New Methods of Mobile Computing: From Smartphones to Smart Education

Every aspect of our daily lives has been touched by the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices. We have experienced an exponential growth of mobile computing—a trend that seems to have no limit. This paper provides a report on the findings of a recent offering of an iPhone Application Development course at Sheridan College, Ontario, Canada. It includes a report on the effectiveness of the course by assessing students’ opinions of the course, and by analyzing student performance scores in relation to traditional programming courses. It also provides an overview of the development environment, an assessment of this new course including qualitative surveys, informal observations and quantitative analysis including student performance score results. Overall, it was found that students enjoyed the iPhone course and performed very well. The iPhone Group exceeded the performance of a Comparison Group: F(1,81) = 4.145, p < .05.