“I wouldn’t be able to graduate if it wasn’t for my mobile phone.” Mobile literacies and the construction of complex academic texts in Higher Education

This paper draws on a case study of one student’s mobile phone use in higher education. I focus on the student’s use of the mobile phone to produce complex academic texts, using data drawn from extended video-interviews and comprehensive multimodal textual analysis. In doing so, I aim to illuminate mobile learning and literacy practices which are likely to be widespread, given the near-ubiquity and prosthetic quality of mobile, internet-enabled devices, yet which are not currently well understood by teachers or researchers. Discussion of mobile learning and literacies is becoming increasingly widespread, yet these terms are surprisingly ill-defined; through building on an existing body of work which seeks to define literacies, digital literacies and mobile learning, I propose a definition of mobile literacies as pertains to higher education. The definition takes account of the mobility of technology, of learners, and of learning in current HE contexts. I use this definition and my empirical data to begin to theorise the role of mobility in the student’s learning and consider implications for pedagogy.