THE MOTFAL PROJECT
MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES FOR AD-HOC LEARNING
Eleni Malliou, Antonis Miliarakis, Stavros Savvas, Sofoklis Sotiriou, Manolis Stratakis, Kostas Tsolakidis
Abstract
The Mobile Technologies For Ad-hoc Learning (MoTFAL) project is a joint initiative of pedagogical, cognitive science and technological experts, educators, and psychologists to research the possibilities of using mobile platforms – mobile phones and PDA devices- with Internet access for educational purposes at school level. The project designs, develops, tests and evaluates a handheld learning environment based on emerging technology that facilitates in situ learning and maximize the impact of information that is provided when the motivation of the learner is highest. The proposed approach cross cuts the traditional boundary between the classroom, home, and other alternative educational settings (museums, libraries, archaeological and historical sites, etc.) as distinct learning environments. The goal is to shift away from classroom learning to “daylong” learning and to use the mobile technology to facilitate that shift. This paper presents the basic principles of the MoTFAL project, the theoretical background of its development as well as the possibilities for its educational exploitation.
Introduction
The project MoTFAL is a joint initiative of pedagogical, technological experts, educators, and psychologists to research the possibilities of using mobile platforms with Internet access for educational purposes at school level. The partnership aims to develop, test and evaluate learning schemes that is implemented on a handheld learning environment based on emerging technology that facilitates in situ learning maximizing the impact of information that is provided when the motivation of the student is highest.
The MoTFAL learning environment includes full access to digital resources, cognitive tools, knowledge visualizations, software mentors to help with learning to use devices such as digital cameras, organise and recall images and sounds of people and situations, knowledge sharing between students in different environments, contextual personal tools that change their behaviour based on where they are and the activity in progress. Students have the chance to be linked to video clips, PDF articles, and Websites.
The project’s background
Over the last two decades, instructional computing introduced algorithmically based procedures and information-processing tools such as word processing and spreadsheets to enhance learning. The Internet added communication, connectivity and collaboration. Education is no longer bound by a specific location. Internet applications change the core relationship between teacher, learner and material, making guided and self-directed distance learning fully actualized. It is clear that ICT opens the door to “virtual schooling”. The web through conventional PC’s is combined with a major disadvantage: It fails in mobility. Students can only access the web at school or at home. Modern educational theories though have proved the significance of informal learning in situ. It is proven that students are more motivated to learn about a historical site or a scientific application when they actually see it, in a museum or in a factory. Presenting information through the web implies that the teacher motivates the students in school or at home, where the motivating stimuli are not present.
It is obvious that for the expansion of the idea of learning and the creation of learning schemes that are based on the effective use of motivation that arises when a student is faced with the stimuli, mobile devices with Internet access can offer significant advantages. The advantages are clear: accessible resources wherever you are, strong search capabilities, rich interaction, powerful support for effective learning, and performance-based assessment: m-learning independent of location in time or space
In situ learning and learning through mobile technology
Classrooms, textbooks, lectures, and training sessions have at least one thing in common. As characteristic of learning opportunities, they take the learners out of the context of their everyday tasks and other activities and situations and put them into specialized learning contexts. Traditionally, this is the way people learned.
But there is another idea, one that promises to complement traditional dedicated learning situations with "contextual learning," in which learning is a dimension of those everyday tasks, activities, and situations. And this alternative approach is becoming all the more attractive in the light of current trends in work and learning, emphasizing continuous and just-in-time learning.
Learning happens in various ways. Students learn in classrooms, but they also learn by exploring streams and parks, trying and failing to perform tasks, talking to friends etc. Adults learn in many of the same ways, by experience, by involvement, by talking with peers and experts, or by delving into a practical problem. All of these can be legitimate learning activities. Virtually any experience can be a learning opportunity, but often the resources to make it so are lacking. We are used to thinking of knowledge as something "stored," "held," or contained in a "body of knowledge." That conception lends itself very easily to conceptions of learning as "acquiring knowledge," collecting it from books, lectures, and other media. We are following a different, complementary insight here, that knowledge is something active in situations and contextual in its very nature. Knowledge is something that happens rather than something that is stored and applied when appropriate.
The idea of contextual learning is fully supported in the framework of m- learning application. In the word m-learning “m” stands for “mobile”, representing the back- stage mobile delivery technology.
Educational point of view
Educational Theories
The educational theories that are the basis for the development of the educational material as well as the educational framework of the MoTFAL project are the following:
· Constructivism: As a learning theory constructivism describes knowledge as being in flux, where an individual internally constructs knowledge through social and cultural mediation. Constructivists learning theorists contend that social activity and discourse play important roles for understanding to occur.
· Collaborative learning: In collaborative learning students generally work together in groups of two or more. These are usually face-to-face groups but, with the rapid expansion and availability of communication and information technologies such as e-mail, this can also be done effectively at a distance. The mobile application of the MoTFAL system enhances students’ collaboration as it gives them the possibility to communicate and cooperate just by using the project’s platform.
· Contextual learning: Contextual learning is learning that occurs in close relationship with actual experience. Its main principle is to motivate students to make connections between knowledge and its applications to their lives. In the framework of the MoTFAL project students have the opportunity to study their curricula in real environments, they have for example the possibility to learn about the Parthenon while their looking at it.
· Autonomous learning: Autonomous and self directed learning views learners as responsible owners and managers of their own learning process. The main principle of the pedagogical theory of autonomous learning s the conscious involvement of the learner in some or all of the learning process. The MoTFAL project supports the autonomy of the learners by providing them with a variety of resources and materials, with an open environment for learning and collaboration and also with opportunities to work alone or with others.
· Learning by doing/ Experiential learning: Experiential learning takes place when a person is involved in an activity, looks back and evaluates it, determines what was useful or important to remember and uses this information to perform another activity. The application of the MoTFAL project supports the pedagogical method of experiential learning as it gives students the opportunity to get personally involved in the learning activity and not just to learn and think about it.
Educational Scenarios for learning through mobile devices: History Education, an example
Research on the methods of teaching history in the class has proved that: The main difficulties that students face are related to the understanding of historical terms, the placement of historical events in space and time, the proposition of multidimensional causative relationships, the considering of every event as a unique product of a society. They also face difficulties in understanding that historical studies are not political, military or diplomatic events but the every day life of people of an epoch. Contextual learning in history education and the scenario design method offer a different approach and perspective to history teaching and learning.
The educational approach, which is adopted in the framework of the MoTFAL project, is to use scenario-based design method as a means of defining suitable educational applications of the mobile technology. Scenario building is one main design techniques to explore new forms of interaction in which the physical environment is able to react to human behaviour, using handheld devices as a mediator. The project includes an extended period of school-centred work. The ain is to help both teachers and students to actively participate in the development of the MoTFAL platform by giving their input and contributions. Furthermore the project is sing a student-centred approach in order to assure the maximal usability of the new tools as well as a realistic evaluation of the pedagogical effects.
In the framework of the MoTFAL project a series of scenarios as well as the relevant educational material are being designed and developed in order to be used during the implementation phase of the project. An example of a learning scenario is presented above.
The teacher of a high school class takes the students to a field trip to Parthenon. As they are visiting the monument the students are requested to connect to the specific area of the platform where the teacher has already uploaded the selected material concerning the history of the monument. Students are able to see pictures of the monument during the time, to see drawings of the monument enriched by animations. They can also have access to a video presenting how the monument was and how it was related to the everyday life of the people living at that time. They can even find sound and video recordings of remarkable events of this specific period. Furthermore students are able to capture moments of their visit with the camera of the device and upload them to the server for future reference and also to add their comments and to continue their research by accessing relevant web-sites.
Technological Point of view
A true m-learning environment resembles in principle a sophisticated content and data management system, with development, delivery and control of the content and the learning progress. Its main objective is the learning of the material. Based on this definition, m-learning should be described as part of an integrated global learning strategy, encompassing a variety of instructional methods, learning content management and services that supply the learner with electronic information and educational content regardless of space and time.
Technical Description
The main technological aim of the MoTFAL project is the development of a platform that makes Internet services available anyplace, anytime. The MoTFAL system is composed by a handheld device, a GPRS capable mobile phone and an open web platform. The open structure of the platform gives teachers the possibility to develop and upload the teaching material that it is useful for their lesson.
The project develops methods and software for storing, retrieving and dynamically synthesizing educational modules to meet each learner’s goals. To achieve this, the content is broken into small, independent multimedia educational modules. These are stored and retrieved using a database management system. Content modules present domain topics in many different formats. Meta-data are used to describe the modules. Aspects to describe using meta-data include the format of module and other technological aspects, its technology requirements, its duration, its role in the learning cycle etc. A set of software modules is also used in order to synthesize and educational course – based on the specific scenarios-.
At the time of access the learner informs the service provider of her/his terminal characteristics (display dimensions, computing capacity, graphic processing capacity, etc.), and the provider transmits the required information, adapting representation to the indicated characteristics. Consequently the same information is presented in different ways, according to whether access is from a desktop computer or from a mobile terminal.
The platform services are delivered via an advanced user-interface, where the user has to log in. The first major component of the user-interface is the Personal Learner's apprentice: This is the core software agent of the system and the main part of the user-interface. It is responsible for interacting with the user. It will:
· Manage the user-system dialogue
· Support students in declaring their goals
· Pro-actively suggest content to the student, based on his/her profile
· Attend to users queries about content and suggest modules that meet his/her declared needs, based on the available educational modules
· Decompose the user queries and goals into sub-goals to be met by the system and then co-operate with the response planner in order to compile a list of suggestions
· Monitor the correct delivery of courses and record user's learning behaviour in order to update his/her profile
· Optimize the delivery of content with respect to momentary network availability and device capabilities
A Multimedia Messaging Platform (MMP) is being developed that will provide two-way communication. The MMP is the second major component of the user-interface. A web-based application provides the interface for the delivery of the multimedia messages. A web server is used to collect user responses either through the web or directly from the mobile network. Certain work can be delivered to learners using this platform and questions or feedback can be collected from them. Collaboration among the learners is enhanced with such a service that allows for easy and immediate exchange of information (transmission of quality photographs, sound and video is possible enabling instant, high quality collaboration among the users.
Usability Issues and the project’s technological requirements
Learning through mobile technology has been slow to grow because most wireless devices up today have small screens, low resolution, slow processing, and limited storage capabilities. Likewise, difficulty connecting various types of devices to the same network is a real limitation. Given these limitations, "mobilizing" existing learning applications can result in a frustrating or nearly unusable mobile service. The solution exists in taking a different approach to how the information is streamlined and targeted to the user. The first step toward this solution is to integrate a user centered investigation into the m-learning system’s development cycle. There comes a time when the design of a system is no longer driven by technological advances, but instead drawn forward by the users who have expectations of usability and take for granted the basic performance. The methodological approach of the MoTFAL project plays a fundamental role for the development of such a system: user-centered design and scenario based design are means for assuring that the final system is appropriate to the user and to the context of use.