Assessing the Benefits of AJAX in Mobile Learning Systems Design

Mobile technologies are rapidly changing our lives with increasing numbers of services supported by mobile devices, including Web-based learning applications, providing opportunities for people to study anytime and anywhere. However, using Web-based mobile applications to present learning resources is a challenge for developers because the performance of the mobile Internet over GPRS networks is often unacceptably slow. A new Web development model, Ajax, may help to address this problem. Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is an approach to Web application development that uses client-side scripting to reduce traffic between client and server and provide a seamless user application experience. In this chapter, we address the question of whether mobile Ajax provides measurable performance advantages over non-Ajax mobile learning applications. An empirical study was undertaken to measure mobile learning application performance over a GPRS network, comparing an Ajax application and an active server pages (ASP) application with identical functionality. Our results suggest that mobile Ajax can reduce the bandwidth requirement by around 70 percent, and cut the server’s response time in half. In addition, these performance improvements were noticed by users in our small group usability test.

Designing Situated Learning Experiences

To ensure the success of future mobile learning environments, it is essential to develop affordable and effective applications that are well matched to the needs of the users. Depending on their unique requirements, effective mobile learning applications should keep up with their learning activities rather than simply providing them with conventional course materials on mobile devices. As an early exploration of this line of study, this chapter designs and evaluates a location-aware learning organizer that helps university students to manage their learning activities on campus. We confirmed that this situated learning support experience could lead to markedly different in-depth learning activities. Empirical testing of the learning organizer also revealed some potential opportunities for the learners to be more engaged in further mobile learning activities.

Situated Learning with SketchMap

This chapter presents the SketchMap system, which supports children’s situated learning by their experience of creating maps. In an outdoor environment, each child creates a map in the region of his or her school using a SketchMap client. The map is uploaded to the SketchMap server to be shared with other children who have created maps of different areas. Children can add new information to the maps or can edit them in their classrooms or in their homes. The goal of the SketchMap project is to investigate whether it the integration of outdoor and classroom activities, and the sharing of the children’s experiences through the maps, can actually promote collaborative learning. This system has been used in the classes “safety map” and “nature exploration” in a Japanese elementary school, and an evaluation of the system has also been performed. Some issues that were identified during the educational activities are also described here.

Handheld Educational Applications

This chapter reviews and discusses research on applications of handheld devices in education. The author classifies these applications into six categories based on their functions: educational communication, managing, multimedia access, games and simulations, data collection, and context-aware applications. Each category is examined individually and the consequences arising from these applications are analyzed. The author posits that handheld educational applications, in many cases, have duplicated traditional practice, and that these uses do not seem to have much impact on educational practices. Continued research is needed to focus on longitudinal studies of how students’ perceive and use handheld devices for their own needs in contexts that change their educational practices.

iPods as Mobile Multimedia Learning Environments

In recent years, educators across the globe have begun to employ portable, digital media players, especially iPods, as educational platforms. Unfortunately, while the iPod grows in favor as a mobile multimedia learning environment, relatively little is empirically known about its educational impact. This chapter explores the use of the iPod as an educational platform and reports on a study designed to examine individual differences in iPod use as a mobile multimedia learning environment. This exploration into applied and basic research involving the iPod reveals that iPods are being used across a variety of content areas, educational levels and geographic locations, involving a variety of pedagogies. However, very little research has been conducted to establish the efficacy of the iPod for fostering learning. To address this need, the authors conducted a study that examined the effects of working memory capacity (WMC) on learning within an iPod-based mobile multimedia learning environment.

Transforming the Practice of Mobile Learning

This chapter deploys Denning’s (2004) powerful assertion that “an innovation is a transformation of practice in a community” (p. 1) through the elaboration of three key educational principles: engagement; presence; and flexibility. Each principle is accompanied by an elicitation of practical strategies that have proved effective in implementing the principles sustainably within particular courses and programs of study, as well as factors that inhibit that implementation. The authors use these principles and strategies that work as an evaluative lens for examining the pedagogical innovativeness of mobile learning and teaching environments. The application of that lens highlights a set of challenges and opportunities facing those technologies and their proponents, specifically in the authors’ host institution and in higher education more broadly. Provided that those technologies can be used to engage with those challenges and opportunities, mobile learning can indeed contribute simultaneously to pedagogical innovation and to transformed practice in university learning and teaching.

Designing Learning Activities with Mobile Technologies

This introductory chapter focuses not so much on mobile learning technologies per se, but rather on a theoretical foundation and its pragmatic application to designing learning activities with mobile technologies. It sets out three learning spaces that are explicitly considered in the book: individual, collaborative, and situated learning. On these differing learning spaces, we begin by proposing the essential factors in effective mobile learning experience design that should be addressed by different features or functions of the relevant learning activities. In turn, derived is a conceptual framework to provide systematic support for mobile learning expererience design. This chapter concludes by surveying the mobile learning systems included in this book, reviewing their differing learning activities within context of the framework. We hope that this analysis will help to expose the key qualities and features that can support the future development of increasingly effective mobile learning applications.

Constructing Mobile Technology-Enabled Environments for an Integrated Learning Approach

This chapter presents a review of the approach, design and implementation of the networked educational infrastructure of the ENLACE project that supports ubiquitous learning processes. The design phase in ENLACE was conceived based on a Learning Object Repository and the learning tools are presented as well as the approach for integrating these tools into the networking infrastructure. Considerations about the evaluation and the evolution of the system are also discussed.

From Individual Learning to Collaborative Learning— Location, Fun, and Games

This chapter explores mobile learning where location and game like or playful activity adds to the context of learning. The relationship between space, play, and the development of context and learner identity is explored through an examination of the issues concerning the context of space, narratives, and engagement. There is a discussion of the meta-knowledge and specific learning attributes we would want to encounter in mobile game like learning. These issues are further explored in three case studies of learning activities which have been designed such that the context of location and game like or playful learning is significant. The examples include simple games based on multiple choice questions, a complex multi-role simulation and an environmental tagging and hypermedia project. The case is made for the potential of the context of location, and game-like learning in mobile learning.

Learning by Pervasive Gaming

This chapter investigates how mobile games can be used for an efficient transfer of knowledge in learning processes that connect between the real world and the virtual world. In this chapter, the pervasive game concept is implemented on mobile phones as a means of enabling interaction and communication to support learning activities. The chapter presents the design of a new pervasive learning game, which was compared with a conventional pedagogical approach in terms of long-term learning results and learning efficiency. The empirical results revealed that the pervasive game led to higher energetic activation, more positive emotions and attitudes towards learning activities, and more efficient knowledge transfer than the conventional case-study approach.