Developing m-learning assistance for small screen, wireless devices

Hosting University

Dublin City University

Overview

The advent of wireless technology has facilitated anytime, anywhere access to Web material for the purposes of information, entertainment, and learning. However, access to this content is now constrained by device type, and more specifically device screen size. Specific to m-learning, it has been acknowledged that full scale delivery of course content to a small screen device is not necessarily desirable. However, it has been proposed that mobile learning could be used to "refresh the memory" for users searching for specific and selective information. The proposed project explores issues surrounding the delivery of appropriate content over small-screen devices.

A number of factors affect the usability of small screen devices (smartphones and pdas), wireless devices for web browsing. W3C has published a draft Mobile Web Best Practices guide. This project will determine what factors affect performance and usability for small screen devices, specifically with regards to searching for and accessing targetted information. The project aims modify existing course content for delivery to small screen devices for targetted access to key concepts and then deploy it on a real device such as a PDA.

Relevance to Host Laboratory

This project will be hosted by the Performance Engineering Laboratory (PEL), Dublin City University. PEL has broad experience in the area of performance in multimedia and wireless networks and the impact of performance in user perception. PEL has developed a performance-aware adaptive hypermedia e-learning system, which has been shown to improve learning outcomes when compared to a similar non-adaptive system. It is a logical step to extend this work into the area of m-learning, and this project represents a practical step towards this goal.

Supervisor

Dr. Jennifer McManis     

Students who have worked on this project: