Ubiquitous learning: A systematic review

Abstract Ubiquitous learning, labeled as u–learning, takes advantage of digital content, physical surroundings, mobile devices, pervasive components, and wireless communication to deliver teaching–learning experiences to users at anytime, anywhere, and anyway. U–learning represents an emergent paradigm that spreads education in diverse settings, where users are situated in authentic learning contexts to face immersive experiences in order to accomplish meaningful learning. With the aim at disseminating such a revolutionary arena, this systematic review analyzes its nature, application, and evolution throughout a longitudinal study, where 176 approaches built since 2010 up to the third quarter of 2017 date are gathered, classified, and characterized to disclose labor traits, outcome patterns, and field tendencies. These five results are grounded respectively in a representative collection, a proposed taxonomy, a suggested pattern, statistical interpretations, mining findings, and critical analysis. The conclusions reveal: u–learning is able to transform traditional education provided at classroom level and by e–learning. Principally, this is because students, pertaining to diverse academic levels experience real and authentic settings, are immersed in dual reality sceneries, benefit from context–aware support, learn diverse educational domains, follow suitable learning paradigms, deal with diverse effects, and interact with different devices and technologies in a blended fashion. All of this with the purpose of enhancing users’ apprenticeship.