Athabasca University Mobile Learning Project Team

1. Mobile Design: Interactive Multimedia to Support Learning and Teaching Athabasca University Mobile Learning Project Team M-Libraries Conference 2009

2. Today’s Presentation • Introduction – Athabasca University • Mobile learning content design • AU mobile learning projects and technologies • Demo of multimedia mobile learning modules • Hands-on with interactive exercise • Generate mobile learning content • Discussion

3. Athabasca Universityhttp://www.athabascau.ca. • Canada’s Open University • Location: Athabasca, Alberta, Canada • Mandate: Remove barriers for students • Over 37,000 students, 700 courses and 90 graduate and undergraduate programs • Doctoral, Masters, Bachelors, diploma and certificate levels • Students from Canada and 84 countries worldwide

4. Student Profile • Average age 29 • Two-thirds women • 60% of our program students are employed full-time while studying • 36% undergraduates are visiting students

5. About AU: Athabasca River

6. About AU: Campus

7. Mission Statement “Athabasca University is dedicated to the removal of barriers that restrict access to, and success in, university-level studies and to increasing equality of educational opportunity for adult learners worldwide.” http://www.athabascau.ca/

8. What is mobile learning? • Use of mobile devices such as mobile phones, handhelds, PDAs, iPhone 3G, etc. to facilitate learning and access to electronic learning resources.

9. Why Support Mobile Learning at AU? • Remove barrier to learning • Access from remote locations • Students can learn from anywhere and at anytime • Many learners already have mobile devices • Accessibility of audience • Instant delivery and updates • Affordability/portability • Novelty of gadget/display

10. Why Support Mobile Learning atAU? (cont’d) • Cater to different learning styles • Learning is more learner-centered • Affordability and portability • Novelty of gadget and display • Learning materials are easy to update and deliver

11. Mobile Learning Content Design • Content must be organized so that learners can access the content from anywhere and at anytime. • The intelligence of the mobile learning system must be able to format the mobile content for specific mobile devices.

12. Guidelines for Developing Mobile Content • Break content into small chunks • Design as learning objects • Store in repositories for easy access • Metatag for retrieval, discovery and reuse

13. AU Mobile Learning Projects & Technologies

14. Mobile Library Project • provide learners with access to the library services and learning resources using mobile devices

15. Special Features • Auto-detect and reformat • Learning object reuse • Easy web maintain/update • Multimedia file support • Ipodcasting • Wireless library catalogue • Search • Mobile content conversion on the fly

16. M-library Design/Technology

17. Project Outcomes • Recipient of the Canadian Library Association Research & Development Award 2007 • DRR Model adopted by BC Thompson Rivers University • Mobile model adopted by UK Open University

18. Mobile Content Projects • Mobile ESL Project • Develop and test innovative approaches to ESL learning using mobile devices and a variety of testing and practice methods (CBC News) • Mobile Workplace English Project • Design to improve worker’s workplace communication skills and literacy using Apple iPhone • iPhone App project • Design to facilitate iPhone access to AU Press E-journals and E-books • Mobile Friendly library resources project • Study the mobile-friendliness of E-Journals

19. Mobile-friendly KM System • What is KMS? • What is MKMS? • Why Athabasca University Library needs a MKMS? • How to implement MKMS • What does MKMS have?

20. Mobile-friendly KM System What is KMS? Knowledge Management System What is MKMS? Mobile-friendly Knowledge Management System

21. Mobile-friendly KM System AU library develops a MKMS Why do we need a MKMS? Existing KMSs have disadvantages Knowledge sharing Knowledge accessible anytime anywhere

22. Mobile-friendly KM System Implementation PHP Zend Framework MySQL database Multiple languages support

23. Mobile-friendly KM System Features Two views: Admin view and Learners view Manage content through desktop computers or mobile devices: create, delete, organize, and publish/un-publish, etc Describe entries using metadata

24. Mobile-friendly KM System Future work Authentication and Authorization Quiz (multi-choice questions) Searching capacity OAI-compatible

25. Mobile Device Automatic Detector A component in Personalized and Adaptive M-learning Framework and Mobile Knowledge Management System

26. Mobile Device Automatic Detector • Why do we need it • Capabilities of a mobile device decide what kind of the content it can display correctly and what context it can process properly • MKMS or other Mobile based LMS, like Personalized Adaptive m-learning System needs to know device capabilities before preparing and transporting the suitable learning contents to mobile clients

27. Mobile Device Automatic Detector • What are our approaches to solve these issues • design and develop a software API to detect the device information in details. Such information includes the device type, device type name (e.g. HTC, Samsung, iPhone, etc.), device OS, screen resolution, image type supported, etc. • establish a device profile repository to store mobile device specifications • generate device profile ontology and output RDFS or OWL • provide mobile profile retrieving services that can be consumed easily by other applications

28. Mobile Device Automatic Detector • What will be covered in our design • Service Oriented Architecture • XML format data exchanging between server and mobile client • XSL selection dependent on mobile device profile • Multi-language support • Multi-platform support

29. Mobile Device Automatic Detector System architecture

30. Mobile Device Automatic Detector • Evaluation 4 Devices IPHONE

31. Mobile Device Automatic Detector-- Device Profile (Sample) <rdf:RDF> <rdf:Description rdf:ID="Profile"> <prf:component> <rdf:Description rdf:ID="HardwarePlatform"> <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/profiles/UAPROF/ccppschema-20021212#HardwarePlatform"/> <prf:Model>Polaris</prf:Model> <prf:Vendor>High Tech Computer Corporation</prf:Vendor> <prf:BitsPerPixel>16</prf:BitsPerPixel> <prf:ColorCapable>Yes</prf:ColorCapable> <prf:ScreenSize>240x320</prf:ScreenSize> <prf:ImageCapable>Yes</prf:ImageCapable> <prf:PixelAspectRatio>1x1</prf:PixelAspectRatio> <prf:ScreenSizeChar>16x36</prf:ScreenSizeChar> <prf:StandardFontProportional>Yes</prf:StandardFontProportional> <prf:SoundOutputCapable>Yes</prf:SoundOutputCapable> <prf:TextInputCapable>Yes</prf:TextInputCapable> <prf:VoiceInputCapable>Yes</prf:VoiceInputCapable> <prf:InputCharSet> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li>US-ASCII</rdf:li> <rdf:li>UTF-8</rdf:li> <rdf:li>UTF-16</rdf:li> <rdf:li>ISO-10646-UCS-2</rdf:li> </rdf:Bag> </prf:InputCharSet>

32. Workplace English

33. Stanza and the Digitization Portal

34. Stanza Code

35. Hands-on with WPEAU Pronunciation Practice • Canadian Phonetic Alphabet • Consonants • Watch “b” animation and listen to “bandage” • Dialogues • Exercise 87.1 • Watch and listen to the comic, answer questions • Minimal pairs • 89 “R” vs. “L” • Watch “right” vs. “light” • Listen to any tongue twister, answer minimal pairs and listening pyramid

36. Break

37. Generate Mobile Learning Content • DRR • Mobile Knowledge Management System • Others

38. Discussion and Feedback

39. The Mobile Benefit “You decide where class is and when class starts.”

40. Further Information • Website: Mobile Library: http://library.athabascau.ca/ Mobile ESL http://eslau.ca Mobile Workplace English http://wpeau.ca • Publications:Ally, M. (2009). Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training. AU Press.