My understanding of ubiquitous learning is learning that transcends space and time. This means that students can study at their own pace or in their own environment, outside of the classroom – be that at home, in a café or anywhere else that has internet access.  Students don’t necessarily need internet access either if they are working on an assignment or studying from a portable device, such as a laptop computer, tablet or smartphone.  Learners are able to study whenever it suits them, after doing a late shift at work, three o’clock in the morning, or before their children get up for school, at five am. 

Ubiquitous learning illustrates the flexibility that learners can potentially attain and reflects a move away from the traditional classroom and didactic pedagogy.

Ubiquitous learning also enables students to access education from remote areas, enabling opportunities for people who might not ordinarily have the chance to participate in a course of their choosing.

Mobile learning is one facet of ubiquitous learning.  For example, in my workplace (as a teacher), students must come to the classroom with an iPad.  The iPad has allowed me to assist my students (who study academic and general English as their second language) with the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.  The iPad is also used for vocabulary practice through apps such as, ‘Spelling City’.  Students practice vocab through games, spelling, and pronunciation exercises.  They do this in class, at home or wherever else they please.  https://www.spellingcity.com/

Another example is of students collaborating on a shared document such as google docs (https://www.google.com/docs/about/).   A document is created, maybe for a group essay assignment and all the students in the group can add, delete, or make notes or suggestions in their own individual learning space. Students are creating, learning, and interacting in a group/class activity.

As Liu and Milrad (2011) state:

"… people learn differently as a result of owning personal handheld computing devices (Chan et al., 2006). The attributes of these devices, including portability, connectivity and context sensitivity combined with sound pedagogical ideas can transform learning from being a merely productive knowledge acquisition process to an active social interaction activity."

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2016). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-learning ecologies. New York: Routledge (fortcoming).

https://education-2025.wikispaces.com/Ubiquitous+Learning

Liu, C.C., & Milrad, M. (2010). Guest Editorial – One-to-One Learning in the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Age.  Educational Technology & Society, 13 (4), 1–3.