Using persuasive marketing methods and mobile phones as active learning devices to enhance students’ learning

One of the latest additions to the educator’s toolbox are learning parcels sent to the students’ mobile phones. We used a four factor sales and marketing model from previous research to produce and evaluate the contents of the learning parcels and the mobile phone concept. The four factors are: Relevance, timeliness, responsibility and value. In an action research program during the first semester of 2015, we tested to which degree the students felt their curriculum knowledge improved through the use of learning parcels on their mobile phones. We learned that the novelty effect of using mobile phones as a medium quickly evaporated. The use of the learning parcels depends to a high degree on the instant feeling of high usefulness in relation to the four factors and is decisive for students’ use of the learning parcels and the concept as such. A significant number of the students liked the concept, and were sure of its positive learning outcome.