Mobile Usability in Educational Contexts: What have we learnt?

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in approaches to usability and on recent developments, with particular reference to usability findings reported in studies of mobile learning. The requirements of education are considered as well as the needs of students participating in distance education; discipline-specific perspectives and accessibility issues are also addressed. Usability findings from empirical studies of mobile learning published in the literature are drawn together in the paper, along with an account of issues that emerged in two mobile learning projects based at The Open University, UK, in 2001 and 2005. The main conclusions are: that usability issues are often reported in cases where PDAs have been used; that the future is in scenario-based design which should also take into account the evolution of uses over time and the unpredictability of how devices might be used; and that usability issues should be tracked over a longer period, from initial use through to a state of relative experience with the technology

Mobile recommender apps with privacy management for accessible and usable technologies

The paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing survey of the use of computers and mobile devices, interest in recommender apps and knowledge and concerns about privacy issues amongst English and Italian speaking disabled people. Participants were found to be regular users of computers and mobile devices for a range of applications. They were interested in recommender apps for household items, computer software and apps that met their accessibility and other requirements. They showed greater concerns about controlling access to personal data of different types than this data being retained by the computer or mobile device. They were also willing to make tradeoffs to improve device performance

An investigation into the validity of mobile technologies as a support structure for first year students studying German as a foreign language in a South African context

Thesis (MPhil (Modern Foreign Languages. Hypermedia for Language Learning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The high penetration rate of mobile devices all over the world, and especially in South Africa, has significantly increased the relevance of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). The objective of this study is to ascertain the viability of incorporating MALL technology to enhance the language learning experience of South African university students who are studying a foreign language. The students enrolled for the beginners’ German course at Stellenbosch University served as participants in this study, and surveys and interviews were used to establish their exposure to mobile devices, as well as their experiences in relation to the incorporation of Short Messages Service (SMS) into their German course. The results indicate that although the vast majority of students are mobile device owners, only a few students will embrace the idea of using these devices to improve their language skills without any incentive. Without constant motivation and encouragement to use mobile technologies, and the willingness from everybody involved in both teaching and learning a foreign language, mobile technology as a support structure cannot be implemented successfully.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Weens die hoë indringingsaanslag van mobiele toestelle regoor die wêreld, en so ook in Suid-Afrika, het die relevansie van Mobiele Ondersteuning vir Taal Onderrig (MOTO) aansienlik verhoog. Die uitkoms van die studie is om te bepaal wat die lewensvatbaarheid is, van die inkorporering van MOTO tegnologie om die taal aanleer ervaring van Suid-Afrikaanse studente wat `n vreemde taal aanleer te verhoog. Die studente wie geregistreer was vir die Duits beginners klas by die universiteit van Stellenbosch, het gedien as deelnemers aan die study. Opnames en onderhoude was gebruik om die studente se blootstelling ten opsigte van mobiele toestelle vas te stel, so ook hul ervaring van die inkorporering van kortboodskapdienste (SMSe) in die Duitse module. Die resultate toon dat alhoewel die meeste studente eienaars is van een of ander mobiele toestel, dat daar slegs `n paar studente is wat die konsep van die gebruik van hierdie toerusting vir die verbetering van taal vermoë, sonder enige insentief, aangryp. Sonder konstante motivering en aanmoediging om mobiele toestelle te gebruik, en die bereidheid van almal wie betrokke is in beide die leer en die onderrig van ’n vreemde taal, sal die implementering van mobiele tegnologie as ’n ondersteuningsmiddel nie suksesvol geskied nie

Museums, social media & 2.0 technology

Índice: - Sobre museos, redes sociales y tecnología 2.0 (Alex Ibáñez Etxeberria). - Sitios web y museos: nuevas aplicaciones para el aprendizaje informal (Mikel Asensio, Elena Asenjo y Alex Ibáñez Etxeberria). - From headphones to microphones: mobile social media in the museum as distributed network (Nancy Proctor). - Mobile learning y patrimionio: aprendiendo historia con mi teléfono, mi GPS y mi PDA (Alex Ibáñez Etxeberria, Mikel Asensio y José Miguel Correa). - Digital asset management strategies for multi-platform content delivery (Titus Bicknell). - Redes sociales y museos participativos: la irrupción de las tecnologías 2.0 en la sociedad y su aplicación en los museos a través del caso de Arazi (Juan José Aranburu)

Context-Aware and Adaptable eLearning Systems

The full text file attached to this record contains a copy of the thesis without the authors publications attached. The list of publications that are attached to the complete thesis can be found on pages 6-7 in the thesis.This thesis proposed solutions to some shortcomings to current eLearning architectures. The proposed DeLC architecture supports context-aware and adaptable provision of eLearning services and electronic content. The architecture is fully distributed and integrates service-oriented development with agent technology. Central to this architecture is that a node is our unit of computation (known as eLearning node) which can have purely service-oriented architecture, agent-oriented architecture or mixed architecture. Three eLeaerning Nodes have been implemented in order to demonstrate the vitality of the DeLC concept. The Mobile eLearning Node uses a three-level communication network, called InfoStations network, supporting mobile service provision. The services, displayed on this node, are to be aware of its context, gather required learning material and adapted to the learner request. This is supported trough a multi-layered hybrid (service- and agent-oriented) architecture whose kernel is implemented as middleware. For testing of the middleware a simulation environment has been developed. In addition, the DeLC development approach is proposed. The second eLearning node has been implemented as Education Portal. The architecture of this node is poorly service-oriented and it adopts a client-server architecture. In the education portal, there are incorporated education services and system services, called engines. The electronic content is kept in Digital Libraries. Furthermore, in order to facilitate content creators in DeLC, the environment Selbo2 was developed. The environment allows for creating new content, editing available content, as well as generating educational units out of preexisting standardized elements. In the last two years, the portal is used in actual education at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Plovdiv. The third eLearning node, known as Agent Village, exhibits a purely agent-oriented architecture. The purpose of this node is to provide intelligent assistance to the services deployed on the Education Pportal. Currently, two kinds of assistants are implemented in the node - eTesting Assistants and Refactoring eLearning Environment (ReLE). A more complex architecture, known as Education Cluster, is presented in this thesis as well. The Education Cluster incorporates two eLearning nodes, namely the Education Portal and the Agent Village. eLearning services and intelligent agents interact in the cluster

Using mobile personalisation to enhance the user experience at large sporting events

At large sporting events (LSEs), e.g. football matches and athletics events, the user experience has been shown to be highly variable (Nilsson, 2004; Nilsson et al. 2004). Reported problems include a lack of social interaction with fellow spectators, and insufficient relevant information on the events or the sporting action taking place (Nilsson, 2004; Nilsson et al. 2004; Esbjornsson et al. 2006; Jacucci et al. 2005). A possible solution is personalisation, making the mobile application adapt to the user, ensuring that only relevant information is retrieved and presented in a way that is suitable. This thesis is devoted to studying the user experience related to mobile personalization at LSEs. It aims to investigate how personalized mobile applications at LSEs can render the user experience more active and engaging in a contextually, socially and culturally relevant way. The thesis reviews different theoretical approaches to help to understand the concepts of interest e.g. personalization and user experience (Chapter 2). Research methods are also discussed including the challenge of adapting user-centred methods into the Chinese culture (Chapter 3). This thesis investigates the user experience of mobile personalization at LSEs by following the circle of user-centred research: It starts to consider user requirements and user experience at LSEs and derives the usage patterns that personalized mobile applications could usefully support (Chapter 4). Then it explores the relevant contextual factors at LSEs which could be used to prescribe the behaviour of a personalizable mobile application (Chapter 5). Next, it describes the user-centred process used to design personalizable interfaces for mobile applications used at LSEs. Four key elements of design are considered: content, conceptual, interaction and presentation design (Chapter 6). The final outputs of the design process were two personalized mobile prototypes for Chinese users at LSEs. These included versions based on either (1) user-initiated or (2) system-initiated personalisation. Finally it investigates the impact on user experience of mobile personalization at LSEs in two empirical studies (a field experiment and a lab-based experiment) with these prototypes (Chapters 7 and 8). Mobile personalization is shown to result in an enriched user experience across a range of activities that a spectator would undertake at a large sporting event. The thesis discusses primarily the effective design of mobile personalization, the design implications at LSEs, user experience design, and research methods for Chinese users (Chapter 9). In conclusion (Chapter 10), specific contributions and avenues for future work are highlighted.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo