Critical Success Factors in M-Learning: A Socio-Technical Perspective

Educational institutions around the world increasingly view mobile technology as an effective platform for educating a new generation of students. Unfortunately, educational institutions often fail to achieve substantial results with their mobile-learning initiatives. Studies on m-learning have produced several recommendations about how to improve of its success. These recommendations cover a set of factors limited to people, technology, and pedagogy. This qualitative case study adopts a broader socio-technical perspective on m-learning and produces an extended list of critical success factors in m-learning. These factors fall into organization, people, pedagogy, and technology domains. I used the Abilene Christian University as the site for this study. Additional critical success factors I uncovered include executive involvement, resource allocation, technology injection, supporting creation of m-learning content and applications, technological pluralism, championship, infrastructure development, pedagogical freedom, collaboration, continuous learning and improvement, and external recognition.