20101008 - Niazi's Dissertation - part 4 - Literature Review

Read this while watching Transporter 3 and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ...at Bintulu...evening of Thu 8/10/2010. 2.1.2 MLE MLE (Mobile Learning Engine) [20] enables students to use cell phones as a medium for learning. It is used in combination with a learning-platform (MLP) which is an Internet-based server. MLP is a learning management system (LMS) in the e-learning field which hosts the available learning objects and offers several functions. MLE communicates with the learning platform over HTTP and XML. In other words, MLE and MLP communicate together over HTTP and XML. Comments: I read about MLE somewhere….can't remember the details. 1. It uses a smart phone (a mixture between a mobile phone and a personal digital assistance) as a device of choice. MLE does not support a broad range of mobile devices. 2. It is possible to reuse existing learning management systems to support elearning. 3. Users are connected to the server (online) and download the learning objects from the server. If the learning objects have been downloaded before, they can be used without a new connection to the server (offline). 4. The supported data format is XML. Learning objects are written in XML format making it possible to present many kinds of learning content. It needs, however, the author of learning objects to spend time planning and designing these objects, otherwise the result will be a vast frustration to students. In fact, the authors of the learning objects are responsible for quality of their works. They determine the success and the acceptance of the MLE [20]. 2.1.3 Mobile ELDIT Mobile Eldit (m-Eldit) [21] is a system under development at the University of Trento, Italy. This is a mobile version of an existing online language learning platform that can be accessed from mobile devices like PDAs and Pocket PCs. In the Web-based version of this application, there are two types of data: a searchable words dictionary in German and Italian, plus a set of text in both languages. The texts have specially been designed to prepare learners for the examination in bilingual capability. The user can search for a particular word in the dictionary or browse the texts to study. In the mobile version, however, searching is not supported, because the raw data of m-Eldit is beyond the capacity of available memory on mobile devices. Technically, data are in XML file format. The Web server transforms data from XML into HTML and Java-Script. The learner then can browse the HTML files by clicking on hyperlinks. Comments: M-Eldit has been mentioned in at least a few research papers and/or journal articles. Heard about M-Eldit previously. 1. It uses some particular mobile devices like PDAs and Pocket PCs. It does not support a broad range of mobile devices such as cell phones or smart phones. 2. It supports e-learning. In fact, if mobile devices used are laptops, the hardware and software characteristics are the same as e-learning. 3. M-Eldit supports online access to educational materials. It can connect to the Internet through GPRS, WAP, WiFi and browse HTML files. It also supports offline accessibility. For this purpose, m-Eldit uses caching technique and in the case, when the data is bigger than the device available memory, it uses Hoarding technique. Hoarding technique is a technique for automating selection and caching of the data needed by the user in offline periods. 4. This system only supports HTML files plus Java Script. This format of file is not supported by all mobile devices. In Mobile Eldit, in order to support content adaptation, context discovery should be done. For this purpose, m-Eldit adds contextual information including hardware and software limitations (such as screen size in pixel, color resolution, CPU, supported language, operating system and etc) to the HTTP request message. In the proposed solution, however, it is not clear, given the wide varieties of mobile devices, how the contextual information will be provided. 2.1.4 MOBILE MOBILE [34] is a MObile-Based Interactive Learning Environment which aids elementary school English Learning. This system consists of a server and a set of mobile learning tools which supports in or outdoor learning activities. It is composed of the following components: • MMS (Mobile Management System): it involves content management, course management, dictionaries, and learning records. • MAS (Mobile Assessment System): it supports online assessments. • MIS (Mobile Instruction System): it provides services for browsing material, bulletin board, learning community, chat, quiz, notebook, and FAQ. • MLDB (Mobile Learning Database): students' learning statuses and records are stored in this database. • LCMS (Learning Content Management System): it handles storing and managing the digitized teaching and assessment materials. Comments: This sounds like a comprehensive Mobile LMS….with extensive features. In this system, each student uses a PDA to send and receive learning materials from the mobile learning system. In addition, teachers are able to download the teaching and assessments materials from LCMS through Internet to the MLDB while conducting indoor or outdoor activities. 1. It supports mobile devices including PDAs and notebooks. It does not support a broad range of mobile devices. 2. No information has been provided to support e-learning. 3. It supports online as well as offline access to educational materials. In fact, educational materials can be downloaded to be used for offline learning. 4. It supports HTML-based educational materials for diverse learning activities. In this system, the teacher has access to a notebook and each student uses a PDA that is provided by the school. In fact, MOBILE does not support a wide variety of mobile devices, and thus does not face many of the obstacles described in Section 1.4. 2.1.6 MobiLP MobiLP (Mobile Learning Platform) [22] is a Web-based learning system which supports access from both mobile and non-mobile devices. It aims to provide educational materials and communication services to teachers and students any time, any where. Totally, MobiLP functions are classified into three groups: • User functions available to students are designed for mobile devices access. They include the display of Web materials specified by the teachers, online chat rooms and online quiz systems. • Teacher functions include input of teacher-specified Web materials, online quiz management, online chat and user profile management. These functions can be accessed either by mobile devices or non-mobile devices or both. • Administrator functions include general system management functions such as access control and user account management. All of these functions are to be accessed by non-mobile devices. This system does not support offline access to educational materials and quizzes. In addition, it supports browser-based technology and the supported data format is XML. No information has been provided on customization process of XML data on the supported browsers. 2.1.5 An Adaptive Mobile Learning System In [35] an adaptive mobile learning system is proposed. It suggests an architecture and prototype quiz system based on XML/XSLT technologies. The prototype consists of five dimensions as follows: • The content dimension: it represents the actual content containing course modules, content and multimedia representation of the content (audio, video, animation and so on) sub-dimension. • The user model dimension: it contains two sub-dimensions including learning model and user preference. Learning model dimension includes attributes such as module completed, weight, score and time taken. User preference contains attributes like learning style and preferred difficulty level. • The device dimension: it includes attributes such as the device types, audio, and video capabilities as well as memory, bandwidth, and operation platform. • The connectivity dimension: it includes four operating sub-dimensions as follows: o A real-time online mode: some attributes like throughput determine representation of text or multimedia. o Pre-fetching capability: it specifies how much the pre-fetching depth should be? It completely depends on the device capability, network reliability and connection type. o Offline synchronization mode o Channel mode: it represents the actual mode of the connection between the user and the server. For instance, a user can experience a longer delay in a satellite connection than a cable connection. • The coordination dimension: it represents the logic and algorithm subdimension of the application. In the development of the quiz system, the multi-dimension framework has been applied. This system is capable of adapting to the device and the user profiles. It works on both PC and mobile Platforms. 1. It supports a variety of mobile devices including hand phones, PDAs and Pocket PCs. 2. Probably supports e-learning. 3. It is a dynamic quiz system which does not support offline learning. The current prototype has been tested only for PC users, PDA (iPaq) users, and mobile phone users with Openwave browser. Comments: Whose does this Adaptive Mobile Learning System belong to? Niazi's? source: Design and implementation of a deviceindependent platform for mobile learning by Niazi, Razieh, M.Sc., University of Guelph (Canada), 2008