Towards a mobile flipped classroom: Using mobile instant messaging to enhance distributed learning of academically challenged students

While mobile devices have been touted by technology optimists as silver bullets for tackling the challenges of asymmetrical access to learning resources and 'fixing' inflexible traditional educator-dominated pedagogies, the irony is that educators' expectations for emerging technologies to mediate untransformed pedagogical practices have impeded the optimal utilisation of mobile applications like mobile instant messaging. Since profound shifts in pedagogical designs are necessary for the adoption of mobile instant messaging to ensure distributed collaborative learning by students, this study adopted a mobile flipped classroom to re-engineer pedagogical delivery. The mobile flipped classroom comprised the use of a mobile application (i.e. WhatsApp) by geographically dispersed students to collaboratively engage with content after demonstration of IT concepts and processes by the educator. Evidence from WhatsApp-enabled collaborative engagements (i.e. lecturer-student, student-peer) and in-depth interviews with students suggest that mobile flipped classrooms enabled student self-paced learning, heightened their access to distributed learning, enhanced their cogitative processes, promoted on-task activities and informal playback of academic videos watched by students. The study recommended that successful adoption of emerging technologies necessitates a consideration of student grasp of disciplinary knowledge, ability to work collaboratively and sustained willingness to engage on academically purposeful activities.