Abstract: The flipped classroom has been recognized by educators as an innovative and effective instructional approach. It totally overthrows traditional instruction by switching in-class instruction time with at-home practicing time. While the effectiveness of the flipped room has been identified, the challenges of applying it to school settings have also been pointed out, such as the need for effective in-class learning designs and the necessity of helping students learn across at-home and in-school contexts. In this paper, the challenges as well as the definition, characteristics, and educational objectives of flipped learning are introduced; moreover, the seamless flipped learning model is proposed by integrating the features of mobile and wireless communication technologies into the flipped classroom model to provide a guide for researchers and educators to develop effective flipped learning activities and plans for helping students learn seamlessly across contexts.

Abstract: Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of innovative technological smart solutions providing unprecedented opportunities for application in the tourism and hospitality industry. With intensified competition in the tourism market place, it has become paramount for businesses to explore the potential of technologies, not only to optimize existing processes but facilitate the creation of more meaningful and personalized services and experiences. This study aims to bridge the current knowledge gap between smart technologies and experience personalization to understand how smart mobile technologies can facilitate personalized experiences in the context of the hospitality industry. By adopting a qualitative case study approach, this paper makes a two-fold contribution; it a) identifies the requirements of smart technologies for experience creation, including information aggregation, ubiquitous mobile connectedness and real time synchronization and b) highlights how smart technology integration can lead to two distinct levels of personalized tourism experiences. The paper concludes with the development of a model depicting the dynamic process of experience personalization and a discussion of the strategic implications for tourism and hospitality management and research.

Abstract: With smart devices, particular smartphones, becoming our everyday companions, the ubiquitous mobile Internet and computing applications pervade people daily lives. With the surge demand on high-quality mobile services at anywhere, how to address the ubiquitous user demand and accommodate the explosive growth of mobile traffics is the key issue of the next generation mobile networks. The Fog computing is a promising solution towards this goal. Fog computing extends cloud computing by providing virtualized resources and engaged location-based services to the edge of the mobile networks so as to better serve mobile traffics. Therefore, Fog computing is a lubricant of the combination of cloud computing and mobile applications. In this article, we outline the main features of Fog computing and describe its concept, architecture and design goals. Lastly, we discuss some of the future research issues from the networking perspective.

Abstract: Advanced technology enables users to amalgamate information from various sources on their mobile devices, personalise their profile through applications and social networks, as well as interact dynamically with their context. Context-based marketing uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) that recognise the physical environment of their users. Tourism marketers are increasingly becoming aware of those cutting-edge ICTs that provide tools to respond more accurately to the context within and around their users. This paper connects the different concepts of context-based marketing, social media and personalisation, as well as mobile devices. It proposes social context mobile (SoCoMo) marketing as a new framework that enables marketers to increase value for all stakeholders at the destination. Contextual information is increasingly relevant, as big data collected by a wide range of sensors in a smart destination provide real-time information that can influence the tourist experience. SoCoMo marketing introduces a new paradigm for travel and tourism. It enables tourism organisations and destinations to revolutionise their offering and to co-create products and services dynamically with their consumers. The proposed SoCoMo conceptual model explores the emerging opportunities and challenges for all stakeholders.

Abstract: Mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets have been rapidly adopted worldwide. Mobile media are now the primary online connection for most individuals. Despite this rapid rise, theories of how mobile media relate to communication patterns and outcomes remain scarce. An affordances approach promises a high-level framework for researching how technologies such as mobile media are integrated into routines, affecting subsequent patterns of communication. In this article, I first consider the theoretical lineage of affordances and how this perspective demonstrates advantages from related theories. Second, I draw on affordances to define “communicative affordances,” a perspective that takes communication as a central concern. Finally, I synthesize literature from mobile communication to formulate a typology of communicative affordances of mobile media: portability, availability, locatability, and multimediality. Suggestions are then made for research employing a communicative affordances framework.

Abstract: This research paper explores the effectiveness of using mobile technologies to support a blended learning course titled Scientific Research Methods in Information Science. Specifically, it discusses the effects of WhatsApp mobile learning activities guided by activity theory on students' knowledge Management (KM). During the 2014 academic year, the researcher adopted an experimental approach-based comparison between an experimental group (34 students) and a control group (34 students). The learning process of the experimental group was based on continuity between 2 hours of in-class learning and 1 hour of learning activities that were mediated by WhatsApp instant messaging each week. The control group’s experience was 100% in-class with no app mediation. The researcher used the t-test to compare the means of the control and experimental groups in the test and the students’ attitudes at 0.05 alpha levels. This research paper is useful for exploring the effectiveness of mobile technologies in supporting blended learning courses.

Abstract: Early days, the prevalence of Internet technology generated e-commerce, e-business, and innovative products and services to market. At present, the diffusion of mobile technology creates m-commerce. Mobile banking is a banking service which helps customers in easily making online transactions anywhere, anytime. It has been adopted extensively in developed countries. However, for Thailand, this acceptance rate is still low. Thus, this paper is aimed at to gather factors affecting m-banking acceptance, both on adoption side and barrier side, to explore the effects of those factors, to guide banks and financial firms to attract more customers, and to compare the differences and similarities of m-banking key success factors from different countries. The quantitative approach using questionnaire survey along with the qualitative approach using interviews are used to test the model. The result shows that the positive factors have more influence on an intention to use m-banking than the negative factors.

Abstract: The advanced fifth-generation (5G) infrastructure will not only be a sheer evolution of the current network generations but, more significantly, a revolution in the information and communication technology (ICT) field. The 5G technology will efficiently enable new secure, dependable, ultrareliable, and delay-critical services to everyone and everything, such as cognitive objects and cyberphysical systems (CPSs). A fully immersive experience and anything as a service are the primary drivers for a global adoption and market uptake of new technology components, beyond today's client-server model, where the network has been reduced to a mere pipe of bits. The network will become the nervous system of the true digital society and economy. This article gives fundamental insight into how the 5G mobile communications system is being designed to be powerful and, especially, flexible enough, thus meeting the foreseen and unknown traffic scenarios and services requirements. We also present how a massive adoption and exploitation of mobile-edge computing (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and services virtualization will make the 5G operating system (OS) feasible and business viable.

Abstract: Close to 90% of U.S. adolescents now own or have access to a mobile phone, and they are using them frequently. Adolescents send and receive an average of over 60 text messages per day from their devices, and over 90% of adolescents now access the Internet from a mobile device at least occasionally. Many adults are asking how this constant connectivity is influencing adolescents' development. In this article, we examine seven commonly voiced fears about the influence of mobile technologies on adolescents' safety (e.g., cyberbullying and online solicitation), social development (e.g., peer relationships, parent-child relationships, and identity development), cognitive performance, and sleep. Three sets of findings emerge. First, with some notable exceptions (e.g., sleep disruption and new tools for bullying), most online behaviors and threats to well-being are mirrored in the offline world, such that offline factors predict negative online experiences and effects. Second, the effects of mobile technologies are not uniform, in that benefits appear to be conferred for some adolescents (e.g., skill building among shy adolescents), whereas risk is exacerbated among others (e.g., worsening existing mental health problems). Third, experimental and quasi-experimental studies that go beyond a reliance on self-reported information are required to understand how, for whom, and under what conditions adolescents' interactions with mobile technologies influence their still developing social relationships, brains, and bodies.

Abstract: With the development of 5G, the wireless world will be interconnected without barriers. This new technology will enable many challenging applications, and more personalized and interactive services are expected to be available with resourcelimited mobile terminals. Fortunately, mobile cloud computing (MCC) emerging in the context of 5G has the potential to overcome this bottleneck, which enables many resource-intensive services for mobile users with the support of mobile big data delivery and cloud-assisted computing. In this article we propose a novel framework named EMC in the context of 5G, which offers personalized emotionaware services by MCC and affective computing. With the proposed framework, the traditional MCC architecture is modified to achieve the required Quality of Experience in emotion-aware applications. Furthermore, we design a partitioning solution corresponding to the fundamental trade-off between the communication and computation in EMC. The framework would be helpful to provide personalized, human-centric, intelligent emotion-aware services in 5G.

Abstract: Today, everything is affected by the digital revolution – the impact of new technology on improving the health and well-being of individuals, communities, and populations is unprecedented. Recent technological achievements have revolutionized clinical practice, from prevention through diagnosis, monitoring to disease management, and enabled unprecedented public interest and engagement in self-management and well-being. Digital health is defined as the “use of information and communications technologies to improve human health, healthcare services, and wellness for individuals and across populations.” Dozens of digital health projects have been conducted in Europe alone (1) and with the growth of mobile technology for improving health and well-being (mHealth). There is an unprecedented opportunity to transform the healthcare sector and empower citizens in taking charge of their own health (2). However, the successful development, integration and implementation of new technology and methods require a radical shift from traditional and single-disciplinary academic and clinical approaches. In order to truly embrace these opportunities and transform healthcare and improve well-being, we need a new approach to science and health research. Only when investigated together, aimed at solving real-world problems, will health and technology be in a position to create results with significant impact on the delivery of clinical and social care and improve the well-being of individuals and populations. First, recent technological advances enabled by the creation of real-time big data streams, social media, and infectious disease modeling are the focus of public health computer science, aiming to strengthen disease surveillance, early-warning, preparedness, and response through integration of traditional surveillance systems with new big data sources. Second, advances in reliability and accuracy of medical devices and personalized technology, together with booming wearable and tracking technology (MedTech), have rapidly become established as the mainstream enhancing opportunities for personalized care, improving self-management, and bringing the desirable outcome: behavior change. Third, with over 4.55 billion people worldwide using a mobile phone in 2014, mHealth apps and interventions empower users in the developed world and are accelerating unprecedented access to best evidence and healthcare service in the low and middle income settings. Fourth, more than a decade ago, Sir Muir Gray forecasted that “knowledge is the best enemy of disease – the application of what we know already will have a bigger impact on health and disease than any drug or technology likely to be introduced in the next decade” (3). Better use of technology for capturing, understanding, and disseminating knowledge is paramount for fulfilling this vision. The recent research achievements in web science, data mining and analytics, medical ontologies, and recommender systems provide further opportunities for better evidence dissemination, medical advice, and development of personalized persuasive intelligent systems. Fifth, serious games for health- and game-based learning have crossed the rubicon from entertainment technology to education and health interventions, and are getting firmly established as health educational and intervention tools. Finally, in light of the speed of data sharing technologies and the absence of a legal framework, we must engage in policy debates safeguarding individual privacy, regulation usage of data for commercial purposes, while enabling transparent data sharing for research. However, these challenges are only achievable through truly multi-disciplinary research collaborations.

Abstract: This editorial explores the potential of social media and mobile technologies to foster citizen engagement and participation in urban planning. We argue that there is a lot of wishful thinking, but little empirically validated knowledge in this emerging field of study. We outline key developments and pay attention to larger societal and political trends. The aim of this special issue is: 1) To offer a critical state-of-the-art overview of empirical research; and 2) to explore whether social media and mobile technologies have measurable effects on citizens' engagement beyond traditional mobilization and participation tools. We find that wider engagement only ‘materializes’ if virtual connections also manifest themselves in real space through concrete actions, by using both online and offline engagement tools. Another requirement is that planners do not seek to marginalize dissenting voices in order to promote the interests of powerful developers

Abstract: As mobile computing has been developed for decades, a new model for mobile computing, namely, mobile cloud computing, emerges resulting from the marriage of powerful yet affordable mobile devices and cloud computing. In this paper we survey existing mobile cloud computing applications, as well as speculate future generation mobile cloud computing applications. We provide insights for the enabling technologies and challenges that lie ahead for us to move forward from mobile computing to mobile cloud computing for building the next generation mobile cloud applications. For each of the challenges, we provide a survey of existing solutions, identify research gaps, and suggest future research areas.

Abstract: The smart mobile devices have emerged during the past decade and have become one of the most dominant consumer electronic products. Therefore, exploring and understanding the factors which can influence the acceptance of novel mobile technology have become the essential task for the vendors and distributors of mobile devices. The Phablets, integrated smart devices combining the functionality and characteristics of both tablet PCs and smart phones, have gradually become possible alternatives for smart phones. Therefore, predicting factors which can influence the acceptance of Phablets have become indispensable for designing, manufacturing, and marketing of such mobile devices. However, such predictions are not easy. Meanwhile, very few researches tried to study related issues. Consequently, the authors aim to explore and predict the intentions to use and use behaviors of Phablets. The second generation of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) is introduced as a theoretic basis. The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) based Network Process (DNP) will be used to construct the analytic framework. In light of the analytic results, the causal relationships being derived by the DEMATEL demonstrate the direct influence of the habit on other dimensions. Also, based on the influence weights being derived, the use intention, hedonic motivation, and performance expectancy are the most important dimensions. The analytic results can serve as a basis for concept developments, marketing strategy definitions, and new product designs of the future Phablets. The proposed analytic framework can also be used for predicting and analyzing consumers’ preferences toward future mobile devices.

Abstract: Mobile technology use is nearly ubiquitous which affords the opportunity for using these technologies for modifying health related behaviors. At the same time, use of mobile health (mHealth) technology raises privacy and security concerns of consumers. The goal of this analysis was to understand the perceived ease of use, usefulness, risk and trust that contribute to behavioral intention to use a mobile application for meeting the healthcare needs of persons living with HIV (PLWH). To understand these issues, we conducted focus group sessions with 50 persons living with HIV and 30 HIV healthcare providers. We used the e-commerce acceptance model to analyze our focus group data. Findings from the study demonstrated the need for mHealth to be perceived as useful, easy to use, with little perceived risk accompanied by a measure of trust in the creators of the technology. Findings from this work can inform future work on patients and providers' perceptions of risk, trust, ease of use and usefulness of mHealth technology.

Abstract: Retailing and other business sectors have been buffeted by the diffusion of mobile technology. Millennials, in particular, consider such technology indispensable and have lately been using it for gaming applications. In order to thrive in the new mobile and game centric world, retailers will need to adapt and leverage mobile game-like applications using the process known as gamification. Our own sense is that the gamified interfaces currently offered by firms mostly miss the mark. We provide a systematic overview of game design and point out how principles derived from that field are highly applicable to gamified retail apps as well as to other firm offerings with game like elements. We are aided in our systematic approach by the work of Schell (2008) whose Elemental Game Tetrad Model allows us to offer a coherent look at the gamification antecedents of its psychological and marketing outcomes.

Abstract: We conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of mobile technology on treatment outcome for psychotherapy and other behavioral interventions. Our search of the literature resulted in 26 empirical articles describing 25 clinical trials testing the benefits of smartphone applications, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or text messaging systems either to supplement treatment or substitute for direct contact with a clinician. Overall, mobile technology use was associated with superior treatment outcome across all study designs and control conditions, effect size (ES) = .34, p < .0001. For the subset of 10 studies that looked specifically at the added benefit of mobile technology using a rigorous "Treatment" versus "Treatment + Mobile" design, effect sizes were only slightly more modest (ES = .27) and still significant (p < .05). Overall, the results support the role of mobile technology for the delivery of psychotherapy and other behavioral interventions.

Abstract: Smart Cities are paving the way for the development of new services in the field of tourism. The “smart” concept is based on the intensive deployment of Information and Communication Technology infrastructures, as well as on the proliferation of mobile technology and its apps. However, a destination is not smart because it makes intensive use of technology. It is smart because it also uses technology in order to seek a deeper understanding about the characteristics and meaning of human mobility. It uses latent knowledge and capacities to empower local institutions and industries to create knowledge-based policies and advanced mobile services for visitors. This paper presents a new approach to the Smart Destination concept and a cloud-based infrastructure designed to reach that vision. This infrastructure promotes the creation of advanced mobile tourism applications by tourism stakeholders with tools adapted to people with no programming skills.

Abstract: Travel behavior is becoming inherently dynamic and socially connected because of the increasing use of mobile technologies; as such, the concept of context is becoming increasingly important in travel and tourism and particularly within today’s technology-supported mobile environment. This article builds upon existing literature describing recent developments in context-aware system design with the aim of defining the notion of context as it relates to the mobile technological environment for tourism. As part of this effort, a conceptual framework is proposed to describe the structure and fundamental properties of context, and several implications are discussed for tourism research and the design of mobile systems.

Abstract: The ever-increasing demand of mobile Internet traffic is pushing operators to look for solutions to increase the available bandwidth per user and per unit of area. At the same time, they need to reduce the load in the core network at a reasonable cost in their future 5G deployments. Today’s trend points to the deployment of extremely dense networks in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity at high data rates. However, this is hard to couple with the current mobile networks’ architecture, which is heavily centralized, posing difficult challenges when coping with the foreseen explosion of mobile data. Additionally, future 5G networks will exhibit disparate types of services, posing different connectivity requirements. Distributed mobility management is emerging as a valid framework to design future mobile network architectures, taking into account the requirements for large traffic in the core and the rise of extremely dense wireless access networks. In this article, we discuss the adoption of a distributed mobility management approach for mobile networks, and analyze the operation of the main existing solutions proposed so far, including a first practical evaluation based on experiments with real Linux-based prototype implementations.

Abstract: With the rich set of embedded sensors installed in smartphones and the large number of mobile users, we witness the emergence of many innovative commercial mobile crowdsensing applications that combine the power of mobile technology with crowdsourcing to deliver time-sensitive and location-dependent information to their customers. Motivated by these real-world applications, we consider the task selection problem for heterogeneous users with different initial locations, movement costs, movement speeds, and reputation levels. Computing the social surplus maximization task allocation turns out to be an NP-hard problem. Hence we focus on the distributed case, and propose an asynchronous and distributed task selection (ADTS) algorithm to help the users plan their task selections on their own. We prove the convergence of the algorithm, and further characterize the computation time for users' updates in the algorithm. Simulation results suggest that the ADTS scheme achieves the highest Jain's fairness index and coverage comparing with several benchmark algorithms, while yielding similar user payoff to a greedy centralized benchmark. Finally, we illustrate how mobile users coordinate under the ADTS scheme based on some practical movement time data derived from Google Maps.

Abstract: This study investigates online students’ acceptance of mobile learning and its influence on learning achievement using an information system success and extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Structural equation modeling was used to test the structure of individual, social, and systemic factors influencing mobile learning’s acceptance, and how said acceptance influences learning satisfaction and achievement. Unlike earlier TAM-related research that did not provide a broad view of technological acceptance and its impact on learning activities, the present study’s results highlight the relationship between behavioral intention/learning satisfaction and learning achievement. Additionally, this study tests the theoretical model of successful mobile learning by empirically accepting mobile learning management systems. The findings further imply that students at online universities have started to accept mobile technology as a new learning tool; consequently, its acceptance has influenced their learning achievement both directly and indirectly. These discoveries should facilitate a better understanding of students’ usage of mobile learning systems in higher education, and provide timely guidance for its development and implementation.

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that mobile technologies play in mobile workers’ efforts to manage the boundaries between work and non-work domains. Previous theories of work-life boundary management frame boundary management strategies as a range between the segmentation and integration of work-life domains, but fail to provide a satisfactory account of technology’s role. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply the concept of affordances, defined as the relationship between users’ abilities and features of mobile technology, in two field studies of a total of 25 mobile workers who used a variety of mobile devices and services. Findings – The results demonstrate that the material features of mobile technologies offer five specific affordances that mobile workers use in managing work-life boundaries: mobility, connectedness, interoperability, identifiability and personalization. These affordances persist in their influence across time, despite their connection to differen...