Actualizing the Affordance of Mobile Technology for Mobile Learning: A Main Path Analysis of Mobile Learning

As the number of mobile device owners on university campuses grew over the past two decades, scholars specializing in digital education and its application versatility have taken a heightened interest in mobile learning programs and platforms. The nature of mobile learning is constantly evolving with the development of technology artifacts, and it brings the purpose of this article into sharper focus as we examine mobile learning from various perspectives, critical issues confronting distant education programs, and identify potential research directions for future studies. To that end, main path analysis, a citation-based systematic review method, is employed for this study in collecting and analyzing of 935 articles that address mobile learning in the higher education community. The results of the analysis identify several significant trajectories, which reveal four popular research clusters: mobile technology artifact, educator motivation approach, learner learning projection, and actualizing mobile learning and in turn identifies two mobile learning research derivatives: Mobile-technology affordance and actualizing mobile learning. This kind of discovery research has demonstrated that mobile learning will strengthen learning references.