English is becoming increasingly important for Japanese Medical students preparing for a future career as a doctor or researcher. In order to give these students more opportunities to build up medical English terminology, one of the most important parts of their English study, the authors started to design a range of self-study quizzes to deliver to students’ mobile devices, which are expected to be a useful tool for enhancing their autonomous study (Bakay, Bulut & Delialioglu, 2013). The authors conducted a needs analysis in June 2013 to investigate their students’ needs and preferences for using mobile devices for English study and the results showed that their expectations towards mobile learning were very high (Iwata, Tamaki, Shudong, Telloyan, Ajiki, Clayton, 2014). Two hundred forty-two students signed up for a subscription of this mobile learning content and each content was delivered to them twice a week from July 2013 to January 2014. The survey conducted on the students’ perceptions of the content revealed that half of them found the content useful for their medical English study and about two-thirds of them found the content level to be appropriate. However, the data analysis revealed that the students’ actual use of the content was at a low level of 9.5% on average, which illustrated that students’ readiness for mobile learning was still low while their expectations of mobile learning were high. These results left us two challenges to solve. Firstly, we need to modify the content and delivery system to better suit students’ needs and preferences. Secondly, we need to investigate what factors affect learners’ motivation and autonomy in a mobile learning context and seek ways to increase student’s motivation for mobile learning.
