PERCEIVED ENJOYMENT OF MOBILE MATHEMATICAL LEARNING GAMES

Conference ProceedingsPerceived enjoyment is often reckoned as one of the most important factors influencing consumer behavior in educational learning material. Without the educational application providing a positive experience, children are unlikely to interact with it. Previous research on the use of educational applications in mathematics education has focused primarily on the learning potential of these applications and has not adequately addressed the perceived enjoyment. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap and to investigate the perceived enjoyment of mobile mathematical learning games. This study adopted the GameFlow model and Game-Based Learning model as theoretical base. A mixed method research methodology was employed where qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through surveys and semi-structured interviews. Twenty-six children, aged 10 to 13, from selected schools in one of South Africa’s provinces, participated in the study. The results indicate that the interest, fantasy, sensation and goal constructs, as well as the reward systems of mobile mathematical learning games, were most influential in terms of perceived enjoyment. The findings of this study could be used by educators and parents in the evaluation and selection of mobile mathematical learning games

Evaluation of mobile health education applications for health professionals and patients

Paper presented at 8th International conference on e-Health (EH 2016), 1-3 July 2016, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. ABSTRACT Mobile applications for health education are commonly utilized to support patients and health professionals. A critical evaluation framework is required to ensure the usability and reliability of mobile health education applications in order to facilitate the saving of time and effort for the various user groups; thus, the aim of this paper is to describe a framework for evaluating mobile applications for health education. The intended outcome of this framework is to meet the needs and requirements of the different user categories and to improve the development of mobile health education applications with software engineering approaches, by creating new and more effective techniques to evaluate such software. This paper first highlights the importance of mobile health education apps, then explains the need to establish an evaluation framework for these apps. The paper provides a description of the evaluation framework, along with some specific evaluation metrics: an efficient hybrid of selected heuristic evaluation (HE) and usability evaluation (UE) factors to enable the determination of the usefulness and usability of health education mobile apps. Finally, an explanation of the initial results for the framework was obtained using a Medscape mobile app. The proposed framework - An Evaluation Framework for Mobile Health Education Apps – is a hybrid of five metrics selected from a larger set in heuristic and usability evaluation, filtered based on interviews from patients and health professionals. These five metrics correspond to specific facets of usability identified through a requirements analysis of typical users of mobile health apps. These metrics were decomposed into 21 specific questionnaire questions, which are available on request from first author

An evaluation methodology for ergonomic design of electronic consumer products based on fuzzy axiomatic design

This article is posted with permission of OCP Science imprint. Copyright @ 2008 Old City Publishing Group.The development life cycle of software and electronic products has been shortened by the growth of rapid prototyping techniques. The evaluation of electronic consumer products should consider hardware and software as well as the ergonomic usability, emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research follows a systematic approach to develop an evaluation methodology for electronic mobile products on ergonomic design. The proposed methodology is based on fuzzy multi attribute decision making and fuzzy axiomatic design realized in three steps; determination of ergonomic attributes for electronic consumer products, determination of a representative set of alternatives, and selection of the best alternative in terms of ergonomic design by utilizing fuzzy axiomatic design. A case study is also provided to support the proposed methodology

Applications of Soft Computing in Mobile and Wireless Communications

Soft computing is a synergistic combination of artificial intelligence methodologies to model and solve real world problems that are either impossible or too difficult to model mathematically. Furthermore, the use of conventional modeling techniques demands rigor, precision and certainty, which carry computational cost. On the other hand, soft computing utilizes computation, reasoning and inference to reduce computational cost by exploiting tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth and approximation. In addition to computational cost savings, soft computing is an excellent platform for autonomic computing, owing to its roots in artificial intelligence. Wireless communication networks are associated with much uncertainty and imprecision due to a number of stochastic processes such as escalating number of access points, constantly changing propagation channels, sudden variations in network load and random mobility of users. This reality has fuelled numerous applications of soft computing techniques in mobile and wireless communications. This paper reviews various applications of the core soft computing methodologies in mobile and wireless communications

Genetic algorithms

Genetic algorithms are mathematical, highly parallel, adaptive search procedures (i.e., problem solving methods) based loosely on the processes of natural genetics and Darwinian survival of the fittest. Basic genetic algorithms concepts are introduced, genetic algorithm applications are introduced, and results are presented from a project to develop a software tool that will enable the widespread use of genetic algorithm technology

An Experience-Connected e-Learning System with a Personalization Mechanism for Learners’ Situations and Preferences

This paper presents an “experience-connected” e- Learning system that facilitates users to learn practical skills of foreign language by associating knowledge and daily-life experiences. “Experience-Connected” means that the users of this system receive personalized and situation-dependent learning materials automatically. Knowledge associated to users’ daily-life has the following advantages: 1) provides opportunities to learn frequently, and 2) provides clear and practical context information about foreign language usage. The unique feature of this system is a dynamic relevance computation mechanism that retrieves learning materials according to both preference relevance and spatiotemporal relevance. Users of this system obtain appropriate learning materials, without manual and time-consuming search processes. This paper proves the feasibility of the system by showing the actual system implementation that automatically broadcasts the media-data of foreign language learning materials to smart-phones