MOBILE E-LEARNING

Support Services Case Study

Catarina Maximiano

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Department of Computer Science, School of Technology and Management, Leiria, Portugal

Vitor Basto Fernandes

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Research Center for Informatics and Communications (RCIC), Leiria, Portugal

Keywords: LMS, Mobile Device, e-Learning, m-Learning, Mobile Technologies.

Abstract: Currently mobile devices and wireless communications are present in the daily tasks of our lives.

m-Learning extends the e-Learning concept by the use of mobile computation and communication

technological resources. Mobile computing focuses the paradigm of "anytime, anywhere access" that offers

resources for distance education via mobile devices. This paradigm, allow that information is made

available to users with greater flexibility and diversity, supporting learning in non conventional places and

time schedules. The need for learning throughout life and flexibility of education profiles requires the

support and development of new approaches in the educational context and tools to support learning.

This paper presents a distance learning case study at Polytechnic Institute of Leiria. The main objective is

the utilization of mobile devices as support tools for course information/contents resources access available

in Learning Management Systems (in the presented case study - Moodle).

1 INTRODUCTION

The increasing of the computing power for mobile

devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, mobile

learning (m-Learning) be presented as supporting

tools in teaching process. m-Learning complements

the benefits of e-Learning in terms of access to

information anytime anywhere - "anytime anywhere

learning" (Perry2001). It allows for students new

freedom, which comes with a choice of where and

how they want to access the information.

The main function of mobile devices is to

provide immediate communication. In this

perspective, the present work represents one

contribution for the problematic regarding the

availability of contents from the LMS (Learning

Management Systems) in mobile devices. The main

goal consists in the definition of an architecture

using mobile devices to access both administrative

information associated to the courses and

collaboration/communication information. An

implementation of the prototype mBoard according

to the architecture defined was implemented and

presented in this paper.

mboard acceptance tests were performed by the

students of Institute Polytechnic of Leiria (IPLeiria)

- Informatics Engineering Department (DEI).

This paper is organized as follows. In section 2

we present an overview of applications using mobile

devices in the educational area. Section 3 describes

the supporting architecture for IPLeiria m-Learning

case study. mboard prototype and acceptance tests

results are presented in section 4 and 5 respectively.

Finally, conclusions and future work directions are

presented.

2 STATE OF THE ART

There are many researches regarding the

applicability of the mobile devices as supporting

tools in the educational scope. In this context, it will

be presented some of those studies.

Applications to Perform Knowledge Tests.

(Ally2007) uses the mobile devices in teaching

English as a second language for adults. The

contents used in the learning process are interactive,

106

Maximiano C. and Basto Fernandes V. (2010).

MOBILE E-LEARNING - Support Services Case Study.

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Software Agents and Internet Computing, pages 106-113

DOI: 10.5220/0002946301060113

 SciTePress

allowing students to practice using different types of

questions. Indeed, four different types of questions

were used in the creation of more interactive

grammar exercises. They were easily accessible on

mobile devices to test the ability of students. The

type of questions were true/false, multiple choice,

ordering and correspondence. (Matthee2007) has

conducted the study on the use of mobile devices

applied to the teaching of mathematics in South

Africa. In this country there are low PC penetrations

in the country, but that is about three million young

people with mobile phones with Java. The MOBI

client application is developed in tests on

mathematics through mobile devices.

Games as Study Objects. (Liao2008) has

developed the mini-My-Pet game that is inserted

into the theme of creation/education of animals for

PDA. It was developed as having three components:

emotional bonding, controlled learning and

exposure. The project Programming Mobile Games

for Learners (MobiGP) was developed in order to

teach the programming language object-oriented

C++ to students through mobile games

(Hamid2007). The project originated three games to

test student’s knowledge in C++: SpaceOut, Doggy

and Snail. The Wireless Crossword Fan-Tan Game

(WiCFG) was designed has an attempt to increase

the vocabulary of English students (Lin2008). The

game WiCFG represents a type of competition

between groups through co-operation between the

members of groups.

Learning a Language and also Foreign Language.

The Mobile Adaptive CALL (MAC) application -

(Uther2005), was designed to help the Japanese

people to distinguish phonetic contrasts in the

English language through audio. In this application

students have to select the correct word from a

presented list, and the next word is selected, based

on the error rate of the student. Another system was

developed for oral practice and assessment of

English for students to be used with mobile devices

with wireless in the classroom (Yang2005). Another

study was presented by (Joseph2005) and describes

the photoStudy that serves to support students in

learning new words through pictures and

collaboration among students. Other example is the

PALLAS system (Petersen2008), which is based on

real life scenarios and provides access to

personalized and contextualized data associated with

the teaching of languages through mobile devices.

Mobile Applications Adapted from Desktop/Web

Application. (Kainulainen2004) has developed an

extension of the application Problem Processing

Assistant (PPA) which is a web tool for learning.

This tool combines the features of digital portfolios

with the functionality of problem. The adaptation of

this tool for web access via mobile devices was

implemented in two phases, where not all features

were included. At first it only took into account the

adaptation of digital portfolios and the second phase,

was focused on the pre-research of contents.

Another example is the study of (Marcelino2008),

who had developed the H-SICAS application

(Handheld - SICAS) which is the adaptation of

SICAS application for mobile devices. The H-

SICAS has all the features of the parent application,

which is the creation and simulation of algorithms.

The application also allows for the creation of the

solution by the algorithm flowchart and automatic

generation of pseudo-code. It also permits to run the

solution in order to validate the correct definition of

the algorithm.

These studies differ in technologies and approach to

the use of wireless networks, mobile technologies,

equipment integrated into devices (camera and

video, mp3 players, calendar, browser, etc.). While

some choose to create their own resources for

learning, others are concerned about the reuse of

existing content. Others are theoretical, with

emphasis on educational research by the use of

mobile devices as a tool to support learning.

While most m-Learning approaches presented

are focused on the learning process and resources,

the approach presented in this paper is specially

focused on academic community communication

and interaction processes (professors, students,

school coordination, direction boards, etc.).

3 ACHITECTURE

This study is centred in the use of mobile devices as

tools to support the education process, specially –

availability of administrative information of the

courses. Analysis of the overall information related

to courses and the learning supporting process lead

us to conclude for the need of a specific tool to

manage the diversity of information and interactions

involved in university level learning. The mobile

devices are used as tools for easy obtaining of

information about the existing courses without the

need of accessing the LMS.

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3.1 Considerations

Before the definition of the architecture has been

done, the following considerations for the mBoard

application were assessed:

Platform: the objective is the use of application

to be adopted by the greatest number of students.

Therefore, we choose to implement the application

in Java ME;

Get Information: Web Services are used for

communication between the application and the

LMS;

Contextualized and Personalized Access:

Users should be able to set the terms for the

application to use, ensuring an application for

adjustment of terms used by the LMS platform and

also the ability to configure what types of content

should be displayed;

LMS: the architecture should not depend on any

data model of a specific LMS.

The contents to be displayed by the mBoard

application are events; news since the last access;

grade notes (marks); new posts in forums and blogs;

new messages and activity reports.

3.2 Steps in Designing the Architecture

The definition of technical functional and non

functional requirements for the mBoard system were

done using UML (Unified Modelling Language)

notation. For the sake of simplicity only a few

diagrams of structural level and representative

features are presented. Class Diagram is presented in

Figure 1, Authentication and data retrieval functions

are implemented by the use of Web Services

provided by the LMS system and are depicted in the

Activity Diagrams of Figure 2 and Figure 3

respectively.

Figure 1: Class diagram of mBoard architecture.

Figure 2: Authentication activity diagram.

The users to authenticate on the mBoard application

must provide the same authentication data they use

to login in the LMS.

Figure 3: Data retrieval from LMS activity diagram.

The architecture we propose is derived from a key

generic reference architecture defined by

(Trifonova2003). In our proposal, we are going to

improve some aspects that were not very well

defined in the generic architecture. The architecture

presented in the above study consisted in delegate to

the mobile device the responsibility of the

adaptation/conversion of the information to be

displayed. Due to the limited processing power and

memory of mobile devices, it was chosen to not

include the adaptation/conversion of the LMS data

in the application. Instead, it was included in the

services that the LMS should provide. A new

module was introduced for this specific purpose,

consisting in preferences configuration by the user.

The architecture, shown in

Figure 4, contains

three layers: the upper layer - represents the client

mobile application; the intermediate layer - is

composed by the web services need for the mBoard

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application; and the lower layer - represents the

LMS, that is going to contain all the information

need by the application, corresponding to the logical

layer of the architecture.

The most important advantage of this

architecture is that by isolating the implementation

of the Web Services need for mboard application, it

enables the use of different types of LMS, not

requiring the adoption of any specific LMS.

Figure 4: Architecture of mBoard system.

3.3 Upper Layer

In this architecture, the upper layer is the application

mBoard, which will be installed in the mobile

devices.

The application contains five modules:

Authentication Module: for mboard end user

identification in the LMS, using the same

authentication data used in the LMS.

Configuration Module: is constituted by two types

of configurations. One consists in the definition of

the connection to the LMS, i.e the address of the

Web Services provided by the LMS. The other is

related to the customization of the application, like

the terms used and types of contents that must be

displayed in the mBoard application.

Module for the Adaption: is responsible for the

adaptation of contents in HTML format to text

format. When it is detected that some attribute of the

received content is in HTML, this module is

responsible for its transformation into text.

Module for the Presentation of the Information:

is the main module of mBoard, it is responsible for

the information retrieval from LMS and let it

available for mboard users. This module invokes the

Web Services provided by the LMS and presents it

to the users.

Upgrade Module: is responsible to ensure

automatic upgrades for the mBoard application, i.e.

this module minimizes user interactions in mboard

versioning and configuring tasks.

3.4 Intermediate Layer

This layer represents how mBoard application is

going to obtain the contents existing in the LMS and

how contents will be then displayed to the users,

through Web Services. It is also constituted by a

Web Server responsible to provide data about

existing versions of mBoard and to perform

upgrades.

3.5 Lower Layer

The lower layer represents the LMS. This layer is

responsible by the creation and maintenance of all

the necessary information for the application

mBoard, acting as a provider for the application.

4 MBOARD SYSTEM

4.1 Used Technologies

For the mboard core application development, Java

ME framework was chosen, because of its wide

adoption by mobile devices suppliers and users.

Therefore, our application can be used by a high

share of mobile device users.

For the designing of the user interface,

Lightweight UI Toolkit – LWUIT was used. This

toolkit makes very easy the process of creating and

compelling UI's that will look and behave the same

on all devices using a programming paradigm

similar to Java Swing. To invoke the Web Services

we used the KSOAP package.

4.2 Implementation

Before moving into the application programming, it

was necessary to create a draft of the screens to be

implemented in the mBoard application.

In the development of the draft we took into

consideration some rules related to the orientation of

the interfaces for mobile applications (Keogh2003,

Gong2004): simplification of the interface; use of

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diverse screens and each should only present

relevant information (

Figure 5, Figure 6, Figure 7 and

Figure 8); always provide feedback to the user

(middle screen of

Figure 5 and right screen of Figure

7), because the mobile user is more impatient with

the mobile than the user of a desktop application;

consistency: in the "look and feel" uniformity in all

of the screens in all of the elements of the interface

(ex. names, plan of colors, appearance of the boxes),

create methodologies of input/output independent of

the device and reuse the same components used in

several screens (e.g. commands).

In the login screen, it is displayed the menu option.

However, the menu only allows the configuration of

the address of the Web Services provided by the

LMS, because the authentication involve the LMS

through the Web Services. The first time the user

accesses the application he must configure this

address, otherwise it will not have access to the

information.

Figure 5: Authentication screens.

In the setting setup screen, users can select which

type of contents they want to be available, as well as

defining the term to be displayed.

Figure 6: configuration screen.

On the main menu screen, users can choose the

information they want to see. A process bar was

added as feedback for the user when the application

is performing some processing (e.g., invocation of

Web Services). With this feedback the user gets to

know that the application is running and not

blocked.

Figure 7: Menu screens.

For the screens presenting the contents of the

courses associated to an user, two screens are

required: one with the resume of all new information

about the type of selected content by the user and the

other with the details of the content. The right screen

displays a warning message when there is no new

information available about the selected content.

Figure 8: Contents screens.

4.3 Tests

This chapter discusses the several tests performed to

validate the prototype implementation/functionality.

4.3.1 Tests in the Emulators

Several tests were performed in different emulators

available from several suppliers. Table 1 presents a

summary of those tests.

4.3.2 Acceptance Tests

To validate the prototype, a group of undergraduate

Computer Science students at IPLeiria were chosen

to perform the first mboard assessment and

acceptance tests.

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Table 1: Resume of tests performed with emulators.

Brands/

Model

Autentication

Settings

Contens

Comments

Samsung

SGH-

B2700

F480

SGH-

E250

SGH-

J800

SGH-

M880

SGH -

F700

GD90

BL20

LX60

Nokia

N97

S40

5rd

editio

Motorola

Qwert

Candy

bar

G24 -

JHMI

Touch

Only has the virtual

keyboard and I could not

access it, so it was possible

to test the application

Sonny Ericsson

K750

W200

W700

W950

I could not access the menu,

in order to perform the

settings

M600

I could not access the menu,

in order to perform the

settings

V800

Z550

Z800

In order to gather necessary data to evaluate the

mBoard prototype developed, it was created an

inquiry composed by 14 questions, organised in

three sections: the first section was essentially

concerned with the installation of the application on

the mobile device, the second on the usability and

functionality of the application and the last section

on the motivation for the use of such a mobile

application.

The grades (marks) of the students were published in

the LMS and made available only by the mBoard

application. In a 93 potential users (students) group

15 answers were obtained for analysis. The

statistical analysis of the data collected follows.

In Table 2 is presented the success rate obtained

about the application installation in mobile devices.

Table 2: Answers percentage of question if application

was successeful installed.

Answer Response (%)

Yes 53.33

No 46.67

In Table 3 is indentified the mobile device suppliers

where the application was installed.

Table 3: Answers percentage of question to identity the

mobile devise.

Brand Response (%)

LG 6.67

HTC 13.33

Nokia 46.67

Sony-Ericsson 33.33

Other 6.67

Due to a high rate of application setup failures, a

more detailed analysis was made by mobile device

models (Table 4).

Table 4: Mobile devices witch student could not install

application.

Brand Model

HTC

TYTN II

P3600i

Nokia

9130

E66

E51

5610

Sony-Ericsson W880I

The technical requirements for each of these mobile

devices were checked and the analysis confirmed

that all devices had the necessary requirements.

However, it was noticed that all devices supported

applications with the MIDP 2.0 version of Java, and

the required information about the application was

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defined the version 2.1 for MIDP. This definition in

fact was the cause of installation failures.

The results of users classification for application

usability (in 1 to 5 scale, where 1 is bad and 5 very

Good) are listed in Table 5.

Table 5: Answers percentage of question to classify the

application in terms of application usability.

Item 1 2 3 4 5

Authentication 0 0 25 25 50

Navigation 0 0 12.5 75 12.5

Information

visualization

12.5 0 75 12.5 0

Usability 0 0 12.5 75 12.5

Screens 0 0 50 37.5 12.5

The results of user classification for application

feedback (in 1 to 5 scale, where 1 is bad and 5 very

Good) are listed in Table 6.

Table 6: Answers percentage of question to classify the

application in terms of application feedback.

Item 1 2 3 4 5

Progress messages 0 0 25 50 25

Error messages 25 62.5 12.5

Response time 12.5 25 62.5

For the question “How do you classify the

application functionalities? (in 1 to 5 scale, where 1

is bad and 5 very Good)” the answers are present in

Table 7.

Table 7: Answers percentage of question to classify the

application in global.

Item 1 2 3 4 5

Functionality 0 0 25 50 25

Table 8 presents the answers for the question “Do

you think that is beneficial to access information

present in LMS via mobile devices?”

Table 8: Answers percentage of question about the

beneficial of use this kind of application.

Answer Response (%)

Yes 93.33

No 0

Without opinion 1 6.67

The answers for the “Identify the main cause to not

use the application” question are listed in Table 9.

Table 9: Answers percentage of question to identify the

main cause to not use the application.

Answer Response (%)

Price 80

Device limitation 13.33

Limited information visualization 6.67

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we presented a new method to make

traditional e-Learning content available to mobile

devices users, with no need to extra work of content

adaption from LMS in mobile devices.

In the case study, we observed a good acceptance

of students to this new approach for educational

information access. According to the preliminary

results from the acceptance tests we also conclude

that mobile devices configuration and versioning

management is one of the critical success factors for

m-Learning applications deployment. In addition to

configuration and versioning management

improvements we also need to assess the core

functions of m-Learning applications from the point

of view of professors, student and staff. Other future

working directions related to communication

models, economical cost analysis, etc. were

identified.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The resources required for the release of the

application and Moodle instance were provided by

the Unit of Distance Education (UED) at

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria.

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