, experience and knowledge of virtual world environments.

This article reports on the preliminary findings, design criteria and lessons learned while developing and piloting an alternative to traditional print-based education delivery within a prison environment. PLEIADES (Portable Learning Environments for Incarcerated Distance Education Students), was designed to provide incarcerated students with access to internet-independent secure digital and mobile technologies. An internet-independent version of Moodle was developed to complement course readings deployed on eReaders. The aim of the project was to increase access to and participation in higher education courses that are increasingly offered exclusively online. The article begins with an overview of the current provision of education within prison environments and introduces the rationale for commencing the project. The research findings of the project trial are discussed and the paper concludes with the lessons learned and implications for further research, development and implementation.