Supporting Learner-Content Interaction on Autodidactic Field Trips through Mobile Learning Applications

The increasing number of university students in Europe leads to an increasing student-to-lecturer ratio which finally results in a lower quality of studying experience. Thus, lecturers have to find new possibilities to adapt to the changing circumstances. This is particularly important in disciplines of natural sciences, as they integrate field trips in their curriculum, which require small groups of students. To be able to offer field trips in the future, one possible solution is to combine them with mobile learning application to enable autodidactic field trips. As prior research already showed that mobile learning applications can support autodidactic activities in education, the aim of this study is to design and develop a mobile learning application to support field trips. The existing research about designing such applications is limited, especially regarding needed requirements. With the aim of deducing meta-equirements and design principles for such applications, we apply the design science approach.