Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

Guidelines for Developing Adaptive Mobile Learning

Fatma Bayoumi

National Telecommunication Institute

Key words: Tele-learning, adaptive mobile learning, guidelines for mobile

learning design.

Abstract:
Mobile learning is becoming a part of our daily life. Adaptive mobile learning helps
learners to study learning materials anytime anywhere using mobile devices.
Therefore, it is the time to build guidelines for designing and implementing highly
efficient usable contents and courses for mobile devices. This paper presents new
guidelines for course development and design for mobile learning. The previous
experiences in guidelines are presented. Some adaptive pilot projects and studies are
demonstrated, and then the proposed guidelines are explained. The suggested
hierarchy gives flexibility either in the selected criteria or in the expected course
sequence. The conclusive remarks and future direction are given at the end.

1 Introduction
With the continuous evolution of wireless technology and the spread of internet-enabled
mobile devices, mobile learning will have significant effect on the learning paradigm and
reshaping the ways of learning. There are many definitions for mobile learning in the
literature; it may be defined as “delivery of digitized e-content through wireless phones
hooked into laptops or personal digital assistants (PDAs)” [1]. In the mobile environment,
teachers and learners must move away from knowledge production and into a knowledge
navigation paradigm in which teachers become more like tutors who help learners to select
and manipulate pre-existing information [2-3]. This moves education towards a truly learner-
centered model in which the learner defines how to proceed, based on individual needs, and
that learning is highly tuned to the situation in which it takes place
Mobile learning is not intended to replace the classroom learning, just like the relationship
between e-Learning and classroom instruction. In fact, mobile learning offers another way to
deliver content and to embed learning into daily life. The learning materials need to be
developed in small, consumable bytes of format, which can be delivered through wireless
network. Hence, the fundamental belief of mobile learning is not to convert all PC-based
learning content into a mobile format, but to consider how the mobile devices can be used to
strengthen and harmonize overall learning strategy.
The overall advantages provided by the mobile learning are more flexible, accessible and
personalized learning activities. Such advantages are hoped to keep the learners engaged in
ongoing learning activities and enhance their productivity and effectiveness.
Mobile learning applications have to be designed with special care and sometimes different to
a technology- enhanced learning system that is used in office environment. The mobile
learning system must be adaptive to the learner contexts, i.e., movement, motivation, style,
background, etc. The recent development of mobile adaptivity in learning has focused

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towards building systems that are both location aware and use an open learner model for
consultation by a student, and away from a intelligent tutoring system in which the learner
model was generated [4].
This paper proposes new guidelines for developing and designing contents for adaptive
mobile learning. The paper is organized as follow; in section 2 the previous experiences in
guidelines are explained. In section 3 some adaptive studies and pilot projects are briefly
discussed. In section 4 the proposed structure is presented. Finally the conclusive remarks are
given in section 5.

2 Guidelines of Designing of Mobile Learning System

2.1 Guidelines for Interface Design

To design mobile learning system two steps must be taken [5]:

First Step: User analysis
It is necessary to identify: the user’s characteristics, such as age, nationality, special needs or
disabilities; degree of familiarity with mobile devices, motivation and interest in learning
using mobile devices; the usage context of the application.
Second Step: Designing a usable interface
The next step is that of designing the interface according to the previous analyses, and the
available technology. In designing interface, some considerations must be taken:
• The used mobile device: the research on readability and comprehension with small screens
[6-7] shows that even for very small displays of only a few lines of text, users can read and
understand information well. Nonetheless, there is also evidence that to a certain point, the
size of the display will impact on the users’ performance [8]. Hence due to the limited
display capacity of mobile devices, information should be chunked into categories to
prevent overload during processing in working memory. Interactive pages on mobile
devices should be short and informative.
• The limited bandwidth: this affects both the display of output and the users’ interaction.
• The user is mobile: consider the possible variations in context. Also consider that the
primary goal of mobile Internet is to get easy access to specific information. Minimize the
need for user input (particularly text).
• Navigation: provide a consistent navigation method. Each page should ideally contain links
to the main page.
• Designing for fixed and mobile Internet: consider that it is generally easier to extend a
mobile-oriented service to the fixed Internet than vice versa.

On the other hand, from the pedagogical standpoint the interface must have the following
properties: Natural usage, Completeness:, Consistency, No visual or functional complexity,
No redundancy, Assistance, and Flexibility. So the general guidelines for interface designing
may be applied, details in [7].

2.2 Guidelines for Contents Developments

How content is designed and organized it is an important issue, learning styles, mental
processing, and motivational factors must be considered. Some guidelines must be followed
in designing contents for mobile learning [9-13]:

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

2.2.1 Content Development for Mobile Devices

Content for mobile devices must be designed in the form of learning objects to allow for
flexibility in course development and delivery and to cater to students’ individual needs. As
any digital resource a learning object can be reused to support learning. Each learning object
should be tied to a learning outcome so that on completion of the lesson, students get a sense
of achievement. Designing content in the form of learning objects will benefit both the learner
and the instructor. If learning objects are developed, tagged, and stored properly, this could
help instructors by automating the assembly of lessons from one or more repositories for
mobile delivery.

2.2.2 Design for Different Learning Styles

Designers of mobile learning must develop learning activities to cater to different learning
styles since different students perceive, interact with, and respond to a given learning situation
in different ways. In addition, adequate social interaction systems must be developed for
students with different learning styles since they may require different levels of support.

2.2.3 Design for Efficient Mental Processing in Mobile Learning

When designing learning materials for mobile devices, proper learning theories must be
followed to promote success. Good pedagogy is critical for mobile learning since the student
and the instructor may be in different locations. Below are guidelines for designing instruction
for mobile devices based on learning theories.
• The use of self-tests or placement tests may help students receive appropriate content for
their comprehension levels.
• Learning materials must use strategies such as advance organizers to activate existing
cognitive structures or to establish the structure to incorporate the details of the lesson.
• Strategies that require students to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate should be
included help promote higher-level learning for transfer to long-term memory.
• Learning strategies to allow students to apply the information in real life should also be
included to contextualize learning and to make learning more meaningful.

2.2.4 Design to Maintain Motivation

When using mobile devices, students may be in different locations. As a result, the learners
may feel disconnected from the learning activities thereby diminishing their motivation.
Learning materials must be designed in manageable chunks so that students can get a sense of
completion after successfully completing each chunk. Only the relevant information should be
shown. The most important information should be right at the top of the page. Students should
be provided with ongoing feedback indicating their progress.

3 Adaptive projects and studies

The adaptation is characterized by focusing on the learner (him/her) self, and hence the
adaptation is mainly based on the learner, include motivation, style, background, etc.
Adaptive mobile learning is a very active area of research. In the following a brief description
of some studies and pilot projects will be given:

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

3.1 Studies

In the literature, many studies appeared for modeling the adaptive mobile learning. In the
following two models will be given:

3.1.1 Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) Model

A new study for adapting content in a mobile environment is introduced in [14], which relies
on probabilistic adaptivity for content adaptation. The design is based on BBNs which are
graphical models that encode relationships between variables of interest in a problem domain
for reasoning and prediction [15]. There are four main categories of attributes that are
considered for adaptation in the proposed environment; device limitations, connectivity,
learner's profile and content types. The BBNs adaptive graph is shown in Fig. 1. The
framework can be used by three types of users:
• Tutors are able to prepare the desired supporting material and services for their students.
• Developers can manage the adaptation process and control the functionalities of the remote
interface.
• Researchers can experiment with various probabilistic algorithms for learning and
inference in a mobile learning domain.

1. Screen size
2. Text presentation
3. Media presentation
4. Connectivity
5. Text
6. Keyboard
7. Media
8. CPU speed
9. Interactive media
10. Interactive text
11. Academic level
12. Time of Year
13. Accepted content
14. Age

Fig.1 A potential model showing dependencies among possible adaptation attributes. Shaded nodes are
decision nodes and unshaded ones are evidence nodes. Dotted lines represent possible variations.

3.1.2 Learning Style of Felder & Soloman Model

Park [16] suggests applying adaptive technique to build educational systems, based on the
learner's style. The adaptive mobile learning management system consists of 1) Mobile device
analysis 2) Mobile learning content management and presentation adaptation for learning
style 3) Learning style analysis. The Index of Learning Style (ILS) made by Felder &
Soloman[17], as a tool for analyzing learners’ learning styles, is used. This system plays a
role in providing learning adaptivity to a learner by analyzing the learning progress and giving
feedback.

3.2 Pilot Projects

Many adaptive mobile learning pilot projects are developed. The goal of these innovative
pilot projects [18] is to create flexible teaching solutions, which will enable the accessing of

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

information with all kinds of devices, and to support learning in a variety of situations. In the
following three pilot projects are described briefly:

3.2.1 Elementary School Project

An adaptive pilot project based on monitor learner's response is introduced in [19]. The
proposed system consists of two servers. One is a Web server that includes an adaptation
engine and a manipulation engine. The other is a relay server that includes a communication
engine. Fig. 2 depicts the architecture of the system. When a learner logs in the Web server,
the adaptation engine identifies the values of learner’s attributes in the user model and
provides adaptive content. It monitors learner’s response and decides whether the provided
content is easy or difficult in order to provide adaptive scaffolding. The adaptation engine
uses a user model, a domain model, and an adaptation model. The user model consists of pairs
of attributes and values such as knowledge level, grade, and access time and so on. The
domain model is a hierarchical structure of learning contents based on courses of each subject.
The adaptation model defines adaptation rules that are how to update the user model
according to the progress of learner’s learning. The type of the scaffolding is determined
according to learner’s response. The system is experimented against elementary school
students, the results indicated that adaptively providing contents to users based on their
cognitive traits enhanced the learning process greatly.

Fig.2 The architecture of the system.

3.2.2 ARIS Project

The mobile learning project ARIS Mobile [20] (ARIS stands for the online course
“Architecture for Integrated Information Systems) meets the following requirements:
• Minimized learning objects: Learning chunks given to the user in a mobile environment
are discrete in order to enhance the possibility of being grasped by the learner until the
next distraction occurs.
• Designing review concepts: Distractions bar learners from digesting new learning content.
Thus, learning objects for mobile environments give the opportunity to practice and repeat
familiar content.
• Minimized compulsory interactivity: The possibility to fade out if needed and to reengage
afterwards where the learner left off is crucial..
• Personalized, adaptive interactivity: The learning experience is adaptive to personal
learning styles. A learner should be able to specify the complexity of the lecture according
to her/his personal and current state of mind and local situation.

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

3.2.3 AMPLe Project

AMPLe (Across Mobile Platform Learning system) has been developed in [9]. The aim of the
design is to to eliminate the difficulties faced with different platform learning system.
Therefore, through AMPLe, learners can simply access digital contents by their mobile
phones, PDAs and laptop or tablet PCs.

It is noticed that these pilot projects' design uses certain fixed criteria, for example style
index, mobile devices, learner's response time. This represents a drawback of the presented
systems because the mobile learning system must be adaptive to cope with the factors that
arise during the learning process.

4 Proposed Guidelines
In the light of the previous considerations (mentioned in section 2) developing mobile
learning contents is more complicated than other electronic learning applications. Furthermore
the contents' adaptivity highly complicates this task.
The developed projects built experiences in mobile learning. Important guidelines were
produced from these pilot projects. In addition to the previous guidelines considerations, we
propose the following two considerations:

4.1 Objects must be organized in a tree form

Content designers must produce the contents in the form of objects; each object should have a
certain goal that can be achieved by an exam or number of quizzes. Various objects could
have the same goal, depending on the learner analysis, i.e., motivation, style, etc. These
objects must be organized in a tree form as shown in Fig.3. The nodes of the tree represent the
objects, while the levels represent the goals, and the leaves represent the final objects. As an
example in the shown tree, the learner has a maximum of five objects to achieve by the end of
the course. This structure has the following features:
• Each object or node may be assigned certain attributes such as goal, time, motivation,
necessary background, etc.
• The learner will participate in customizing his course by setting his contexts as well as his
preference or priority. Accordingly, the system assigns weight for each context.
• Selection of the nodes sequence is determined based on the node's attributes and the
learner' weighted contexts, which will determine the selected path.
• With this structure criteria like cost may be added easily, noting that cost may be an
important issue in some situations.
• The sequence of objects may be change dynamically, according to the user context
changing, e.g., motivation, previous scores, etc.
• Learners will be aware of the expected sequence.
• Algorithms from graph theory such as shortest or longest path may be applied to obtain
the optimum sequence.
• Warning message may be appear to inform the learner of the consequence of his choice,
for example if the learner wants to limit the online time (which means cost) the system
warns the learner that he must improve his background by the mean of book or
recommend web site.
According to the proposed structure, the expected dialog between the learner and the system
is shown in Fig. 4

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

User Analysis

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

Fig. 3 Objects structure.

Fig.4 learning flow of the learner

4.2 Developer must be up to date with the provided services

Developer must be aware either by available services or future (planned) services. For
example service like hoarding [21] may change the strategy of the developer who would then
decide to keep some objects off line and other online.

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Conference IMCL2007 April 18 -20, 2007 Amman, Jordan

5 Conclusions

Development and design of adaptive mobile learning system is a complicated task. Lots of
issues must be taken into considerations, such as learner environments, learner profile, etc.
The contents of mobile learning must be organized in small objects; each object should have a
certain attributes. It is very important to consider the development of learning objects as well
as the recognition of learning styles, cognitive processing, and motivation of learners. If these
objects are created and tagged properly, they can be reused, and reassembled. Also, by
placing learning objects in repositories, students and instructors can access learning objects
anytime and from anywhere using their mobile devices. The proposed architecture will help
the learner to customize his course. It can be applied for adult's learners that they can manage
their choice and compromise between the requirements and environment. This will
subsequently lead to the decrease of the mobile learning cost in the same time the learning
activities will be enhanced..
In this paper we presented a tree organization for the objects that has flexibility in criteria
selection. Each node in the tree has specific attributes which are compared with the learner'
contexts and preference to get the selected objects. The course is composed of sequence of
objects that organized in a tree form. The path selection is transparent to the learners; also the
sequence of objects is dynamically changed according to the learner contexts and preference.
For future work, we aim to experiment and justify the suggested structure. This may require
making new adjustments or updating to the proposed work, and enhancing its features
accordingly.

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Author(s):
Fatma Bayoumi, Ass. Prof., head of Computer Dep., NTI
Telecommunication Institute (NTI), Computer Dep.
Address: 5 Mahmoud El- Meligy St. 6th District, Nasr City, Cairo 11768, Egypt
Email: fatmabayoumi@hotmail.com

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