Non-repository Uses of Moodle through Mobile Access: Students’ Usage Patterns and Perceptions

摘要: Learning management systems (LMSs) (e.g. Moodle, Desire2Learn, Blackboard, etc.) have been adopted by a large number of higher education institutions around the world. Moodle, one of the most commonly used LMSs, has been registered in more than 1,800 sites in over 120 countries (Hajjar, 2014). The LMS possesses various features and functionalities for educators to employ in the flexible learning environment. In a nutshell, LMS serves as a learning platform that can incorporate rich multi-media resources as well as a wide range of activities such as databases, forums, quizzes and wikis. Despite of the rich functionality of LMS, in universities around the world, LMS has been used primarily as a repository of contents, assignments and other online resources shared by students and instructors (Susana et al., 2015). Recent studies have been advocating using LMS beyond merely a repository, for supporting more interactions, collaborations and learning community (Cho et al., 2014). Moreover, following the rising popularity of hand-held mobile devices among different stakeholders in higher education, it is not uncommon for instructors and students to access LMS using mobile devices such as smartphones. Prior reviews of mobile learning (m-learning) research offer reassuring results in the use mobile devices for supporting teaching and learning (Rath, 2015), but there seems a lack of empirical research on the use of mobile LMSs in teaching and learning, particularly on students’ perception on mobile access to LMS and students’ mobile access to the LMS for non-repository uses. In view of these gaps, this study attempts to gather …