DESIGNING FOR FLEXIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING
WIRED AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS
David M. Kennedy
1
and Doug Vogel
2
1
Division of Information and Technology Studies, Hong Kong University, Pokfulam Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
2
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Keywords: Mobile, technology, smart phones, design, software, learning, PDA.
Abstract: Mobility is an intrinsic property of learning encompassing spatial, temporal and developmental components.
Students’ expectations on how and when they learn are creating increasingly heavier demands upon all
aspects of their learning and young people, more than any other group, are making mobile devices
extensions of their personal space and fundamental to their daily lives. In response, the world is moving
very rapidly to engage with the opportunities and flexibility offered by mobile technologies. Educators and
developers are faced with the dilemma: do you develop applications for the mobile or the wired
environment? In this paper we argue that learning environments will remain combinations of wired and
wireless for the foreseeable future. However, not all affordances offered by wired environments are
transferable to small mobile devices. In fact, some tasks involving student-generated content are better
served by applications that are designed to be entirely mobile. The paper will present initial results and
evaluations of five of learning tools with the properties mobility, flexibility and either instructor- or student-
generated content.
1 INTRODUCTION
The web has empowered students and instructors
with environments that facilitate a wide variety of
opportunities for learning and engagement. For
example, with appropriate learning design, the web
can facilitate engagement with authentic tasks
supported by a range of learning resources, and more
frequent, meaningful communication with
instructors and/or other students in the process of
knowledge-building. However, the concept of a fully
wired world where students can learn anytime–
anywhere is still unrealized and likely to remain that
way for some time to come (Vernon, 2006). This is
due to:
limitations in the interoperability of different
wireless systems;
high power requirements of the 802.11 wireless
standard, necessitating powerful (heavy)
batteries for PDAs and smart phones and
concomitant short operating lives;
lower security than wired links;
potential interference resulting in frustrated
users; and
cost, since most wireless domains are either
password protected (private) or fee-for-service.
Not withstanding these problems a number of
countries are choosing wireless connectivity over
extensive wired development. However, the
educational issue remains the same—providing
flexibility of learning opportunities. Students in
many developed countries suffer from problems
balancing work and study, which limits their on-
campus engagement. Thus, student expectations of
when and where learning can occur have evolved to
include wireless solutions along with wired internet
access at home or university.
Mobile devices may well define the next era in
computing as such devices create a new paradigm
between anytime/anyplace availability (ubiquity)
and computing capabilities (functionality).
For example, market trends indicate that sales of
notebook computers are currently buoying overall
sales of personal computers (PCs), particularly in the
developed world, as people move to the convenience
of mobile computing (The Register, 2006). Mobile
computing devices include a variety of hardware
with different functions. They include
notebook/laptop computers, personal digital
313
M. Kennedy D. and Vogel D. (2007).
DESIGNING FOR FLEXIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING WIRED AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS.
In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /
e-Learning, pages 313-320
DOI: 10.5220/0001277703130320
Copyright
c
SciTePress
assistants (PDAs), mobile telephones, game
consoles, mp3 players (e.g., iPod), DVD and/or CD
players and digital cameras. Considerable efforts
have already been made to utilise the inherent
mobility and flexibility for learning of some of these
devices (primarily PDAs and mobile phones—small
mobile devices). Small mobile devices (SMDs) have
been used successfully in business (e.g., Easton,
2002), medicine, (DeHart et al., 2004; Smørdal &
Gregory, 2003), nursing (Altmann & Brady, 2005),
engineering (Perry & Jacob, 2005), radiology
(Boonn & Flanders, 2005), K-12 schools (Johnson &
Rudd, 2003) and more recently as a field data-
collection and reflection tool (Vogel, Kennedy,
Kuan, Kwok & Lai, in press).
In the last two years, many of the functions once
associated with separate devices are now being
incorporated into a single device called a ‘smart
phone’ (Zheng & Ni, 2006). The original limitations
associated with SMDs (e.g., memory, battery life,
connectivity, and CPU speed), are rapidly being
overcome in smart phones. Moore’s Law suggests
that these rapid gains in memory, storage and CPU
speed will continue.
However, for design purposes SMDs present a
different user interface—stylus-driven interactions
and handwriting recognition rather than the
keyboard and mouse associated with desktop/
notebook computers (D/Ns). In the applications
described below, considerable effort has been made
to provide:
flexibility of potential use;
alternate, but similar interfaces for wired or
wireless devices; and
one-stop authoring of content for both domains.
It is the latter that the authors believe will ‘make
or break’ uptake of these ubiquitous technologies in
the broader educational environment.
2 MOBILITY AND FLEXIBILITY
FOR LEARNING: THE NEW
PARADIGM?
Mobility is an intrinsic property of learning,
encompassing spatial (university, workplace, home),
temporal (days, evenings, weekends) and
developmental (the learning needs/ life skills of
individuals which change depending upon age,
interest or employment) components. Student
expectations on how and when they learn are
creating increasingly heavier demands upon all
aspects of their learning and young people, more
than any other group, are making the devices
extensions of their personal space fundamental to
their daily lives (Sharples, Taylor & Vavoula, 2005);
Vavoula and Sharples, 2002). Figure 1 (after
Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula & Sharples, 2005, p.
7) is a diagrammatic representation of this view.
In Figure 1 the horizontal arrow indicates
increasing mobility of people (right to left), while
the vertical arrow indicates increasing mobility of
the device.
Per s onal
Shar ed
Stati c
Portable
Mobile phones
PDAs
Tablet PCs
Laptops
Kiosks
Smart phones
Games consoles
Electronic whiteboards
Vide o co nf er encin g
Classroom response
systems
Mobility of people
Mobilit y
of tools
Figure 1: Classification of mobile technologies.
The learning tools described in this paper may be
associated with the top left quadrant, where people
and devices are highly mobile. In considering how to
design applications for both mLearning and wired
access, a number of key factors need to be
addressed. Zheng & Ni (2006, p. 473) suggested that
the main elements that need to be addressed in
moving from the D/N to an SMD are:
context, where the functional design accounts for
screen size, processor speed, and educational
needs;
content, resources that can be presented,
annotated, queried and answered using the input
devices(s);
community, allowing students to share
information (text, SMS and images) via
Bluetooth and WiFi;
communication, using all of the possible input
methods, text recognition, keyboard, stylus;
customisation, so that students have the facility
to tailor the device to personal needs; and
connection, via a variety of methods, to support
students moving from wireless to wired
environments.
In practice this often means a decrease in
functionality or a change in design features when
moving from the D/N to SMDs, but this is not the
always the case. In applications that recognise
mobility as an intrinsic element needed for learning
WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
314
(e.g., field studies, professional practice or
engagement outside the classroom), the D/N
application may not be suitable. The current
developments seek to:
1. develop and research the use of a range of tools
for both web and mobile platforms;
2. develop or select software that enables
academics to easily publish activities/tasks to the
web and/or personal digital assistants (PDAs) or
smart phones simultaneously;
3. develop a common set of icons for common tasks
(e.g., save, upload, download, log-in, check
answer, hints, information) consistent for each
mobile application; and
4. provide pedagogical advice and support (with
examples) for developing content suitable for
eLearning (web-based and mLearning).
In this research a number of applications have
been redesigned to provide greater flexibility for
student learning by providing access and
engagement in the mobile form. The five examples
are discussed below.
Interactive Graphing Object (IGO): Many
concepts are best represented by graphs, where more
than two variables can be represented. Many key
concepts in science, business and medical sciences
are best understood using graphs (Kremer, 1998;
Kennedy, 2004; Kozma, 2000). The Interactive
Graphing Object (IGO) was originally developed for
the web (Kennedy, 2004) but was adapted for
mobile devices to increase the flexibility of learning
available for students. The IGO supports onscreen
sketching and curve fitting (Kennedy, Vogel & Xu,
2004). The IGO authoring environment also
supports web authoring and publishing to either
fixed or mobile devices.
Tatoes: Tatoes is an XML-based application that
converts the highly successful quiz-generation
software Hot Potatoes (available free to educational
institutions from http://hotpot.uvic.ca/) to a form that
functions on a Pocket PC. Authoring is done on a PC
and the Tatoes software converts the files (multiple-
choice, fill-in-the-gap, ordered lists, matching
exercises) to run on any device with the Windows
.NET mobile platform installed. An instructor
creates a series of questions using Hot Potatoes
publishes them to the web or mobile form.
Crossword puzzle: The Crossword tool is part of
the Tatoes environment. While generally focusing
on knowledge-type questions, it has been popular
with students in the mobile form, as they can
undertake the exercise when away from any
network, wired or wireless.
Build-a-PC tool: The student is required to select
from a range of computer components to build a
desktop computer system appropriate for specific
people in an organisation. Students must make
decisions based upon the position held,
responsibility level and budget available. Extensive
feedback is provided about their decisions.
In each of these examples, instructors author
once and publish to the internet and/or mobile
devices with one click.
Phototate: This software utilises the camera
feature found in smart phones and PDAs. Students
may capture images, annotate the image with a pen
tool, and add audio content to the final saved file.
In Tables 1 and 2 the differences between the
web and mobile forms are shown using screen
captures from the online and mobile versions of the
same application (except for Phototate).
The first four tools have been used with two
cohorts of first-year information systems students
(totalling 1,600 students) at the City University of
Hong Kong (CityU), while Phototate has been
piloted on a field trip to Norway by third-year
science students at CityU.
3 DESIGNING FOR FIXED AND
WIRELESS DEVICES
Development of the mobile applications has been
undertaken since 2004. In Figure 2, a framework
showing the software developed as part of this
project is presented in relation to mobility
(horizontal axis) and content creation, instructor or
student (vertical axis). In the majority of institutions
of higher education, applications have been
developed from the premise that connection to
computing environments will be at fixed locations
using a D/N computer (e.g., university, schools,
home, computer laboratories and internet cafes).
Figure 2: Content creation for applications intended for fixe
d
and wireless devices.
DESIGNING FOR FLEXIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING WIRED AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS
315
Table 1: Comparing applications, desktop/notebook versus mLearning equivalents (three tools).
Tool Desktop or laptop computers Small mobile devices
IGO/
mIGO
A set of icons has been used to simplify the user interface. Input of actual values in the mobile version
is no longer available and, in the mobile version, longer questions must be scrolled to read the entire text.
However, both versions support complex curve fitting, iterative forms of feedback, zooming, and saving of
files (students may save their work in progress).
Hot
Potatoes
/ Tatoes
In moving from the D/N to the SMD some limits on text length are needed to reduce the amount of
reading on the SMD and the use of images is problematic. However, for text-based questions the mobile
version has all of the functionality of the full-sized version.
Xword
The two versions are almost the same, with a much more efficient use of screen real estate in the
mobile form. The major difference is the need for the questions and hints on the mobile version to overlap
the crossword, unlike the web version where the clues are at the top of screen.
WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
316
The second dimension considers who is
responsible for the creation of the content. While the
internet has created many opportunities for teaching
and learning, and many interactions/tasks can be
designed by instructors, the underlying assumption
is that the student is the recipient of the content. The
major exception to this statement is the use of
computer-mediated communication (CMC). Thus
far, the use of mobile devices for students to
generate content has been limited to text (SMS,
email and CMC), digital photographs and video, and
data collection using a forms-based interface).
In this project providing tools and resources to
enable students to learn at a time most suitable for
the student, and simple to use authoring interfaces
(PC-based) are seen as primary factors guiding the
developments.
Table 2: Comparing applications, desktop/notebook versus mLearning equivalents (two tools).
Tool Desktop or laptop computers Small mobile devices
Build-a-
PC
The two versions are effectively, the same. However, what has changed is the way in which
students engage with the task. In the D/N version, students use a drag-and-drop method using a
mouse. In addition, the mouse-over of a component produces a description of the item. On the
SMD version, the tap-and-click method is used (the object is selected and then added using a tap
on the appropriate button, or the student selects ‘Detail’ to know more about the component).
Phototate
Phototate is software that allows students to collect data in the field or undertake reflective
practice. Phototate allows students to annotate the photos taken with a PDA or smart phone with
a variety of pen colours and attach an audio file to the annotated image. The composite file may
then be uploaded to a Course Management System and the student’s ePortfolio for future
analysis and reflection. The file on the left is from a science field trip to Norway, uploaded to a
webpage. The attached audio file consists of a discussion about nutrient levels versus water
clarity between a student and the instructor. On the right is a partially annotated photo of
students on a PDA.
DESIGNING FOR FLEXIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING WIRED AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS
317
The major expected outcomes are flexibility of
learning opportunities. Flexibility incorporates a:
connected mode (at the campus);
nomadic mode (at home or connected to a
desktop computer on campus or at home), and
disconnected mode (on public transport, away
from wired or wireless connections)
(after Zheng & Ni, 2006)
To date, what has been shown is that the change
in interface between the more fully featured web
versions of individual applications has not interfered
with students who use the mobile form of the tools
for self-guided learning. Numerous authors see only
problems of security, screen size, battery life and
CPU speed; however, we focus on opportunities and
flexibility for student learning. In Table 3 these
issues perceived as problematic are discussed in
light of our experiences and feedback from students.
The list of problems is adapted from Csete, Wong,
and Vogel (2004), but the improvements in mobile
affordances since 2004 have been relentless.
Table 3: Perceived limitations of SMD versus actual experience: Designing for web and mobile applications.
Perceived
inhibitors
Key functional differences: Web/Mobile Future solution
Small screen
size
Current screen size creates overlapping text and/or
graphics, especially for the feedback to questions. This has
not been an inhibitor to the use of the mobile versions of
the content in the minds of the students.
Flexible film display
Non-
ergonomic
input method
From one perspective, the stylus or onscreen text
recognition limits the speed and flexibility of input for an
annotation. However, a stylus also allows more flexibility
for annotations using Phototate software, and text input has
never surfaced as a significant issue (student focus groups).
Voice recognition
Projection keyboard
Cursive hand-writing
recognition improvements
Slow CPU
speed
Applications run more slowly than on a desktop computer,
but the speed at which all of the applications run is deemed
satisfactory by students.
New breed of architecture
for faster CPU
Limited
memory
The size and power requirements of more powerful CPUs
limit what can be placed in mobile devices. This is a
limitation only on the most demanding of applications. All
of the examples described above operate satisfactorily on
PDAs up to two years old. The advent of cheap flash
memory has overcome storage issues. Up to 100 Phototate
files can be stored on one 512 Mb flash memory card.
Expansion memory card
Increase internal RAM
capacity
Limited
battery span
Extended use is limited by current technology, and this
remains a problem, particularly the non-persistence of
information with some hardware.
New breeds of lithium
batteries or fuel cells
Ever-
changing OS
This is a current and likely future problem not resolvable
in the short term with many competing systems (e.g.,
Symbian and Windows mobile).
Open-source OS for mobile
devices (e.g., Linux has been
run successfully on a smart
phone)
Infrastructure
compatibility
There is a plethora of wireless standards, some of which
require large amounts of power, but also offer increased
bandwidth and transfer speeds.
Standards are still being
developed to bridge the
mobile platform.
Connectivity
bandwidth
Current wireless networks have sacrificed speed for access,
but this is changing rapidly.
3G mobile capacity and
Bluetooth v.1.2
More efficient wireless
protocols than currently
available
WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
318
3.1 Brief Summary of Current
Evaluation Data
Qualitative and quantitative evaluations have been
undertaken with Tatoes, Phototate and build-a-PC
and are reported elsewhere (Vogel et al., 2007). The
use of the exercises on the PDAs was not mandated
so students tended to download exercises more than
upload the completed work. However, students who
achieved higher levels in the mid-term exam
performance were positively correlated with the
group that also used the mobile exercises.
The key finding from the tutors (with 416 students
participating in various tasks from a cohort of an
introductory business course) indicates that students
who engaged with the use of mobile devices for
learning in and out of the classroom found the
experience of using a PDA provided a significantly
better set of learning experiences, was fun, and
useful for motivation and confidence building.
Approximately one quarter of the total student
cohort of 1,600 have engaged with all or some of the
tools in spite of the voluntary nature of the exercises.
While the initial evaluation results were
encouraging, there still remains a great deal of work
to be done to explore more fully the reasons why
students used or did not use the exercises. In
particular, the ongoing research seeks to determine
why students (almost all) did not use the high quality
feedback provided (all incorrect alternatives had a
detailed description of why the selection was
incorrect) with the Tatoes exercises. The expectation
was that students would take the opportunity to
explore incorrect alternatives in order to improve
their understanding: this was not observed. The
current cohort of students are experiencing specific
teaching interventions in an attempt to determine if
their current approach to learning can be modified,
and encourage more students to use the exercises.
4 THE FUTURE
The future may see a paradigm change as mobile
devices become more integrated into educational
environments (see Table 2). However, for this to
occur we need to establish sound pedagogical
frameworks based upon experience and research into
how students use the tools in practice: what the
specific learning needs are, and how more effective
feedback, communication and collaboration can be
enhanced. Four tools, Tatoes, Crossword, IGO and
Build-a-PC, have been designed with the facility for
lecturers to provide high quality feedback to
students. The use of the Tatoes environment
provides limited evidence that writing multiple-
choice questions with detailed feedback may
encourage some students to not only look for the
correct answers to a question, but to spend time
examining what makes other distracters wrong.
Phototate provides a tool for reflective practice and
data generation by students away from traditional
classrooms and lecture halls, providing support for
more flexible modes of learning.
The focus in the past has been on the perceived
limitations of mobile devices, rather than the
pedagogical affordances and flexibility offered. The
rate of uptake (voluntary) by students has been
steady as they take advantage of the:
the quality of the feedback provided for incorrect
distracters and correct answers; and
flexibility offered by anytime/anyplace learning.
What this project has made clear is that offering
students the flexibility of mobile learning options in
addition to current wired learning environments is
viable now, and not something that educators need
to wait for. The key issues are not technological, but
pedagogical and institutional.
REFERENCES
Altmann, T. K. & Brady, D. (2005). PDAs bring
information competence to the point-of-care.
International Journal of Nursing Education
Scholarship, 2(1). Retrieved September 10, 2006,
from http://www.bepress.com/ijnes/vol2/iss1/art10/
Boonn, W. W. & Flanders, A. E. (2005). Survey of
personal digital assistant use in radiology.
RadioGraphics, 25, 537-541.
Csete, J., Wong, Y.-H. & Vogel, D. (2004). Mobile
devices in and out of the classroom. In L. Cantoni &
C. McLoughlin (Eds.), ED-MEDIA 2004, (pp. 4729–
4736). Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on
Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia & World
Conference on Educational Telecommunications,
Lugano, Switzerland. Norfolk VA: Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education.
DeHart, R. M., Monk-Tutor, M. R., Worthington, M. A.,
Price, S. O. & Sowell, J. G. (2004). Implementation of
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs): A first-year
report. American Journal of Pharmaceutical
Education, 68(4), Article 98. Retrieved August 10,
2006, from
http://ajpe.org/aj6804/aj680498/aj680498.pdf
Easton, J. (2002). Going wireless: Transform your
business with mobile technology. New York: Harper
Collins.
DESIGNING FOR FLEXIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING WIRED AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS
319
Johnson, D. W. & Rudd, D. (2003). Will handheld
computers succeed in college? Information Systems
Education Journal, 1(50). Retrieved August 30, 2006,
from http://isedj.org/1/50/ISEDJ.1(50).Johnson.pdf
Kennedy, D. M. (2004). Continuous refinement of
reusable learning objects: The case of the Interactive
Graphing Object. In L. Cantoni & C. McLoughlin
(Eds.), ED-MEDIA 2004, (pp. 1398–1404).
Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on
Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia & World
Conference on Educational Telecommunications,
Lugano, Switzerland: Norfolk VA: Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education.
Kennedy, D. M., Vogel, D. R. & Xu, T. (2004). Increasing
opportunities for learning: Mobile graphing. In R.
Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips
(Eds.), ASCILITE 2004: Beyond the Comfort Zone,
(pp. 493–502). Proceedings of the 21st Annual
Conference of the Australian Society for Computers in
Learning in Tertiary Education, Perth, Western
Australia. Retrieved May 31, 2006, from
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/k
ennedy.html
Kozma, R. B. (2000). The use of multiple representations
and the social construction of understanding in
chemistry. In M. Jacobson & R. Kozma (Eds.),
Innovations in science and mathematics education:
Advanced designs for technologies of learning (pp.
11–46). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kremer, R. (1998). Visual languages for knowledge
representation. Knowledge Science Institute.
Retrieved May 31, 2006, from
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kremer/papers/KAW98/
visual/kremer-visual.html
Naismith, L., Lonsdale, P., Vavoula, G. & Sharples, M.
(2005). Literature review in mobile technologies and
learning (11). Bristol, UK: FutureLab. Retrieved
August 30, 2006, from
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/download/pdfs/research/li
t_reviews/futurelab_review_11.pdf
Perry, M. & Jacob, J. M. (2005). PDA in the classroom
project. 2005 Illonois-Indiana Sectional Conference.
Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering
Education, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb:
American Society for Engineering Education.
Retrieved August 1, 2006, from
http://www.asee4ilin.org/Conference2005papers/P159.
pdf
Smørdal, O. & Gregory, J. (2003). Personal Digital
Assistants in medical education and practice. Journal
of Computer Assisted Learning, 19(3), 320–329.
Sharples, M., Taylor, J. & Vavoula, G. (in press). A theory
of learning for the mobile age. In R. Andrews & C.
Haythornwaite (Eds.), Handbook of eLearning
research. London: Sage.
The Register, (2006). Laptops continue to drive PC
shipments. Retrieved November 6, 2006, from,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/19/idc_pc_ship
ments/
Vavoula, G. & Sharples, M. (2002). kLeOS: A personal,
mobile, knowledge and learning organisation system.
In M. Milrad, U. Hoppe & Kinshuk (Eds.),
WMTE2002, (pp. 152–156). Proceedings of the IEEE
International Workshop on Mobile and Wireless
Technologies in Education (WMWTE), Vaxjo,
Sweden: Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE).
Vernon, R. D. (2006).
Cornell data networking: Wired vs.
wireless? Office of Information Technologies: Cornell
University. Retrieved August 1, 2006, from
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/oit/Arch-
Init/WIRELESS.pdf
Vogel, D., Kennedy, D. M., Kuan, K., Kwok, R. & Lai, J.
(2007). Do Mobile Device Applications Affect
Learning?, HICSS-40. Proceedings of the Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences
(HICSS), Hawai'i: Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers.
Zheng, P. & Ni, L. M. (2006). Smart phone & next
generation mobile computing. San Francisco: Elsevier
Inc.
All URLS in the body of the paper were accessed no
earlier than 1 August 2006.
WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies
320