mobile learning, museum education, spatial learning strategies, ubiquitous learning

The paper describes the design of a coherence model of instruction, which aims at a better understanding of curriculum in context and knowledge retention in long-term memory. The coherence model is built on four pillars: cooperative learning, activating teaching methods, instruction in authentic environment, or more precisely in educational expositions and spatial learning strategies. These strategies use a nonlinear representation of knowledge, such as dynamic semantic networks. Based on the principles of a coherence model of instruction an educational application for tablets was designed, developed and evaluated. This application serves as a virtual guide through the Ostrava Zoo and contains the following features: navigating through an educational exposition, multimedia and interactive information board, visualization of dynamic semantic networks, electronic worksheets and continuous testing of the pupil´s contextual understanding of the actual curriculum. The evaluation of the coherence model of instruction and the virtual guide was carried out by three methods: observing the pupils´ behaviour and work, a pedagogical experiment and evaluation questionnaires. This paper presents the results of the third method, evaluation questionnaire. One of the conclusions suggests that mobile technologies and mobile learning are not yet a completely ideal medium of instruction in outdoor educational expositions. These deficiencies can be partially overcome by specialized static devices installed directly at the place of the individual educational activities, wearable technology, the Internet of things, devices for augmented or virtual reality and finally ubiquitous learning.