Implementation of an Electrical Theory Mobile Learning Course

Rui Neves Madeira J. F. Martins V. Fernão Pires O. P. Dias

ESTSetúbal / Inst. Politécnico Setúbal

Setúbal, Portugal

CTS, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia / UNL, Lisboa, Portugal

ESTSetúbal / Inst. Pol. Setúbal CIEEE

Setúbal, Portugal

ESTSetúbal / Inst. Pol. Setúbal CESET, INESC-ID Setúbal, Portugal

rmadeira@est.ips.pt jf.martins@fct.unl.pt vpires@est.ips.pt pdias@est.ips.pt

Abstract — In the last years several mobile learning courses have been experimented. The increasing popularity and additional features of mobile devices is one of the key reasons for that development. Some of the courses are adaptations and others are fully developed for mobile devices. The superior portability and accessibility of those equipments makes them suitable for interactive learning courses. This paper presents the mobile learning framework for an electrical theory course. The course is made of several interactive multimedia modules, at the end of which students have to answer several oriented questions. The chosen SMS format for the answers allows the teacher to keep track of the student’s progress.

Keywords- Mobile learning environment, mobile devices, electrical theory, interactive learning

I. INTRODUCTION The extensive use of electrical devices makes the

fundamental understanding of electrical theory fundamental for students. Excellent textbooks covering this subject are constantly being published. Besides that, in the last years, several learning tools based on personal computers have also been developed. Remote and blending learning has become nowadays increasing popular. New technologies and methodologies have been used in order to allow students to learn in and outside the traditional classroom. Remote and blending learning systems enhance the possibility for students to attend lessons in remote locations, at a physical distance, being able to be at any place and to communicate actively by means of computers and networks.

Different teaching/learning styles and methodologies can be adopted. We can find differences in students’ preferences in learning through experiential or concrete instruction, as well as we can find those who prefer collaborative activities to others with a competitive basis, and vice-versa. The chosen style of an evaluation is also a key factor for the learning process of a student, because it determines the study procedure until the assessment moment. Being important that students have always the possibility to acquire their knowledge through traditional ways, balanced blended learning, combining e-learning and the classroom ambient learning, is a good solution for specific courses, if not for all.

One of the more innovative and student oriented methodologies is, at the present, mobile learning (m-learning). M-learning makes use of mobile devices, like cell phones,

Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and smart phones. m-learning can be defined as “the exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning” [1]. m-learning is a quite recent concept, but by our group experiences, and by others described in literature [2, 3], it has been motivating students and teachers, representing an effective pedagogical method as any other conventional learning method. Nevertheless, the real problem with the concept is still the quest for an efficient and suitable adaptation of the courses contents to means with clear restriction factors [4]. Or, which is more challenging, the development of brand new courses specifically developed of m-learning.

M-learning restrictions are basically visual, technological and social (SMS costs, among others), which are mentioned in several works, measuring generally the impact of the handheld mobile devices in our society [5]. The challenge for teachers is to prepare brand new courses based in a methodology that embraces the potential of the mobile devices and faces their restrictions. Innovative supporting frameworks should be implemented to accomplish that task. In an initial phase, these frameworks can be directed to specific courses, but they should be extended to accommodate more generic scenarios, being prepared to support almost any course.

A basic understanding of electricity and electrical theory is necessary for electrical systems operators, maintenance personnel, engineers and the technical staff to safely operate and maintain electrical systems and electrical systems support systems. The electrical theory knowledge is a fundamental issue to help technical staff to fully understand the impact that their actions may have on the safe and reliable operation of electrical systems. Traditional courses use textbooks as the main element. However, the use of textbooks is very limited, too flat and static. Therefore, in this new technological context, it is important to develop new m-learning tools for these courses. As a result, a new m-learning framework for the electrical theory course has been developed at Superior School of Technology of Setubal (Polytechnic Institute of Setubal). Besides the traditional theoretical lessons, and laboratory practices, the developed m-learning framework (including innovative contents, animations and interactive examples) enriches the classical electrical theory teaching.

The current paper describes the course, which we consider original and innovative in the area of application, and the main

points of the supporting computational framework development.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we introduce essential mobile concepts that support some taken options. Section III presents related work regarding mobile learning projects, while the course features description is presented in Section IV. Section V is dedicated to the presentation of the principles, general architecture and mobile application issues of the developed system. Finally, in Section VI, conclusions are made.

II. MOBILE LEARNING PRINCIPLES Nowadays, our daily living is almost fully dependent on

mobile devices. With the evolution of their technologies, we see people adapting more easily to the use of the devices. According to [6], the mobile revolution is already here. “Wherever one looks, the evidence of mobile penetration and adoption is irrefutable…”. “No demographic is immune from this phenomenon”.

At the same time, with the evolution of the available functionalities, it also increased the diversity and capacity of multimedia options and wireless communication technologies of the devices. Seen as small computers, these devices can support diverse lessons, display animations for any kind of contents, be used for polling and testing, serve as a gateway to larger learning resources, among much more options.

With the fast growth of wireless handheld and mobile devices sale m-learning concept has started to rapidly emerge as a new instructional method. The overall number of mobile phones sold is expected to grow from 1.2 million, in 2008 and 2009, to 1.6 million in 2012. Fig. 1 presents the market share of mobile phones selling [7]. Smart phones refer to the bottom of ach bar, sophisticated mobile phones to the middle and basic mobile phone to the top. One clearly sees the increasing popularity of smart phones. M-learning is characterized by mobility and accessibility, since it focuses on the use of handheld mobile devices. These equipments have become very popular, especially among young people who use them not only for communication but also as a tool for other activities.

Figure 1. Distribution of worldwide mobile phones selling per year.

There are almost one and a half billion mobile phones in operation around the world, and a large percentage of them are in the hands of students. In the coming 10 years, whether

educators want it or not, more and more students will bring computing devices into the classrooms.

For the development of the proposed project, it is important to have in mind that sophisticated and smart phones are increasing their sales in comparison to the basic cell phones (Fig. 1). Additionally, looking to the table present in Fig. 2, it is possible to establish a guideline between those sales and the increased use of advanced functionalities in mobile phones. Fig. 2 presents the advanced functionalities used in basic phones (depicted in bottom of each bar) and smart phones (depicted in top of each bar) [7]. These are important arguments, because the mobile application of the present work uses multimedia content and some connectivity options. Therefore, this is considered as a positive factor since the probability of finding devices with capabilities for playing lessons and testing contents is high, being excellent to the production of mobile applications with higher performance and better multimedia content.

Figure 2. Basic phones and smart phones advanced functionalities.

As far as the use of these tools in education is concerned, not all courses are suitable for m-learning environments, but short courses are considered suitable for this kind of learning [8]. The use of quizzes, glossaries and the interaction with tutor and other peers may satisfy a wide range of needs and aims on behalf of students. Communication can be made through e-mails, SMS and MMS, and it is important for students to have feedback about their progress [8].

III. RELATED M-LEARNING WORK It has to be noted that, nowadays, m-learning is a very

active research field, with the development of important and interesting projects. In [9], Frohberg et al. made a deep and critical analysis of mobile learning projects published before the end of 2007. Mobile learning is rapidly growing from a set of research projects into worldwide deployment of services for classrooms, field trips, workplace training and informal education, among other areas. Major projects have concentrated on the generic platforms development for m-learning and explored new supports for a kind of technology-mediated learning across locations and life transitions [10, 11]. Smaller projects are more directed to develop new pedagogical solutions for specific cases and to explore how learning on handheld mobile devices interweaves with personal interests and individual learning needs [12].

In relation to platforms, the following projects support the implementation of specific mobile and wireless applications for mobile devices. It is important to know projects like MOBIlearn [13]. It pretends to deliver a generic m-learning architecture to support creation, brokerage, delivery and tracking of learning and information contents, using ambient intelligence, location-dependence, personalization, multimedia, instant messaging (text, video) and distributed databases. Another proposal, MADEE [14], is an execution environment and application development tool that supports and makes easier the development of mobile and wireless information systems that run on handheld devices, allowing communication and information sharing among users in an organization. Other older examples are: the Sync a Java framework [15] that allows asynchronous collaboration between mobile users; Rover [16], a framework for building mobile applications based on flexible client/server architecture; and LIME [17], a middleware package written in Java that supports mobile application development and coordination.

An interesting application of m-learning has been carried out by the Standford Learning Lab for the teaching of the English language [18]. Quizzes, glossaries and interactive audio-files were sent to students to improve their pronunciation and language competencies/skills. Interesting to us is that two other language experiences were followed for the acquisition of English vocabulary and idioms on mobile devices. The first one does it through SMS and the second by means of videos. Another application of mobile learning in the study of languages is Pocket Eijiro [19], an English-Japanese, Japanese-English dictionary, which presents some interesting features.

On the other side, the Moop [20] m-learning environment was developed for use in primary school at the city of Oulu, Finland. Moop has an interactive application for use in situations where primary school students take use of a cell phone to analyze their surroundings and to communicate within groups. The system supports the process of inquiry learning, during which a user outlines her thoughts on the current topic, collects information from the surroundings and reports the findings to the system. The HandLeR project [11], one of the oldest, is an attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of the learning process in different scenarios with the evaluation of a handheld device. The system is also “...intended to support children to capture everyday events such as images, notes and sounds, to relate them to web-based learning resources, to organize these into a visual knowledge map and to share them with other learners and teachers” [21]. This kind of systems promotes learning in complex scenarios where learning goals depend on a contextual factor.

Another system, related with context, is “Contextual Cues” that lets students, who have attended a lecture, to receive a copy on their mobile phone of key points that the teacher labels as important, which should be reviewed later [22]. To support this, a plug-in or application installed on the teacher’s Bluetooth-enabled computer would make it easy to highlight important points in the teaching material. During the presentation, the broadcasting of the key points together with a timestamp takes place in parallel with the presentation of the related material.

Regarding quiz systems oriented for mobile devices, there are several commercial and free options that are interesting for our study. Moodle for mobile tests [23] is a module to execute Moodle questionnaires using CHTML (compact HTML) in compatible mobile phones with i-mode technology. Interactive test is a module of an m-learning system [24] specifically developed for use in Java-enabled mobile devices. Go Test Go’s [25] is a commercial quiz system designed to be used in Java mobile phones that provides a great selection of quizzes about several areas. Finally, Quizzler [26] is a commercial product designed for PC, Palm and PocketPC platforms and provides a collection of tools (quizzler reader, quizzler software maker and quiz library).

IV. MOBILE COURSE FEATURES DESCRIPTION The goal of this project was the development and

implementation of an educational application oriented to electrical theory online teaching. In order to allow mobility to the students it was used an m-learning tool for the teaching of this subject. This project started with several inquiries to the students, in which what type of based support they feel it is important for their study. From those inquiries, more than 50 % of the students say that a tool that allows mobility is very important. In this way, an inquiry about which tool they feel it is more important was further provided. Three options were posed: classical books, e-learning tool or m-learning tool. The majority of the students choose the m-learning tool. Therefore, this solution was developed not to replace the traditional teaching methods, but to create a complementary tool in order to improve the student’s interest, motivation and the resources availability in any place, at any time.

The material covered in this m-learning course was based on textbooks used in the classic classroom lectures. However, the developed material for the m-learning tool was conceived taken into consideration the use of the mobile phones’ resources. The developed course consists in several interactive modules. The contents of the modules cover the following main topics:

o Basic electrical theory where basic electrical concepts are described and electrical terminology is introduced;

o Basic DC theory where basic concepts of direct current electrical circuits are described and associated terminology discussed;

o Basic DC circuit calculations where resistors association, voltage divider and current division are analyzed;

o Kirchhoff’s Laws where voltage and current laws are presented;

o Thevenin’s and Norton’s equivalent circuits explanation.

The contents were developed in order to put an emphasis on demonstrating and assisting each theoretical concept with a practical application. Another important feature is the use of images and multimedia animations. As an example, Fig. 3 displays an animation about the Kirchhoff's first rule – Kirchhoff's current law. The small blue circles denote the

moving charges across the parallel of resistors. They split at the beginning of the parallel and join again at the end.

Figure 3. Animated figure of the Kirchhoff's current law.

Interactive figures are also essential for the understanding and motivation of the students. So, several interactive figures have been developed for this course. Fig. 4 presents an interactive animation for the explanation of Coulomb's law, describing the interaction between charged particles. By pressing one of the charges, it will change its signal so that the student can observe the attraction/repulsion phenomenon. The charges’ speed depends on the distance, thus is a consequence of Coulomb’s force.

Figure 4. Interactive figure for the Coulomb's law.

Fig. 5 shows another interactive circuit that has been developed to explain Ohm’s law. The voltage source is considered ideal, its value remains constant and is capable of absorb current. The water system analogy is used, where the voltage source is equivalent to the water tank and the current to the water flow. To keep the water running it is mandatory that the tank is placed above the ground level. The students can

dynamically change the tank position, by tapping the two buttons on the bottom left.

Figure 5. Interactive figure where the students can see an analogy with a

hydraulic system.

In order to improve the developed framework, students are encouraged to produce comments regarding the course. Figures and interactive animations allow the insertion of comments. Students can make annotations and give feedback about the course contents. This feedback will be sent, by SMS, to the teachers, so that they can improve the course design, based on the student’s awareness.

Each course module ends with a set of quizzes about the module’s contents. Optionally, an SMS is sent to the teacher with the results. This is important to understand the student’s progress and the impact of the m-learning tool. In case of failure, the student is asked to restart the lesson. Based on a large variety of quizzes, generated from a teacher contents manager application, new questions will be posed to the students.

The lessons are simple in order to avoid excessive information for students. However, whenever necessary there is an option called “know more”. This option adapts the amount of presented information to the students’ needs.

V. THE M-LEARNING SYSTEM

A. Requirements First, it is necessary to establish some principles and

requirements for the design of a mobile system like the proposed one. In this way, we define the following requirements as the basic and specific guiding principles for the m-learning system:

o Allowing the mobile learning course to be integrated and to run in motivating settings;

o Allowing the student auto-evaluation and annotations feedback;

o Allowing recovery modules in order to give to all students the same opportunities;

o Flexibly the timetables, mainly, of the final quizzes in order to be possible to complement classroom lessons;

o Having the option to be used interactively in different kinds of classroom lessons, with the teacher being able to configure the quizzes/questionnaires.

In relation to the design requirements, we also follow these four perspectives [27]: generic mobile environment issues, learning contexts, learning experiences, and learning objectives. The most important feature in the mobile environment is mobility, which can be of the user, of the device, and mobility of services, and these three concepts should be addressed both technically and contextually. It is also important to understand that each user employs the personal mobile device in a different way. For instance, students frequently use SMS to communicate, while professionals use calls and email.

For the learning contexts, identities of m-learning users are a necessary contextual factor. This is of great value for the implementation of personalized learning experiences for individual stakeholders. Besides the usual administrator profile, the developed system takes into account three main end-users:

Students – These are the main end-users because the course is implemented to improve their study. Several considerations of the student should be made, because each user has different psychological properties that relate to their learning experience [27]. Therefore, the system provides students with features so they can take annotations and send questions to the teachers. This way, they can receive “personalized mobile” feedback.

Teachers – These users can use the platform as a teaching tool to complement the traditional classroom lessons. Besides, teachers play an important role providing questions to the quizzes section. The system provides a function of auto-calculation, making the quizzes more or less difficult, according to the integration of questions. The teachers have to update the chapters’ contents. Teachers also receive SMS from the student or his tutors regarding his performance.

Tutors – Considered as extra users that can use the m-learning platform to guide their students’ performance. They can check how many times they have accessed their study material and what exactly they do when entering the system. Besides, a tutor can contact the teacher, at certain times of the semester, to get detailed information about the student.

In relation to learning experience, the course follows a cinematic metaphor (with animations and active interaction), although we are in the process of adding the game metaphor to some contents. These concepts enable the system to both leverage the positive qualities of mobile devices and engage learners by providing a rich experience. We can consider that, for this type of courses, the most basic component of learning experience is the one with an organized delivery of contents. Additionally, achieving goals (learning objectives) is a big part of what motivates students, and these goals should be adapted to the course and expertise of the students, being measured by outcomes and feedback [27].

B. General Architecture The architecture of the global system is a typical client-

server model that is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks between servers and clients, with the two-tier separation (Fig. 6).

Figure 6. M-learning clients integrated in a client-server architecture.

For this system, the clients are a web tool (e-learning) module, available through a web browser, and the m-learning course. The server is composed of all the data managers, besides the web server, of the teacher contents manager application and keeps track of all the activity regarding essentially communication between clients, through SMS (a copy is kept in the server), and between these and the server.

Users can use the mobile client in a stand-alone way, without having to connect to the server, but the connection is useful to get updates on quizzes and questionnaires. The communication can be made through GPRS or Wi-Fi, if one is available, beyond the SMS exchanging of feedbacks and annotations.

C. Mobile Application Issues The mobile application is developed in Java (J2ME) for

devices that support the MID profile. The application has some functions that are independent of the implemented prototype. Fig. 7 presents the m-learning client architecture, where the main modules are presented in an hierarchical structure.

The client allows a direct communication with a server, via short-range technology (e.g., Bluetooth), and long distance communication, through GPRS or Wi-Fi. It integrates the Connectivity Manager module that provides an abstraction in relation to the technology used for communication. This will make the programming of the Mobile Manager/Presentation (the logical application) less complex and independent of used technology.

Figure 7. Architecture of the mobile device application.

The Mobile Course Manager includes all the functionalities to follow and/or to manage the course, depending on the profile of the user. The RMS Repository module is a J2ME Record Management System (RMS) that provides a mechanism through which MIDlets can persistently store data and retrieve it later. In a record-oriented approach, the RMS comprises multiple record stores. With this mechanism, it is possible to locally store data about the user, beyond his annotations and quizzes results.

The Mobile Course Manager also deals directly with the SMS Controller, which is the module responsible for sending and receiving SMS documents between mobiles. The J2ME Wireless Messaging API (WMA) specifies a standard set of APIs that J2ME applications running on SMS-enabled devices can use to communicate with network peers via the SMS protocol. The WMA can be implemented on almost all mobile devices and it allows the devices to run SMS-based server applications to automatically process and respond to incoming messages. The WMA specification has been developed by the Java Community Process (JCP) under JSR 120.

VI. CONCLUSIONS AND REMARKS This paper presented the development of a mobile learning

framework for an electrical theory course. The theoretical content of the course was structured in several interactive modules. At the end of each module, there are quizzes allowing students to be evaluated by themselves or by course teachers. The teacher receives automatic SMS from the student’s mobile phone. This allows the teacher to have access to the student’s progress and comments about the images and multimedia animations.

There are still some disadvantages in m-learning, such as its high costs, the possibility for mobile devices to be misplaced or stolen and the difficulty to use mobile devices in noisy environments. Other issues such as devices’ small screen size, limited memory size, small keyboards and limited battery life are still open for improvements.

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