A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE LEARNING

                                                                                                                                      

In brief, mobile solutions are valuable in easing up access retaining students, making learning more flexible and personalized, and providing collaborative (community) support for learning.

Collaborative or community support can also function as a bridge from more formal and institutionalized forms of education to informal, work-related and life-long learning. There is no reason to stop here but one could develop digital technology further in order to find ways for all citizens, but especially for people in danger of being marginalized, to participate in the civic society and democratic decision making. Therefore, learning is seen as an active (though also contemplative), productive and collaborative form of engagement with the world.

Popular business and technology literature defines m-learning as “e-learning through mobile computational devices” (Quinn, 2000; see also Trifonova and Ronchetti 2003), or as “the point at which mobile computing and e-learning intersect to produce an anytime, anywhere learning experience” (Harris, 2001). As argued by Pozzi (2007), the above definitions are highly technology oriented.

An alternative approach to defining m-learning is to start from two propositions. First, communication plays a major role in all human activity, including learning. Second, one cannot stop people from being mobile, and hence all learning is mobile. Technology allows us to interact socially, anytime and anywhere: communication has become strongly ubiquitous. This approach to m-learning is explicated in Nyíri (2002). Nyíri defines m-learning as learning taking place in the course of person-to-person ubiquitous or mobile communication. Tella (2003) also refers to mlearning as studying and communication in which different tools or mobile technologies are used. However, instead of seeing mobile technology and mobile learning as a means to learning irrespective of geographical location (Kopomaa, 2000; Dahlbom and Ljungberg, 1998), it should be seen as a means to situate learning; thus implying learning in a context in which the learning substance is to be put into use (Brown et al., 1989). Situated learning leads us to consider learning in real life contexts, outside the confines of a conventional classroom. Therefore mobile learning promises to put training and learning into a context of meaningful job activities in the real world.

Application areas of m-learning technology can be many since the learning context can change depending on place and time, the learner (young/adult), the subject matter to be learned, and the skills that need to be applied in the particular context/task at hand.

Usability issues in mobile learning

Using mobile technologies in mobile learning inevitably means that attention should be paid to usability issues. Kukulska-Hulme (2007) made an extensive literature review on the current state-of-the-art of mobile usability in education contexts. Her review indicates that, while many studies report findings on the usability issues in the use of mobile technologies in learning contexts, we are still lacking an understanding of the use of mobile technologies in learning and related usability issues. The following observations can be made:

• ·         While many studies report findings on tests and trials; usability studies should also be carried out over a long period of time in order to get a better understanding of how user experience evolves through the many phases of actual use.
• ·         It is (and will remain) difficult to predict how mobile devices and services/applications might be used over time. Users’ needs (or the way users fulfill their needs) might change in unpredictable ways.
• ·         Some devices have a short product life cycle (about 12 months), and many users face a steep learning curve. This means that in most cases users do not have the time to learn and exploit the functionality of their devices before getting a replacement.
• ·         A user-centred design approach to mobile learning should take into account not only the end-users (the learners), but also other actors, such as teachers, content producers, parents…
• ·         Design of mobile learning applications should take into account the complexity of the learning process. All too often user-centred design focuses on solving usability issues at the single task level.
• ·         Other criteria than traditional usability criteria (time, performance, number of errors…) are needed in the design and evaluation of mobile learning applications and services. Learning-specific criteria should be used (e.g. learner motivation, feedback, learner activity…).
• ·         Usability should also take into consideration the context in which learning is taking place. As mentioned earlier in this paper, knowledge co-construction and collaboration are key concepts in mobile learning, realized through interaction with peers, and surrounding – physical and virtual – objects and resources.
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Co-Design of Augmented Reality Book for Collaborative Learning Experience in Primary Education

Co-Design of Augmented Reality Book for Collaborative Learning Experience in Primary Education

Introduction

The AR technology has matured to the point where it can be applied to formal education. However, AR has not been fully adopted into academic settings, and the lack of awareness of AR’s wider benefits for education is one of the reasons. Compared to traditional technologies, AR creates an environment where the learners can interact and collaborate in groups. Using AR, it is possible to augment the text book so as to enrich the whole classroom learning experience by adding multimedia and three dimensional objects to the printed material.

Different considerations of the design process are required to meet the intended users’ needs, especially when these users are children. Therefore, co-design is considered for the practical part of this study as an efficient way to engage children in developing their AR Book.

Research Question

Can Augmented Books be designed for primary school students in order to support collaboration?

It has been clarified into two sub-questions:

·         How can co-design methods be applied in designing Augmented Book with and for primary school children?

·         What is the effect of the proposed Augmented Book on primary school students’ collaboration?

Related Work

Billinghurst, Kato, and Poupyrev pioneered the concept of AR Books by presenting the “Magic Book”. It was the first attempt at creating a transitional AR interface using a normal book as the main interface. Since the first commercial AR Book became available in 2000, a growing number of AR Books entered the market. An example of AR Book for children education is an interactive coloring book. Another one for an educational subject is Live Solar System (LSS) which was developed to help children learn Astronomy. Despite the few numbers of studies that focus on specific areas of education, AR Books should be developed for all kinds of subjects, and explored in different educational aspects in order to fully understand the potential of AR in education. The AR Book of this study will be designed based on an English schoolbook for foreign speakers.

An example of educational AR book is (miBook). It was tested on adults, not children. That study has not identified the target group for its AR Book. Although different studies argue that AR Book can enhance learning experience. Moreover,most researchers were focusing on the implementation and technological development of their proposed AR Books, rather than focusing on design consideration, or evaluating the effects on education.

AR applications are user-friendly, open-access, and can be used by teachers to create daily teaching activities. It can also be cost effective. In addition, AR Book values the traditional paper, and offers a medium that bridges the gap between the physical and the digital. A comparative study between a book supported with a CD and a book augmented with digital media found that the ergonomics in the AR Book provide a flexible interface which supports collaboration between children in educational settings. Despite the wide argument of AR supporting collaboration, there is a huge lack of studies evaluating this aspect on students in the classroom.

Looking at the development of this collaborative AR interfaces in the context of child education raises the need for co- designing with children. The methods of co-design are important to understand the children’s perspectives, and inform the design process based on their needs. Druin argued that involving children in the design of a technology that supports learning can impact the technologies that are created, and can offer a better understanding of how children learn, which can lead to new theories for education and new teaching practices with technology.

To design for kids, we must have a model of what kids are and what we would like them to become. Adults were once kids. Many are parents. Some are teachers. We tend to think that we know kids-who they are, what they are interested in,and what they like. However, we do not have as much access to our former selves as many would like to believe.Furthermore, it is worth noting that our fundamental notions of childhood are in fact culturally constructed and change overtime. In designing for kids, it is crucial to become aware of one’s own assumptions about the nature of childhood.Designers should be able to articulate their assumptions, and be ready to revise them based on empirical evidence.

Research Methods

Co-design,will be adapted to inform the process of designing the interactive AR book experience.

 To answer the first question, cooperative inquiry will be used to involve children,teachers, HCI experts, and educators as design partners in the design process. It is a suitable for use with children aged 7-11 when designing new technology for children.

For the second portion of the study, a questionnaire developed from Fun Toolkit, followed by a focus group interview will be carried out in the classroom to evaluate the collaborative learning experience. The questionnaire data will be analyzed quantitatively, and the following focus group data will be analyzed qualitatively for the purpose of triangulation. A description of each method is illustrated below.

A. Low-tech Prototyping

The research will start with low-tech prototyping which is a brainstorming technique. This co-design session will involve groups of children, educators, teachers and HCI experts. The session will produce models and low-tech prototypes, which represent the key concepts and directions for designing the AR book. The children participants (with an average age of 8-10) will be placed in three groups of three with one adult. Three adult participants (a teacher, HCI expert, and an educator) will join each group of children. Firstly, the idea and the aim of the AR book will be explained. Each group will be given a bag of art supplies, and asked to generate a model for the AR book. After that, each group will present their work and discuss it with the whole group, while the researcher will be taking notes of the key ideas of each prototype on a whiteboard. The models will then be given to a different group to build on and create another prototype, and present, with there searcher taking notes again. Finally the ideas will be discussed with the adult members.

B. Usability Evaluation with Affinity Diagramming

After the development of the AR Book based on the data collected from the previous method, usability evaluation will be conducted with sticky note critiquing, which is another cooperative inquiry technique. This formative evaluation session will involve the same previous groups but with new participants to ensure variation of data. A model will be given to each member to experiment with. The participants will be asked to write their likes, dislikes and any suggested design ideas on separate sticky notes. The researcher will collect the sticky notes and then use affinity diagramming to help guide the next iteration of design.

C. VAS Questionnaire

Final evaluation will take place in the primary school classroom to examine the AR Book’s effect on students’ collaboration. The questionnaire will be based on Fun Toolkit which is a visual analogue scale (VAS), suggested by child-computer interaction (CCI) studies to be useful for collecting opinions from children. The students will experience the AR Book in their classroom during the school day. After that, they will be asked to answer the questionnaire that covers aspect of collaborative experience.

D. Focus-group Discussion

Based on the scores of the questionnaire, students with the highest and the lowest scores will be selected for the focus groups. This conversation will allow students to express more about their experience, and easily give their opinions. It will be useful for gathering information-rich qualitative data in order to supplement the result from the previous questionnaire.

Using this set of proposed methods, the research study can provide a clear understanding of different aspects of the research questions. On the other hand, it raises possible challenges concerning the involvement of children in each stage of the research. Revealing these challenges will help design researchers to reflect on co-design methods and techniques for further adjustment to be used with children.

The Low Status Of Primary Teacher Education Courses

The low status of primary education among prospective primary education teachers is further signaled by the admissions criteria to teacher training courses. Able young people with GCE A Level passes in mathematics and science are denied access to colleges of education for the three year diploma course in primary education.

Although education officials prefer to describe the admission criterion in a more positive way - ‘only arts A Level students may apply’ - the net result is the same. Mathematics and science GCE A Level holders generally considered to be more able than arts A Level students, receive a clear message. If they wish to consider teaching as a career and wish to apply to a college of education, they must apply for post-primary courses.

Professional qualifications in primary education were attained through a non-graduate qualification route, through the teacher training colleges, and, more recently, as noted above, through the colleges of education and distance-education programmers. In 1997, eleven teacher training colleges and eight colleges of education offered training in primary education .The National Institute of Education established a B.Ed. in primary education in the Sinhala-medium in the late 1980s, and in the Tamil-medium in the mid-1990s. To date none of the universities has elevated the study of primary education to degree status (B.Ed.). The absence of university graduate status for primary education courses reinforces its inferior status.

Teacher Education and Primary Education Methodology

The teacher education system itself is not designed to promote skills in teaching methodology. Very few of those employed in the colleges of education and teacher training colleges as lecturers in primary education methodology have experience of teaching in primary classes. In a study of 48 lecturers in primary education from these colleges, only 8.3 per cent had experience of teaching at the primary level Such lecturers are reluctant to gain experience of teaching in the 28 Primary Education Reform in Sri Lanka primary classroom. Teachers for the primary classes are being trained by persons who themselves do not have experience at that level

Mobile learning: A framework and evaluation

Luvai F. Motiwalla

Wireless devices are highly individualized and collaborative communications tools they give faculty flexible tools for complementing the existing technologies and extending the learning beyond the classrooms and homes from remote places like airports or trains where students do not have access to computers and the Internet.

The framework, presented in, integrates the ideas from mobile connectivity and e-learning into application requirements for mobile learning.

The academic instruction in online learning environment alters the traditional time/space configuration by providing access to learning resources from anywhere at anytime, information and content delivery is altered by presenting the materials in different media, parallel access paths, and assessments via computer logs and software packages.