The peripatetic learner

The role of mobility in the formation of collaborative learning spaces

Abstract

The earliest notion of a university came from people walking through the streets of Athens thinking about how the world works and trying to understand it. Apple Distinguished Educator Dr. William Rankin from Abilene Christian University (2012) reframes this notion of the peripatetic learner, originating from Aristotelian philosophy, to describe how mobile technologies have brought about a new way of thinking about education. The ability to be mobile has implications in reshaping future learning: to rethink the spatiotemporal structures of formal tertiary education means to understand both the affordances and challenges. The disruption of traditional pedagogies enables new forms of collaborative interactions to occur. This paper considers how to define a learning space that is no longer constrained by the physical classroom. By taking a technological perspective and a mixed methodology, it aims to evaluate practices of harnessing mobility and collaboration through existing or potential applications on the mobile platform.