Enabling learning and teaching support through mobile app development at Unimc.

According to literature review and market researches, universal and ubiquitous access to content and information is a reality enabled by the current digital ecosystem, with tablet and smartphones outselling PCs already in 2011. The ubiquitous paradigm, providing for context awareness and adaptation, differs to mobile learning under many aspects: for pedagogical theories employed, for the situatedness of application contexts, but mostly for the motto “to say the right thing, at the right time, in the right way” as opposed to the “whenever/wherever /whatever” model. In an effort to promote mobile literacy, emerging as one of the main challenges for today's educators, we endeavour to set a first stone in outlining of a roadmap for the strategic adoption of mobile information services for the University of Macerata. This thesis asserts that the technological-educational gap, as a result of technologies developing faster than their take-up from educational institutions, can be narrowed with a clear understanding of relevant pedagogical models and an up-to-date knowledge of the necessary software development frameworks. The prototype app built is a product of the literature herein reviewed, with consequent adoption of guidelines emerged from those experiences, in a creative effort to listen to our users demanding to be supported with punctual information whether they are in a class or on a bus.