This paper presents research results from the field of mobile-assisted instruction of English for specific purposes for technical and engineering students. The research was structured in three phases: (1) Questionnaire 1 was applied to detect what sources of information students use in higher education, what types of mobile devices they own, what purposes they use them for, (2) how the process of instruction, particularly students´ autonomous work supported by mobile devices ran, (3) students´ feedback was collected by Questionnaire 2 to evaluate the mobile-assisted learning and provide proposals for future exploitation of mobile devices in higher technical language education. The results show students are sufficiently equipped with mobile technologies and exploit them for various purposes, including education and ESP. At the end, examples of helpful mobile applications are presented.
‘Learning is much better with tablets’, today’s pupils and students often say. But, is it really true? Are the mobile devices and mobile technologies the mean performing didactic miracles? Do they really cause students enjoy learning and learn more with less effort? Even an optimist guesses it may not be like this. Do we (teachers) know how the mobile-assisted process of learning runs, what its advantages, weaknesses and limits are, whether learners really remember more, and/or enjoy the learning more? What is the role of the ‘novelty’ factor regarding the latest technologies? Do learners know how to exploit them for education purposes? And last but not least, what are teachers’ competences in this field? These are selected fields we are going to focus on.
The paper presents research results of the two-year pedagogical experiment comparing test scores in three subjects (Database Systems, Management, IT English) taught either in the ICT-supported way, or in the traditional face-to-face way at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The main research objective was to find out whether ICT contribute to increasing learners’ knowledge and consequently to forming key competences. Didactic tests as the main tool were used within the pedagogical experiment which followed the “pre-test - instruction - post-test - post-test2” structure. The research sample included 687 respondents. Obtained results proved there were no statistically significant differences in learners’ knowledge in both approaches to instruction. The results were discussed from two important points of view: (1) teachers’ and learners’ ability to use the potential of ICT in teaching/learning and (2) the role of teaching/learning styles in the ICT-supported instruction.
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