MOBILE TELEPHONE TECHNOLOGY AS A DISTANCE

LEARNING TOOL

Yousuf M. Islam, PhD

Director, Research & Advisory Services, BRAC University, Bangladesh

Mawdudur Rahman, PhD

Director of Online Programs and Professor of Accounting, Suffolk University

Zillur Rahman

Lecturer, Dept of CSE, BRAC University

Manzur Ashraf

Lecturer, Dept of CSE, BRAC University

Keywords: Distance learning, e-learning, Inf

ormation system, Application of Mobile Telephone technology.

Abstract: This paper presents the methodology, results and effectiveness in the develop

ment of Mobile telephone-

based (Short Message Service-based) distance learning. The proposed novel real time interactive distance

learning approach is about the application of information technology to education, was setup, delivered and

evaluated using a real-life environment. Statistical analysis of the achieved results of the learners confirmed

this SMS-mobile based learning being as effective as direct face-to-face learning.

1 INTRODUCTION

The term Distance Learning (DL) means different

things to different people. As the meaning of the

term varies so also the delivery techniques used by

different users and institutions. The California

Distance Learning Project defined distance learning

as: "Distance Learning (DL) is an instructional

delivery system which connects learners with

educational resources. DL provides educational

access to learners not enrolled in educational

institutions and can augment the learning

opportunities of current students. The

implementation of DL is a process which uses

available resources and will evolve to incorporate

emerging technologies". (Source: Distance Learning

Overviews)

Distance learning is not a new phenomenon. It

a long history. In 1892, Penn State and

University of Wisconsin were the first universities to

develop a program of correspondence study. The

correspondence model later evolved into the

Independent Learning Program. During the 1960s,

the British Open University in Great Britain

developed off-campus teaching systems, using a

combination of broadcast and correspondence study

systems. Later, many US universities and

universities around the world followed the Open

University model to reach millions of adult

educators. (Source:

http://cfcc.net/dutch/DistanceEd.htm )

The recent advances in information technology

have

been responsible for widespread adoption with

distance education. Today distance education has

spread worldwide with extensive use of information

technology with varying degrees of success. Some

programs are very successful in delivering quality

education at a distance and others are not. Quality

distance education needs appropriate mix of

technology, contents, processes, faculty talents while

some demand motivation on the part of the learner.

Now-a-days distance education occurs in a non-

classroom

setting where s

tudents participate in

course discussions, exercises, and receive

assessment from the instructors by utilizing

technology such as video conferencing, audio-

graphics, CD-ROM, and Web-based media.

Furthermore, distance learning programs are

becoming increasingly popular at academic

institutions and corporations. Most importantly these

programs are offering learning opportunities for

people that are normally restricted by class time and

226

M. Islam Y., Rahman M., Rahman Z. and Ashraf M. (2005).

MOBILE TELEPHONE TECHNOLOGY AS A DISTANCE LEARNING TOOL.

In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 226-232

 SciTePress

space.(Source: Benefits and limitations of Distance

Learning)

To deliver quality education using available

technology is

the core of distance education

definition. To ensure learning in a distance learning

program several things must happen, e.g. delivery of

contents, regular communication, continuous

feedback, and interactions between the learners

themselves, and also the instructors. Experience

shows that a “live” interaction with the instructor is

the most significant aspect of distance learning

process. Presently there are several ways to achieve

this goal using different available technologies, e.g.,

text chat, audio chat, video conferencing, and

conference calls. Video conferencing and conference

calls have one major limitation. They do not support

“distributed” learning, it is good for only point-to-

point delivery. In some situations the cost of

delivery and the ease of use influence the choice of

technology. In mobile technology, the use of text

messaging (Short Message Service, SMS) is

growing every month. Its rapid growth is generating

substantial commercial applications and research

interest now-a-days. This paper proposes how the

mobiles’ Short Messaging Service or SMS along

with a live telecast can be used to create ‘almost’ an

ideal classroom situation.

2 SCENARIO OF DISTANCE

LEARNING IN BANGLADESH

The limitation of “distributed” learning is felt to a

much greater degree in countries that are at the

wrong end of the ‘digital divide’. In such countries,

the convenience and facilities afforded by the tools

of information technology are not significantly felt.

In Bangladesh, e.g. empirical estimates of the

number of computers is around one million where

the population stands at over 130 million of which

80% is rural based. Although the number of ISPs

stands at more than 76, most of these are

concentrated in the major cities as are the users. The

estimated number of Internet users is around 13%

(Source: MOSAIC groups report ). Educational

resources in the rural areas are meager with a severe

lack of qualified teachers and educational facilities

(Source:

http://www.discoverybangladesh.com/meetbanglade

sh/people.html).

Given such tremendous odds, the Government of

angladesh established the Bangladesh Open

University (BOU) in 1992 by an Act of Parliament.

Its prime objective was to transform the country’s

vast human resources into an educated and trained

workforce. The main criterion was to provide access

to educational materials. BOU airs its educational

programs over the national television network. Its

programs are pre-recorded and are run as regular

courses. Students then go to exam centers and get

certificates if they qualify. However, the envisioned

success of an educated and trained workforce is far

from being achieved (official literacy rate: 43%,

2003).

Compared with face-to-fa

ce learning, the

limitations of such distance learning are found to be:

¾ Prese

ntations are pre-recorded, i.e. they are not

‘live’!

¾ There is

no interaction between the presenter

and student

¾ There is

no feedback of learning achieved

through a presentation

¾ There

is no monitoring of student progress

throughout the course

¾ Th

ere is no evaluation of teaching quality

To introduce interactivity in the context of

angladesh, we have to look at solutions that would

be technologically acceptable as well as affordable.

In this context, it is seen that the growth of the

number of mobile phones in use has been

phenomenal. As per advertising claims, the total

number of mobile phones in use currently exceeds

3.5 million (Grameen Phone: 2 m, Aktel: 1m, City

Cell + Bangla Link > 0.5 m). The phenomenal

growth of mobile phones is expected to continue

with each mobile company setting their targets in

terms of millions. With new companies like BTTB

and Alcatel joining competition, the unit prices of

calls and sending messages are also expected to

drop. The companies now cover all districts of

Bangladesh. If mobile phone technology could be

used as a tool, it would be much more

technologically suitable for Bangladesh in terms of

the reach it would provide.

3 PROPOSED MODEL FOR

INTRODUCING

INTERACTIVITY INTO

DISTANCE LEARNING

BACKDROP

The ideal face-to-face classroom situation is when

each student follows the thread and can answer

interactive questions posed by the

lecturer/trainer/teacher. In reality, however, very few

students participate and answer questions posed. If

participating and answering questions, in each class,

could be made a pre-condition for passing the

course, students would have a motive for being

MOBILE TELEPHONE TECHNOLOGY AS A DISTANCE LEARNING TOOL

227

attentive during a lecture. If, for instance, a rule

could be made that a lecturer would ask at least 10

questions during a class session and that each

student would have to attempt at least 8 questions.

To get the credits for the course, each student must

get at least 5 questions right in each class and have

attended at least 80% of the classes. Such a rule

would force attentiveness and participation. This

should also help the learning process. However,

such idealistic rules are meaningless for a face-to-

face classroom situation as it is impossible for a

lecturer to monitor, check and record the

performance of all the students in a large class. In

Distant Learning over national television, it would

be ideal if students could participate and interact

with a “live” lecture (as opposed to a recorded

telecast) just as in a face-to-face classroom. Again,

the vision of such idealistic participation and

interaction is meaningless, as how would the

presenter monitor, check and record the participation

of the large number of distributed students?

3.1 Overview

In the context of Bangladesh the cost of Internet

bandwidth is high and there is no countrywide

internal infrastructure that would enable chat room

technology or video conferencing to be established.

In this backdrop, the mobile telephone industry

appears to offer a feasible alternative. While using

mobiles is still considered costly (e.g. compared

with mobile rates in neighbouring India), the

coverage of the mobile telephones is now

countrywide.

3.2 Methodology

This paper proposes how the mobiles’ Short

Messaging Service or SMS along with a live telecast

can be used to create ‘almost’ an ideal classroom

situation. The participants would of course need

individual mobile sets and access to national

television. The SMS messages would directly

interface with a central SMS server that would

process the messages and show processed output to

the presenter. The SMS server would also respond

directly to the participant as and when necessary.

When required the SMS server would also randomly

dial individual participants so that the presenter can

talk to them directly.

3.3 Operation of a Class

3.3.1 Live Presentation

It is important that the class be conducted “live”, so

that a presenter can ask questions and respond to

clear up wrong concepts. The presenter should also

be able to talk to randomly selected participants. All

the participants should hear this conversation.

Conducting the class on national television would

allow this and a greater outreach. A course or a

country wide training program can be conducted in

this manner.

3.3.2 Class Timing

The class time would be fixed each week and pre-

announced. This would be just like a regular time

tabled class for the entire course or training program.

For example, a course may consist of 10 classes for

one-credit. Each class can be between 50 minutes to

75 minutes. A fixed weekly timing would allow

participants to organize themselves on a weekly

basis.

Figure 1: Mobile as an Interactive Tool in Distance

Learning

3.3.3 Rules

Along with the class-timing announcement, the rules

of the course would be given. A rule could be that a

lecturer would ask at least 10 questions during a

class and that each student must attempt at least 8

questions. To get the credits for the course, each

student must get at least 5 questions right in each

class in at least 80% of the classes. This would let

the student/participant know what is expected of

him/her. The student can also keep track of her/his

own progress as would the database in the server.

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3.3.4 Attendance

When the presenter comes on air for any particular

class, he/she would ask the students to register

attendance for the class. The attending students

would register by sending an SMS to the server. The

server would log the attendance of all the students

who send an SMS. The SMS could contain things

like “y” if already registered for the entire course. If

it is a one-off session, the candidate can register with

full name and other details like date of birth, if

required. The server would maintain the attendance

records. This would be just like a real classroom.

3.3.5 Payment

If a nominal payment is necessary, the payment may

be deducted from mobile “pre-paid” cards. This

would require an agreement with the mobile

company providing the service. This would be a

hassle free payment method.

3.3.6 Lesson

The lesson would be pre-planned and structured in

such a way that questions can be asked at suitable

points every 2 to 5 minutes. The questions would

have multiple-choice answers that would be

displayed as A, B, C and D or A, D, G and J (i.e. the

first letter of the mobile keypad numbers 2, 3, 4 and

5). All the questions for the lesson would be pre-

defined and entered into the computer. This would

force the lesson to be planned with achievable

objectives in mind.

3.3.7 Answering and Monitoring

The number of the question should also be included

such as Q1D, if the chosen answer for Question 1 is

D. The answer would be sent by SMS. The server

would register the answer against the candidates’

phone number or ID and would do three things:

i) The computer would send a message to those who

have

not attempted the question and tell them their

current status of how many questions have been

attempted. The student/participant would then feel

that he/she is being monitored.

ii) The computer would create a bar chart of the

que

stions answered and mark the correct answer.

The bar chart would be visible to the presenter and

to the participants. To interact with the participants,

the presenter would select a wrong answer on the

graph and the computer would show those who have

sent the particular answer. The computer would then

randomly select a number that the computer would

subsequently dial. Being connected, the presenter

would ask the student the logic behind selecting the

answer. The presenter on air can then correct wrong

concepts. A few other random selections can be

similarly made. This would help clear up wrong

concepts immediately during the presentation.

iii) A complete record of each student’s performance

hroughout the course would be kept. This record

would be used to issue student’s performance

notification via SMS at the end of a session and also

used to issue certificates at the end of the training or

course.

3.3.8 Question and Answer Session

The last ten minutes of the lesson would be kept for

questions and answers session. The questions will be

typed out as an SMS message sent to the same

server. If anyone asks a question, bonus marks can

be given. The server would log all the questions. The

computer would cluster questions with at least three

or four similar words. The clusters would be visible

to the presenter who would then estimate the nature

of questions and show the estimated question to the

audience. He would then answer the question/s live.

This would allow the students to ask independent

questions and satisfy their needs.

The presenter could also give a task for the next

ass. At the beginning of the subsequent class, a

question can be asked based on the task. Quiz

questions could also be set. Statistical correlations

can be done over a period of time to find whether

students are copying from each other.

3.3.9 Results

At the end of the lesson, each student’s results could

be posted via SMS saying whether the student has

passed or failed the class. The student would have a

record of his/her status. This would motivate the

student to be more attentive in the next class or be

pleased that he/she has done well.

3.4 Costs

The SMS costs per session would be between Tk.20

to 30 at current rates. To promote the sale of mobiles

for this purpose, mobile companies may consider

giving an educational discount of e.g. 50% on the

SMS cost. The mobile companies use single packets

to send each SMS. They can examine the feasibility

of providing an educational SMS service and

become “partners-in-education” against the cost of

sales.

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3.5 Benefits

The students would get a feeling of participation and

be forced to follow the class. They would feel that

the presenter is monitoring them individually as well

as the coverage would be larger. Countrywide

training of teachers in various schools or health

workers can be conducted in this manner for rural

Bangladesh. The current cost and time of conducting

countrywide training would have to be compared

with the cost of doing it over national television

using SMS technology and a server. The proposed

concept utilizes existing technological infrastructure

to promote learning. There is no need for Internet

and expensive bandwidth. The system would also

lend itself to any type of distributed interactive

session required.

4 TESTING OF THE PROPOSED

SMS-BASED DISTANCE

LEARNING

To test out the system, the following software

modules were developed for the SMS Server:

• Registration of a course, dates and timing

along with teacher details

• Entering questions, multiple choice

answers and correct answer for each class

• Registration of a student for a course

• Class start reminder system

• Attendance at a particular class

• Presentation of questions

• Logging of answers from each student

• Plotting of graphs for each answer

• Calculating student responses and

responding to students

• Final results module

A lesson was prepared on Quadratic Functions

interspersed with questions. Two practice sessions

were conducted – one drill sequence with the

presenter and one drill session with the sequences of

the SMS server. To send and receive SMSs from the

server a mobile was connected via a data cable to the

server. This was followed by a live session described

below:

Figure 2: Live testing of the Interactive Distance Learning

system with Mobiles

4.1 Live Testing

A class of 52 students was divided roughly 50-50

into those who had mobiles and those who did not.

Both groups sat in two adjacent classrooms, one

face-to-face (f2f) with the presenter and the group

with mobile phones could see the presenter on a

projection screen projected using a video camera and

a multimedia projector as shown in Fig.2.

Both groups were given the same pre-test

and post-test set on quadratic functions. The f2f

group had a pencil and paper to answer the questions

while the mobile phone group used their mobiles to

answer questions via SMS to the SMS server. The

mobile group was given a handout on how to

The marks achieved in both the pre-test and

post-test for both groups were put through a t-test.

A separate video camera was used to take

pictures of both the groups in action. It was found

that the group with mobile phones was very excited

about using their mobile phones for this purpose.

Students generally love to use the SMS of mobile

phones. In general it was found that the mobile

phone group on average scored one to two marks

higher than the f2f group. This could be due to the

initial flurry of excitement over the new method

used. It is expected that this excitement may wear

out after the first initial classes.

4.2 T-test

We test the hypothesis that “there is no true

difference between the two means” (NULL

hypothesis). We used statistical t-test for this

purpose.As was mentioned earlier that prior

learning, the pre-test was taken for both groups in

order to validate their merit-similarities. After

lecturing, post-test was taken in order to compare the

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results achieved in both learning methods (face-to-

face and SMS-based learning).

4.2.1 Pre-test

In t-test, we got result, h = 0, which means that we

cannot reject the null hypothesis. The significance

was 0.1870, which means that by chance we would

have observed values of t more extreme than the one

in this example in 1870 of 10,000 similar

experiments. The differential means of both learning

was 0.2737. A 95% confidence interval on the mean

was [-0.1387, 0.6861], which includes the

theoretical (and hypothesized) difference of 0.1870.

4.2.2 Post-test

When degree of certainty equals 0.02 or less, the

result, h = 0, means that we cannot reject the null

hypothesis. The significance is 0.0274, which means

that by chance we would have observed values of t

more extreme than the one in this example in only

274 of 10,000 similar experiments. For degree of

certainty=0.02, a 95% confidence interval on the

mean is [-1.9303, 0.0553], which includes the

theoretical (and hypothesized) difference of -0.9375.

But when it is 0.03 or more, the result, h = 1, means

that we can reject the null hypothesis. The results of

the t-test showed that the post-test results of the

Distance Learning class were at least as good as the

f2f classroom.

5 RELATED WORKS

In (Jackson, R.H. 2001 ) Jackson argued that

technology-enhanced e-Learning is where the

learner audience has the opportunity to meet face-to-

face with the instructor and is a supplement to

traditional, on campus learning. In (Taylor, R. 2002)

Taylor agreed with Jackson and stated that e-

Learning can be used effectively in several different

forms. It can be used as a stand-alone asynchronous

program, or as a synchronous class where all the

students are online at the same time, or as an add-on

to traditional classroom presentations. In

(Alexander, S. 2001) authors further argued that

using technology in both classroom and distance

learning would improve the quality of learning.The

drawbacks of conventional distance-learning is that

it requires more maturity and self-discipline from

students than traditional classroom education, which

may explain the higher dropout rates in distance-

learning programs compared to conventional

programs (Hiltz, S.R. and Wellman, B. , 1997),

(Kumar, A. et al., 2001). A lot of work has been

done in developing prototype-based distance

learning. Some recent Intelligent E-Learning tools

comprising interactive multimedia through Internet

and prototype are illustrated in (Michelle, S. ,

2003)(Peter B., 2004)(Zhang, D. et al., 2004). Our

proposed method overcomes the above problems,

which is validated through questionnaire-based

observation and statistical ‘T-testing’.

6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

The Distance Learning classroom was not in a “real”

rural setting where students would be separated

geographically but would have access to a television

network that would air the educational program.

During the test, the students were sitting side by side

as in a normal classroom. This however brought

home another point. The SMS technology can also

be used in a normal f2f classroom to log and check

answers. The server would track students who are

not answering questions and send them a warning

SMS and remind them of their current status. In the

f2f classroom, students answered questions on a

piece of paper, however, the instructor was not able

to monitor students who were not answering

questions. The mobile as a tool and an input-output

device would be useful in a normal f2f classroom

situation.

However, in the last 10 minutes of a class

session, stude

nts can also ask questions via SMS to

the presenter. The computer would group the

questions for the presenter. The cryptic language

used for sending SMS adds another dimension of

difficulty to grouping questions. This part was left

for future work. Research has also to be done on the

kind of courses that can be taught in this manner,

e.g. whether English language can be taught in this

manner. If it can, it would be very useful for places

like Bangladesh where there is a severe shortage of

English teachers.

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Distance learning overviews; http://www.uwex.edu

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Http://cfcc.net/dutch/DistanceEd.htm

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/~mstswh/courses/it7000/papers/newp

age12.htm

MOSAIC groups report; http:// som.csudh.edu/ fac/

lpress/devnat/nations/Banglad

esh/bdmosaic.htm

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