20101007 - Niazi's Dissertation - part 3 - Literature Review

Chapter 2 Background Just a bit of reading up while watching Star Movies @ Bintulu…evening of Thu 7 Oct 2010. 2.1 Related Work Due to the variety of current mobile learning systems, we consider them from two perspectives: first, what capabilities and services they support, and second, how they address the issues discussed in Section 1.4. According to the capabilities and services, we evaluate them using some of the indicators specified in [18], among others, as follows: 1. The supported kind of mobile devices: Quinn states that m-learaing solutions must work for a broad range of devices, not only for a set of devices [23]. We adopt this specification. Thus, in this critic we specify what kind of mobile devices these systems support. For instance, some of the current m-learning systems work only in PDAs or Tablet PCs. 2. Support of e-learning: we consider them whether they support e-learning or not. 3. Availability of content: whether the educational materials are always available or not. In other words, whether they support online as well as offline access to content materials or they support only one method. 4. The type of data they support: For instance, some current systems only support flash type. Comments: He reviewed the applications in 4 aspects: supported mobile devices, support for e-learning, availability of content, and type of data supported. 2.1.1 WELCOME WELCOME (Wireless E-Learning and Communication Environment) [17] is a project at the University of Regensburg which aims to support both students and teachers by providing services that facilitate teaching, learning and education- related administrative tasks. This system has been built based on existing experiences in the field of e-learning from VUR (Virtual University Regensburg). VUR is the Internet-based e-learning, widely accepted and used in the university. It is also the fundamental software architecture for all VUR wireless learning and administrative services. Selected features of this platform such as news, distribution of learning materials and personalization are available for mobile devices. 1. The supported kind of mobile devices: Basically, PDAs are selected as a device of choice. In attempt to remain platform independent, PDFs, RealVideo streams and Flash animations are used. These formats are often not fully supported by all mobile devices or supported with limitations. 2. WELCOME does not support e-learning specifications and standards [18]. 3. It is possible to have both online and offline access to Audios and Videos just on PDAs. In fact, it uses AvantGo, a Web page / file synchronization service for PDAs and smart phones. AvantGo [19] consists of browser client software running on the PDA, a synchronization server, and (optionally) an Internet-connected PC to transfer Web pages into the PDA. Using AvantGo, users are able to synchronize. In other words, Web pages, information and data can be stored on their device during synchronization and, later stored pages can be read using the built-in Web browser without reconnecting to the Internet (offline). 4. The supported information types are PDFs, Audio, Video, Flash animations and WML. The WML content format is supported by the WAP protocol. The mobile learning content materials are mostly generated by adapting third-party Web sites such as the Cafeteria page and so on. The content are as HTML which can be rendered on PC without any problem. However, on the mobile devices they must be displayed in an adapted form. For this purpose, WELCOME converts and compiles the content. The basic procedure of translating Web content for mobile devices begins by parsing several HTML pages at regular intervals using PERL programs and extracting the information contained there in. Then the extracted data is stored in a relational database. On the other hand, mobile users request WML pages which are dynamically filled with the data stored in the database. The downside is that content adaptation requires a long process to parse HTML page, store in the database, restore data from database and then make WML page. In addition, in this way the quality of data should be evaluated. The other problem is maintaining content in the database. Data are extracted from HTML Web pages: a complicated strategy is needed to keep up to date these data. source: Design and implementation of a deviceindependent platform for mobile learning by Niazi, Razieh, M.Sc., University of Guelph (Canada), 2008