Endnotes
4.4 Mobile technology helps to reduce the cognitive load of MBA students
MBA students are managers and usually have a very high cognitive load. They have only a very limited capacity to keep details and issues of little importance in their mind long enough for them to be handled. Mobile technology provides them with an opportunity to deal with more of these tasks when they are not in their office, as long as they can be done online right away. Sending an e-mail or message or reaching the right and available partners quickly to make decisions, helps them to tick things off the list as soon as they appear (Straub and Karahanna 1998).
5
Test and evaluation plans for MOBIlearn’s final user tests in Zurich
As presented in this paper, there are many facets of mobile learning that will be covered in the user tests. The success of all evaluation plans and activities will depend strongly on the
performance of the MOBIlearn system which will be available at the beginning of September 2004.
In order to ensure a high-quality system and to allow untroubled user tests, MOBIlearn partners will run a series of technical functional tests and pre-tests to check its usefulness. According to the MOBIlearn project schedule, the user tests will basically be done with undergraduate students until December 2004. If those tests are successful and indicate some added value as expected, further user tests with MBA students can be done in spring 2005.
References
Evans D and Taylor J (2005). The role of user scenarios as the central piece of the development jigsaw puzzle. In J Attewell and C Savill-Smith (eds) Learning anytime anywhere – a book of papers. Proceedings of the MLEARN 2004 Conference, Rome, 5–6 July. London:
Learning and Skills Development Agency.
GroupSystems (2005). Website.
At www.groupsupport.com
Lehner F, Nösekabel H and Bremen G (2003).
M-learning und M-education – Mobile und drahtlose Anwendungen im Unterricht.
Regensburg: University of Regensburg.
Schwabe G (1995). Objekte der Gruppenarbeit – ein Konzept für das Computer Aided Team.
Wiesbaden: Gabler.
Straub D and Karahanna E (1998). Knowledge worker communications and recipient availability:
toward a task closure explanation of media choice. Organization Science, 9(2), 160–175.
84 Mobile learning anytime everywhere
Abstract
This paper presents an overview of our latest work on developing a ubiquitous computing framework to allow seamless access to applications from multiple devices. This paper introduces our application session teleportation (AST) framework, designed to support the movement of application sessions between devices in personal area networks (PANs) and across the internet. So far, we have used the AST framework to allow web sessions to be shared between Internet Explorer clients. In terms of mobile learning, this raises further implications for users who are collaborating through shared web sessions from different devices. We present the results from our research into design metrics for content to be used in this type of
co-browsing environment.
Keywords
mobile learning, sessions, collaboration, device characterisation
1
Introduction
Within a ubiquitous computing environment, a user will own and make use of many devices that vary in functionality and power. Furthermore, these devices will most likely be interconnected to form a personal area network (PAN). PANs are generally confined to a user’s personal operating space, which has a typical range of 10m, but may be extended to 100m for environments such as the home (Braley, Gifford and Heile 2000).
Devices may autonomously join and leave the PAN through device detection and location management techniques in an ad hocor seamless manner. For example, a user’s home PAN may automatically detect and add a personal digital assistant (PDA) device, which could then be used to interact with other devices within the PAN.
Learning and collaborating using mobile devices and sessions
In general, learning applications should support access to meaningful content, provide a means to undertake constructive activities, and allow dialogue and collaboration between learners (see eg Fowler and Mayes 1999). Mobile learning technology adds further opportunities for users to access content from different devices, for moving sessions between devices and for supporting collaborative activities – all potentially from different types of device. This paper focuses on research addressing the technology
requirements for mobile learning, and presents early results from research on how we can adapt learning materials so that they are suitable for collaboration and co-browsing from different types of device.
2
Application session teleportation
Application session teleportation (AST) is our candidate framework for supporting session movement in PANs and the internet. PANs may comprise various types of device with a range of computation/storage capabilities. For this reason, some PAN devices such as mobile phones, digital badges and speakers may rely on more powerful devices to teleport application sessions.
This has subsequently led us to identify a number of classes of device and modes of interaction – namely, controller, listener, minimal and output nodes.
Gardner Chua Shahi 85
Hui-Na Chua [email protected] BT Exactz
Asian Research Centre Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Anuroop Shahi [email protected] University of Essex Adastral Park Ipswich
Suffolk IP5 3RE United Kingdom Michael Gardner
[email protected] University of Essex Adastral Park Ipswich
Suffolk IP5 3RE United Kingdom
Figure 1
Controller node architecture
Figure 1depicts the controller node architecture.
Listener nodes will be constructed from a subset of these components (such as session transfer, security and content adaptation). Minimal nodes are essentially thin clients, with lightweight components for session transfer and security, which interact with controller nodes to transfer a session. Finally, output nodes may only process output streams instantiated from controller and listener nodes. Profiling functions are contained in the Context Awareness component and will be required to hold information regarding users, PAN devices, AST applications and their current locations.
Currently, we have built an initial prototype of the AST framework by implementing the Session Transfer and Device/Service Detection components. To implement our framework, Internet Explorer has been adapted to work with AST. This TeleWeb concept demonstrator
supports web session teleportation within PANs.
3
Session adaptation
We are also separately carrying out research into the AST Content Adaptation component (see Hoh, Gillies and Gardner 2003). Generally, a limiting factor of mobile devices is their small screen size and limited processing/storage capabilities. Application teleportation may involve two or more PAN devices with differing
capabilities. Therefore it will be important to adapt sessions to the characteristics of each particular device.
Recently, much work has been undertaken elsewhere to adapt screen content for display purposes (see Esenther 2002). For example, many applications adapt web pages to comply with bandwidth, screen size and computational restrictions. Traditional content adaptation for small devices has involved using techniques such as discarding irrelevant formatting information.
However, novel approaches (eg Fox et al. 1998) are aiming to extend the usability of existing web content for small devices.
4
Collaborating from different devices
Once users can access applications from any device, we can then consider scenarios that involve users collaborating by means of these applications on shared learning tasks. However, if they are accessing the application from different devices with different display characteristics, then they may well have completely different views of the same shared information. It may not be possible to view the contents of all these web objects on screen at the same time, especially with smaller device display screens that can only display a limited set of web objects. The main objective of our research is to adapt the relevant information based on the perceived ‘utility’ of the web objects and the capabilities of the devices being used. The determination of ‘utility’ could be an automatic or a manual process. We are currently considering a manual method whereby users pre-select the utility of the web objects.
Figure 2(opposite) illustrates a scenario with two users collaborating from different devices.
86 Mobile learning anytime everywhere
5
Design guidelines for co-browsing
Given this scenario, how can we adapt learning materials so that they are suitable for
collaboration and co-browsing (see Chua et al.
2004) from different types of device? We are currently carrying out research to investigate whether the design metrics of web pages that are perceived as being ‘good’ for single-user browsing are the same as the design metrics for pages that are perceived as being ‘good’ for co-browsing. One reason for believing that the design metrics might differ is that co-browsing requires the users not only to search through the content for relevant material, but also to describe that material and their interactions with it to their fellow users with whom they are co-browsing.
If the metrics of ‘good’ pages do differ, then web-page content adaptation schemes implemented in co-browsers will need to alter further the composition and formatting of the contents within the page, to take into account the task at hand as well as the capabilities of the devices being used.
Analysis of our preliminary results indicates that there are only a few differences between what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ web pages for browsing and co-browsing tasks. However, the results do indicate that the gap between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ pages in co-browsing is more
pronounced, which suggests that accounting for task metrics in the adaptation of web pages will be important.
6
Summary
This paper has presented an overview of a number of research activities based around our AST framework and focused on the issues of application session teleportation, session adaptation, heterogeneous device collaboration and design metrics for co-browsing. We have used the AST framework as the basis for a number of research experiments. So far, the experimentation we have done on co-browsing suggests that adapting web-page content for the co-browsing task is best done by emphasising more text and adding large graphics. While it would be very difficult to insert suitable graphics as useful visual cues within a web page, the adding of emphasis to text headers and keywords in web pages is a real possibility for inclusion within automatic content adaptation systems. In the future, this may have a direct impact on the design and development of content for mobile learning services.
Gardner Chua Shahi 87
Figure 2 Shared viewpoints
References
Braley R, Gifford I and Heile R (2000). Wireless personal area networks: an overview of the IEEE P802.15 working group. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, 4(1), 26–33.
Chua HN, Scott SD, Tham VK, Gardner M and Blanfield P (2004). Design metrics for co-browsing. Paper presented to the 7th International Conference on Work with Computing Systems, Kuala Lumpur, 29 June–2 July.
Esenther AW (2002). Instant co-browsing:
lightweight real-time collaborative web browsing.
In Proceedings of the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference, Honolulu, 7–11 May.
Fowler CJH and Mayes JT (1999). Learning relationships from theory to design. Association for Learning Technology Journal, 7(3), 6–16.
Fox A, Gribble SD, Chawathe Y and Brewer EA (1998). Adapting to network and client variation using active proxies: lessons and perspectives.
IEEE Personal Communications, 5(4), 10–19.
Hoh S, Gillies S and Gardner M (2003). Device personalisation – where content meets device.
BT Technology Journal, 21(1).
88 Mobile learning anytime everywhere
Abstract
Exploiting the capabilities of an increasingly powerful and ubiquitous network is the key enabling factor in introducing new collaboration and learning paradigms, where participants do not need to be physically located in the same place. Even more important, in the context of the research and university world, this model permits the sharing of costly equipment between
geographically distant laboratories, as well as providing students in remote locations with access to concrete scientific instruments.
While most of the network issues, such as quality of service (QoS), mobility and security are gradually being solved, an adequate set of application-level technologies must be put in place to allow for this model to be deployed.
Keywords
MPEG–4, distance learning, IP QoS
1
Introduction
This paper presents the activities and experiments carried out by the authors in the context of several European and Italian research projects, which initially aimed at providing a technological platform for accessing cultural heritage information through advanced and interactive multimedia systems. As a natural extension of this platform, instruments for providing an enhanced learning experience have been developed, which add support for external, media-synchronised learning objects.
The context of such activities is a real-world scenario where the teacher, the support material, the application service provider and the students need not necessarily be co-located, either in space or in time. This approach opens up a scenario where didactic material is not limited to written text or slides, becoming a true multimedia and hypertextual collection of objects supporting the teacher in transferring knowledge to his or her audience.
From virtual cooperation to distance learning:
realising remote multimedia platforms on a QoS-enabled network
Embracing the most recent networking technologies and architectural models enables students to attend their lessons from a remote location (be it their home, a remote classroom or conference centre), extending the reach of the platform to telecommuting students, workers and older people; and overcoming the constraints of time and place imposed by the traditional face-to-face training methods.
2
MPEG–4 and the e-learning media platform
The International Organization for
Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) MPEG–4 standard (ISO/IEC Standards Committee 2001) is a comprehensive set of specifications relating to the encoded representation of audio/visual contents. The outstanding improvement provided by MPEG–4 over its predecessors (MPEG–1 and MPEG–2), besides the availability of better optimised encoding algorithms and tools, lies in a new approach to contents description: media is not just a video frame and an associated audio track, but rather a complex scene composed of several audio-video objects(AVOs) which are assembled together with precise
spatial-temporal relationships. Video objects can be just plain old rectangular frames, but they may also be shaped objects which are ‘composed’ to form the final view. Both natural (ie coming from a camera or a microphone) and synthetic (ie 3-D models and parametric descriptions) AVOs can be freely intermixed in an MPEG–4 scene;
furthermore, they can be made ‘interactive’ by associating commands and actions with them.
Finally, AVOs can be associated with quality of service(QoS) descriptors and transported through the network over distinct channels (each, potentially, having a tailored QoS profile).
Giordano Insolvibile Chionsini Polese 89
Stefano Giordano [email protected] Department of
Information Engineering University of Pisa via Caruso 56122 Pisa Italy
Gianluca Insolvibile g.insolvibile
@nextworks.it Network and Multimedia R&D neXtworks Srl Via Turati, 43/45 56125 Pisa Italy
Valentina Chionsini [email protected] Divisione Informatica e Telecomunicazioni Consorzio Pisa Ricerche Corso Italia 116
56125 Pisa Italy
Pietro Polese pietro_andrea.polese
@alcatel.it
Technology Programs Alcatel Italia SpA Via Trento, 30
20059 Vimercate (MI) Italy
This broad set of tools makes MPEG–4 the ideal choice for implementing a technological platform which is able to deliver enhanced contents for an innovative user experience. The components of the e-learning media platform endowed with MPEG–4 functionalities are the media production and delivery chain (authoring tools, media server and client) and the so-called QoS provision layer.
The production chainincludes some basic tools for the creation of content in the format specified by the standard (MP4 file format) and for its segmentation into tracks suitable for delivery via the network. The delivery chaincomprises the media server and client, both of which are able to handle MPEG–4 AVOs and scene descriptions.
The QoS provision layeris an implementation of MPEG–4 DMIF (Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework), a media-unaware and
network-aware signalling protocol allowing the set-up of individual channels and their association with AVOs. The signalling messages also carry information on the QoS requirements for each AVO.
3
Extensions for distance learning applications
This e-learning platform, initially designed to target the delivery of enhanced media in a cultural heritage context, has proved to be suitable also as the basic building block of a distance learningsystem. The ability to intermix synthetic and natural AVOs and to deliver them with QoS guarantees has provided a good starting point for experimenting with distance-based training courses.
The need to have a virtual whiteboard application has been easily satisfied by making the teacher’s free-hand drawing application (Microsoft
Windows Journal running on a Tablet PC) work remotely. The particular nature of the distance learning scenario requires full synchronisation between the audio/video streams and the whiteboard data stream, as well as the ability to transmit the latter using the same network channels and paradigms (unicast/multicast/broadcast).
Hence, a custom application has been
developed, whose purpose is to capture periodic screenshots of the selected application and to feed them to the video encoder as synthetic objects. The media server then delivers the
‘whiteboard video stream’ alongside the
teacher’s voice and video streams. As expected, the image quality obtained with this approach is quite high, since no intermediate
digital–analog–digital conversion takes place between the whiteboard and the end-user screen.
More ambitious applications of the technology reveal the need for more sophisticated functionalities to be built into the platform.
Unfortunately, due to limitations both in the standard and in the current implementation, the introduction of such functionalities has implied a slight detour from the MPEG–4 specifications.
Pursuing a more generalised approach, the traditional audio/video stream is augmented with synchronous external objects which, according to the context and adhering to literature usage, have been called learning objects. This generic term designates, in the context of our research, any kind of additional material that can be used by the teacher to provide the students with an enriched learning experience. More specifically, the implemented mechanism embeds
proprietary triggersinto the media streams, which bring to the client a specific ‘message’
along with a timestamp. The message is currently a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) pointing to the remote learning object or a parameter to be passed to the player.
As simple as this mechanism is, it actually allows some interesting functionalities to be realised.
The simplest example is the transmission of slides synchronised with audio/video frames:
presentation of each slide is activated by triggers which are inserted automatically whenever the distantly located teacher advances his/her presentation. Since triggers are saved together with the media stream when archiving a live presentation for later utilisation, this mechanism also provides for a complete reproduction of the live lesson.
More generally, a wide range of synchronised events on the remote user’s side are enabled.
More complex examples include ‘active’ objects (eg simulations and virtual instrument panels) to be downloaded to the client and synchronised with the presentation by using the triggers as clock references and input signals. Support for mobile, platform-independent code (like Java applets or .NET code) is currently being investigated.
90 Mobile learning anytime everywhere
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