Mobile technology affordance and its social implications: A case of Rain Classroom

This paper proposed the affordance approach of material, affective and social dimensions so as to explore the learners' engagement and disposition to share of using mobile learning technology. The participants in this study were graduate-level engineering students (N=387) from a research university in People's Republic of China. Rain Classroom in this case referred to the newly developed built-in mobile application in China facilitating the didactic practice both synchronously and asynchronously in class. Two surveys were issued to both groups before and after the 14-week long experiment. All the data were input into SPSS 16.0 and examined in descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test. The results showed that the group exposed to Rain Classroom had a positive attitude towards the mobile technology tool. Also, the same test group obtained statistically higher scores than the control group in both learning engagement and their willingness to continue and share the learning experience. The study implies that what the mobile learning technology affords has produced positive impact on teachers, students and institutions in terms of curriculum design, learning activities and policy making towards improving academic quality. Future work could focus on comparing learning effects with different time duration and learning intensity. It might also extend to participants from different educational background.