On April 18, 2013, Dr. Jeff M. Allen, Director of the Center for Knowledge Solutions at the University of North Texas, visited the College of Education and gave a presentation titled “Mobile Learning for Teaching Effectiveness and Sustaining Learning Innovation through Learning Resources.”
    Dr. Allen received his Ph.D. in vocational industrial education from Pennsylvania State University in 1994. Since then he has been working in the Department of Learning Technologies, University of North Texas. He is also contributing editor for Learning and Performance Quarterly and Career and Technical Education. His research interests include learning and technological innovations, learning performance evaluation, learning resources development, mobile learning, and other areas.
   At the beginning of his presentation, Dr. Allen shared with the audience his understanding of three key concepts in area of educational technology: technology, learning and performance. He explored the interrelationship among the three variables and, by presenting several typical case studies, he described some important opportunities and challenges in the field. In the latter part of his presentation, Dr. Allen pointed out that, learning, in its nature, is social and mobile. With the rapid development of mobile technologies, mobile leaning is expected to transform traditional learning environments. Improvement in multimedia technology and Internet connections would increase the diffusion of mobile learning. However, there are some obvious barriers impacting this diffusion process and, among them, learning resources development is key. Dr. Allen ended his presentation by emphasizing the importance of developing abundant qualified learning resources for mobile learning.
    After his presentation, Dr. Allen had wonderful discussions with professors and graduate students from the College of Education. The main topics of discussion included the current status of web-based distance education and mobile learning in both Chinese universities and American universities.