Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Full length article

Youubi: Open software for ubiquitous learning

Bruno de Sousa Monteiroa,∗, Alex Sandro Gomesb, Francisco Milton Mendes Netoa
a
Universidade Federal Rural do Semi-Árido (UFERSA), Brazil
b
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Popularization of mobile and personalized services motivates the adoption of learning strategies sup-
Received 26 September 2014 ported by the principles of ubiquitous computing. However, because it is a new field, there is a perceived
Accepted 30 September 2014
lack of ubiquitous learning environments, based on reference architectures, and open source software.
Available online 29 December 2014
Against this backdrop, this article aims to present the Youubi; one u-learning environment that was de-
Keywords: veloped as a component-oriented reference architecture, applied to the context of formal and informal
Ubiquitous learning learning. For validation, the Youubi was used and installed by undergraduate’s students and teachers in
Ubiquitous computing their smartphones. The method applied in this research includes design process and quantitative and
Software engineering qualitative analysis techniques, with the goal of identifying scenarios of ubiquitous learning and realize
Design interactive the impressions of students and teachers about the playful and motivational aspects, and its contribution
Gamification to learning.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
According to IDC’s research (2014), the number of smartphones
in the world surpassed 1 billion units in 2013. This reality shows a
strong upward trend in the consumption of mobile services and
devices. With increasing access to computing devices connected
to the Internet, individuals experience the ability to produce and
disseminate information, easily, quickly and situated, as are their
needs and wants. By means of mobile devices, access to informa-
tion is free and continuous. This continuity can be temporal (any
time) and spatial (anywhere), and it is in this direction that points
to the development of learning environments: become absolutely
ubiquitous the access to information, communication and knowl-
edge acquisition (Santaella, 2010).
This perspective has led to the interest and growth of scientific
papers in the area of ubiquitous learning (u-learning) (Hwang &
Tsai, 2011; Wu & et al., 2012; Johnson et al., 2014; Martin et al.,
2011a). However, being a field of very recent research work has
been done on experimental artifacts that do not follow a refer-
ence architecture. In the systematic review by Martin et al. (2011b),
we found the lack of development models for ubiquitous learn-
ing systems. Moreover, not all studies reviewed include the rec-
ommended requirements for software of this nature (Spínola &
Travassos, 2012). This reality can result in rework effort for devel-
opment of new projects, but also delay the effective popularization
of context-aware systems by learners and teachers.
Furthermore, the isolation between “playful environments” and
“learning environments” wasted opportunities to develop new
models and didactic approaches. Features of social interaction and
the playfulness of the challenges encountered in digital games
(gaming), for example, also appear to be ignored. This isolation
causes the development of educational environments often im-
posed by institutions, which cannot compete with the attention
given by the learners (and teachers) to environments with a focus
on social interactions (social networks) and recreational activities
(games).
Therefore, it is perceived that the ICT resources and learning
environments are applied based on the same traditional teach-
ing models; do not adapt to the characteristics, interests, goals
and motivations of those involved, be they students or teach-
ers; keeping the distance (structure, dialogue and transactional
distance) between people and people, and between people and
content.

∗
Corresponding author at: Universidade Federal Rural do Semi-Árido, Depart-
1.1. Objectives
ment DCEN, Av. Francisco Mota, 572, Costa e Silva, Mossoró, RN CEP: 59625-900,
Brazil.
E-mail addresses: brunomonteiro@ufersa.edu.br (B. de Sousa Monteiro), This article presents the results of Youubi project, which ob-
asg@cin.ufpe.br (A.S. Gomes), miltonmendes@ufersa.edu.br (F.M. Mendes Neto). jective was develop a u-learning environment and increase the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.064
0747-5632/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1146 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
engagement of learners and teachers. It includes the following spe-
cific objectives:
• Design and implement a ubiquitous, accessible environment
through different platforms (Mobile, Web, Smartwatch and
iDTV).
• Design and implement a reference architecture, component-
oriented, that provides the services available to the ubiquitous
environment.
• Evaluate the progress of ubiquitous engagement in situations
using the proposed ubiquitous learning environment.
1.2. Justification
The following will be raised some points that justify the viabil-
ity of this project:
(a) Recognize the importance of context, everyday life and inter-
ests of individuals. According to Paulo Freire: “Knowledge, in
contrast, requires a curious presence of the subject in the face
of the world. Requires their transforming action on reality. De-
mands a constant search” (Freire, 1977, p. 27).
(b) Recognize the importance of social relationships and interac-
tions of those involved. The Youubi is not just the interaction
of the learner with the system, because the formation of learn-
ing communities also belong to the scope of the u-learning as it
promotes the formation of social networks and facilitates their
social interactions (Wenger, 1988).
(c) Recognize the popularization of mobile devices and services,
and integration among different platforms. As estimates and
reports from various institutions, it is possible to observe the
popularization of ICT, especially mobile technologies. For ex-
ample, according to the Global Report 2013, the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are 6.8 billion mobile
phones worldwide enabled when currently the world’s popu-
lation is 7.1 billion people. Also according to the ITU, in 2013,
approximately 2.7 billion people were using the Internet, which
corresponds to a penetration of 39% worldwide, while in Eu-
rope the percentage is 75%. Specifically with regard to Internet
access mobile broadband, it is estimated that there are over 2
billion subscribers worldwide.
(d) Facilitate authoring and sharing content in a contextualized
way. In experiments by Chu, Hwang, and Tsai (2010); Hwang
and et al., (2011), researchers have proposed the construction
of mental maps, by the learners themselves, ubiquitous envi-
ronment in a sensitive context, to help them interpret, orga-
nize and share their knowledge and discoveries, not only to im-
pact on motivation, but also to improve the learning outcomes
of students. The results of their experiments showed that, in
the quantitative analysis, the experimental group scored higher
than the control group performance in addition to qualitative
analysis, both teachers and students showed up motivated and
engaged in this type of approach.
(e) Recognize the importance of playfulness as a way to motivate
learners in their learning process. Software for social interaction
(social networks, chats, micro blogs), geolocation and games are
widely used by students, however, they are little explored by
educational institutions. However, the differential Youubi is to
integrate existing fundamental requirements in such environ-
ments on a single platform aimed at learners’ learning, it also
helps the teacher to take ownership of that environment.
(f) Provide new approaches and models of learning without the
hindrance of separating formal learning from informal learning.
As recalls Chen, Seow, and So (2010): “the technology that is
used to support learning should be integrated with everyday
life in the same way that learning occurs in everyday life: con-
tinuously”.
(g) Provide a reference architecture for new u-learning projects.
The development of Youubi project also follows a component-
based architecture, which allows each of them can be evolved
or replaced without damage to other components of the archi-
tecture.
1.3. Ubiquitous learning
The concept of Ubiquitous Computing and its development in
education scenarios is very broad and presents challenging require-
ments to be covered even before the current technological ad-
vances. Therefore, it is understood that the development of stan-
dards and tools simplify development of mobile and ubiquitous
learning applications and accelerate the life cycle of projects. This
makes the efforts of the teams to focus on didactic aspects of ed-
ucational design, not in technology and programming details.
According to Weiser (1991) “the most profound technologies
are those that disappear”. With these words the author introduces
the prospect that people and environments would be “augmented”
with computing resources to provide information and services, “in-
visible” mode, when and where required (Azevedo, 2009). This
type of scenario and the term “ubiquitous computing” originated at
the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Program in Ubiquitous Com-
puting (Ubiquitous Computing Program). At that time, anthropolo-
gists of Xerox PARC, through ethnographic studies, observing how
people actually used the technology, and not as people said use
it. These observations led the researchers to reflect less on techni-
cal details of the machines and more on their situational use, ie,
how computers were integrated into daily human social activities
(Weiser, Gold, & Brown, 1999).
Based on this concept and its application prospects, in general
ubiquitous learning refers to learning supported by ICT resources
held anytime, anywhere and fits the context of the learner. This ap-
proach can also be defined as: “[…] learning processes supported
by the use of Information Technologies and Communication Mobile
and Wireless sensors and location mechanisms that collaborate to
integrate learners with their learning context and its surroundings,
allowing form real and virtual networks between people, objects
and situations or events, so that it can support an ongoing, contex-
tualized and meaningful learning to the learner” (Saccol, Schlem-
mer, & Barbosa, 2011).
In this sense, the idea of ubiquity in the learning process pro-
vides valuable contributions to what one might think about the
invisible learning (Cobo & Moravec, 2011), which by nature is not
assigned to a fixed and static context. One of the main contri-
butions of the adoption of ICT (Information and Communication
Technologies) in everyday life is to have allowed expanding the
pre-established than is traditionally known as learning spaces lim-
its. In other words, invisibility technology enables new possibili-
ties for converting other spaces in learning laboratories. This idea
is also related to the perspective of learning as a continuous pro-
cess throughout life, also by expanding the temporal dimension,
for promoting learning situations in the moment that is most ap-
propriate to the learner.
Given this perspective, all the dynamic context of the learner
may be linked with their educational goals. For example, according
to its context, the environment can assist with recommendations
like “content, person, event or place is available for you now”. In
this sense, the concept of context is defined by Dey (2001) as “any
information that can be used to characterize the situation of an
entity. An entity is a person, place, or object considered relevant
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
to the interaction between a user and an application, including the
user and the application itself”.
1.4. Base features of u-learning environments
From a systematic analysis, information systems designed to
support ubiquitous learning should have the following character-
istics (Ogata and Yano, 2004):
• Permanence: information created and collected by individuals
should not be lost, unless they are purposely excluded. More-
over, interactions and other data useful for the learning process
should be recorded continuously.
• Accessibility: individuals have access to their information from
anywhere.
• Immediacy: wherever they are, individuals may request and ob-
tain information immediately.
• Interactivity: individuals can interact with their peers by mech-
anisms of synchronous or asynchronous communication.
• Located activities: learning situations can be incorporated into
the everyday lives of all involved.
Martin et al. (2011a,b) also defines a set of criteria that
must be observed in the development of learning environments,
and therefore, must be provided when designing their base
architectures:
• Privacy: privacy concerns are amplified in context-sensitive ap-
plications, due to access to a large amount of data which refer
to interactions with content and peers, and the complete profile
of the individual, including their location data.
• Synchronization: synchronous operations, where an operation
must wait for a response before execution can continue,
are inadequate for context-sensitive applications, that need
to be notified asynchronously when new context data are
available.
• API available: the availability of an API (Application Program-
ming Interface) allows services to be consumed by other sub-
systems, developed with different technologies, which reduces
the project complexity and processing overhead on the client
applications.
• Free software: when a software comes with an Open Source
license, means that more people can have access to it, which
contributes to the development and popularization of the
projects.
• Reuse and extensibility: extensibility is related to the ability to
add new functionality while reusabildade refers to the ability
of a feature to be used again in other systems. Provide these
properties in software components allows incremental evolu-
tion and reduces the development effort.
• Acquisition of context: a collection of data describing the con-
text can be direct, when it makes use of an internal source (eg a
location provider), or external, when it uses an external source
(eg a weather server).
• Tolerance uncertainty measurements taken by sensors of the
real world may have some degree of uncertainty and incom-
pleteness. Thus, using multiple sources of sensors is recom-
mended to minimize this uncertainty.
• Representation of entities: to allow the system to collect and
process data in a systematic way by all components, the rep-
resentation of the entities and context need to be well defined
and unambiguous.
• Scalability: This property refers to the ability to gradually in-
crease the capacity of a system, in order to maintain their per-
formance at an acceptable level for the users.
1147
• Communication: supporting communication among individuals
synchronously and asynchronously.
• Instructional Content: Besides supporting content created by
learners themselves, the environments must provide content
related to the learning objectives of these individuals.
Finally, Fischer (2001) adds that the challenges of a ubiqui-
tous system go beyond providing the information in any time or
place, as they also aim to provide the right information at the
right time and the right way. Considering these aspects, context-
awareness - that such systems must be able to withstand - plays a
key role.
2. Research design
The research method proposed in this article is divided into two
phases, and uses techniques of Interactive Design (Preece, Rogers,
& Sharp, 2005) and follows the guidelines of Qualitative Research
(Flick, 2004), which is complemented with quantitative techniques
of analysis statistical and interpretative procedures, according to
the procedures described in Fig. 1.
Altogether, this work has mobilized 128 participants, dis-
tributed as follows: Phase 1 counted with the participation of
90 undergraduate students from Science and Technology course;
Phase 2 counted with the participation of two professors and 36
undergraduate students from Science and Technology course and
Biotechnology course. The following Table 1 shows the groups of
participants.
Following the flow of activities described in the research
method (Fig. 1), each of them will be described in detail, with their
respective goals, tasks, artifacts, duration and participants.
2.1. Phase 1: Design process
First, Phase 1 aims to design and validate all the services of-
fered by the u-learning environment that will be used in Phase
2. To this objective were adopted techniques of Design Interac-
tive which, in general, has the following characteristics: model of
cyclical and iterative design, user participation, emphasis on pro-
totyping, and combining quantitative and qualitative techniques.
Moreover, the process has a flexible structure allowing the cycle
methodology can be adapted to specific scenarios.
2.1.1. Competitor analysis
The adoption of this technique aims: Identify characteristics
and intrinsic features of the u-learning environments; and Identify
strengths and weaknesses in related systems.
Artifacts used: Table with the attributes that one wants to ob-
serve.
Tools: Spreadsheet software; and Reference organizer software.
Duration: This activity is expected to last three months, how-
ever, it may be performed again during the research in order to
keep sources updated.
2.1.2. Profile questionnaire
The adoption of this technique aims: Get information on the
profile of participants in Phase 1; Analyze participants’ expecta-
tions about the features found in u-learning environments; and
Identify patterns of consumption and services on mobile devices.
Tools: Software for producing forms/surveys.
2.1.3. Requirements elicitation
The adoption of this technique aims: Develop conceptual model
of the u-learning environment; Identify and describe the require-
ments that form the basis for the u-learning environment; Identify
1148 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

Fig. 1. Research Method.

Table 1
Groups of participants.

Phase Course Role Participants

1 – Design Science and Technology Student 45 students

1 – Design Science and Technology Student 45 students
2 – Experiment Biotechnology Professor 1 professor
2 – Experiment Science and Technology Professor 1 professor
2 – Experiment (control group) Biotechnology Student 8 students
2 – Experiment (control group) Science and Technology Student 10 students
2 – Experiment (experimental group) Biotechnology Student 8 students
2 – Experiment (experimental group) Science and Technology Student 10 students

the services to be provided by the Youubi Server; and Identify spe-
cific requirements of the client applications.
According to Sommerville (2007), requirements are descriptions
of the services provided by the system and operational constraints.
To this objective, it should be taken as input of this process the
following information: (i) intrinsic features and functionality of
u-learning environments; (ii) analysis of competitor systems; (iii)
characteristics of the mobile applications; and (iv) analysis of ques-
tionnaires profile of participants.
2.1.4. Prototyping
The adoption of this technique aims: Develop low fidelity pro-
totype of the client application; and Develop working prototype of
the client application.
In the life cycle of Interactive Design, the prototyping process is
recommended for requirements validation and preliminary evalu-
ation of the system practice. The intent of this activity is to pre-
vent errors related to aspects of usability to propagate to the other
phases of the project. For this, several cycles of prototyping can
be performed until the prototype can be considered stable. During
this process, the following artifacts can be designed: navigability
diagram, paper prototypes, and high-fidelity wireframes.
2.1.5. Evaluation of design
The adoption of this technique aims: Evaluate the prototype of
the client application with the participants; and validate the ser-
vices offered by the Youubi Server and consumed by the prototype.
This activity includes the preparation, implementation and
analysis of usability tests with end users in the different versions
of the prototypes in development. Because it is a cyclic method,
the evaluation results can cause a return to earlier stages, so that
the requirements and prototypes can be refined.
For this activity, from 90 participants in Phase 1 who should
answer the Profile Questionnaire, a subgroup of students that ad-
dress the following prerequisites must be selected: possess a com-
patible smartphone and mobile Internet service. Each participant
of this subgroup will have access to a script with suggestions for
tasks that can be performed through the client application, within
a period of 15 days. After this period, participants must answer a
questionnaire evaluation to identify the strengths and weaknesses
of the prototype. Based on the analysis of the collected data, a new
cycle of requirements elicitation and prototyping can be started.
2.2. Phase 2: Experiment in real environment
Following, Phase 2 aims to perform the collection and analysis
of data necessary to verify the evolution of indicators of engage-
ment. This last phase lasted three weeks and participants were
able to install Youubi in their smartphones, and could freely use
it anywhere, at home, in the city, the university, etc.
In this article was adopted a model proposed by Greene, Miller,
Crowson, Duke, and Akey (2004). It demonstrates how the moti-
vational variables influence the cognitive engagement and achieve-
ment of students (Fig. 2). This model uses eight variables measured
by a questionnaire: motivating tasks, autonomy support, mastery
evaluation, perceived instrumentality, self-efficacy, mastery goals,
performance goals, and study strategies.
2.2.1. Profile questionnaire
The adoption of this technique aims: Get information about the
profile of participants in Phase 2; Analyze participants’ expecta-
tions about the features found in u-learning environments; Identify
patterns of consumption and services on mobile devices.
Because it is the first activity of Phase 2, the researcher must
expose the project plan to collaborator professor, who must agree
to use the u-learning environment, developed in Phase 1, in his
teaching practices. It is noteworthy that the collaborator professors
must also have compatible smartphone and mobile Internet ser-
vice.
2.2.2. Training of participants
The adoption of this technique aims: Present the research
project participants and instruct them about installing and using
the u-learning environment developed in Phase 1.
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
Fig. 2. Theoretical model used to apply engagement questionnaire (Greene et al., 2004).
First, the researcher must instruct professors on how to install
and configure the client application on their smartphones. Further-
more, it should expose all functionality offered and some sugges-
tions for use of these resources with students. Then, the researcher
must also have a face time with the participants of the experimen-
tal group students in order to present the nature of the research,
guide the installation, configuration and use of the u-learning en-
vironment on their smartphones. Thus, it is noteworthy that these
participants must also have compatible smartphone and mobile In-
ternet service. After this training, the students in the two experi-
mental groups (Table 1) can interact with the u-learning environ-
ment for a period of three weeks.
2.2.3. Diary notes
The adoption of this technique aims: For the Experimental
Groups, allow participants to report situations of ubiquitous learn-
ing during interaction with the u-learning environment; For both
the Experimental Groups and the Control Groups, allow partici-
pants to record their study strategies and practices that can ex-
press their levels of engagement.
During the three weeks, in both Control Groups and Experi-
mental Groups, participants are asked to report their learning ex-
periences. To facilitate these records, the researcher can provide
notepads that must be collected at the end of that period.
2.2.4. Episodic narrative interview
The adoption of this technique aims: Collect testimonials from
students of Experimental Group in order to qualitatively analyze
the engagement of these individuals; Collect testimonials with pro-
fessors in order to analyze qualitatively the satisfaction and ac-
ceptance of the u-learning environment designed in Phase 1; and
Identify strategies of use in the u-learning environment adopted by
learners and teachers.
After three weeks the researcher must do episodic narrative
interviews with students in the experimental group. In addition,
the researcher must also do this interview with collaborating
teachers in order to collect evidence of satisfaction and accep-
tance of these professionals regarding the use of the u-learning
environment.
2.2.5. Engagement questionnaire
The adoption of this technique aims to evaluate the level of en-
gagement of learners, through a questionnaire. After 3 weeks, the
researcher must use a questionnaire to all students participating in
Step 2, in order to collect data that can express the level of engage-
1149
ment of these students. After collection, the analysis is performed
by comparing the data collected from control groups and experi-
mental groups.
2.2.6. Interaction history
The adoption of this technique aims: Perform quantitative anal-
ysis of data collected during interactions performed in the experi-
ment, since all the actions performed by users must be registered
in the database of the u-learning environment designed in Phase1.
3. Results
This section presents the results obtained from the application
of the method defined in the previous section in order to develop a
u-learning environment and analyze its impact in real environment
with teachers and students.
3.1. Profile survey
In order to identify patterns of consumption in mobile appli-
cations and helping in requirements elicitation, a questionnaire
was administered as first quantitative data collection technique.
The questionnaires were answered by undergraduate students from
Science and Technology course. The average age of participants was
19 years, and from all 90 questionnaires, 79 reported having smart-
phone, which corresponds to 92% of the sample. Still other ques-
tions were done with the objective of defining the profile of the
participants (Table 2).
Another interesting finding was related to the question “How
many hours per day on average do you spend interacting with
your smartphone?”. The average was 6.7 h, which, although an ap-
proximate value, reflects the perception of the participants overes-
timated their dependence on the services offered by their smart-
phones. This statement is based on comparison with the average
hours of Brazilian using smartphones, which was 84 min in 2013,
according to IBOPE (2014). About privacy issue the participants
were quite receptive to the idea of sharing their location as shown
in Table 3.
Regarding the perception of the usefulness of the recommenda-
tion functionality present in some applications for smartphone, the
average acceptance by participants was 3.5 on a scale 1–5. The fol-
lowing Table 4 highlights the participants’ preferences related shar-
ing and consuming media.
It can be observed that text and images are preferred for cre-
ating and sharing, perhaps for convenience and speed of media
authoring. On the other hand, texts, videos and images have a
1150 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

Table 2
Some questions for profiling the participants (who have smartphones).

Do you have mobile internet plan? Do you have Wi-Fi internet at home? Do you use apps to meet new people?

Yes 70% 91% 65%

No 30% 9% 35%

Table 3
Responses to the question “In the smartphone apps, with whom you may share your location?”.

Everybody Friends, Family, Colleagues Friends, Family, Only Friends Only Family Nobody

16% 8% 28% 42% 4% 2%

lower variation about viewing. Finally, Table 5 expresses the inter- Table 5
Summary of responses to the question “What are your interest with the use of
ests of the participants to use their devices.
smartphone applications?”.
Applications related to leisure stand out in the preferences of
the participants, however, the average between the preferences of Interest Leisure Learning Professional News
Leisure, Learning and News appear with smoother variations. These First preference 69% 9% 15% 6%
data show that there is the potential for applications for learning Average preferences [1–5] 3.3 2.4 1.7 2.4
purposes which could explore the playful aspect.

3.2. System requirements

The requirements listed here (Table 6) are derived from the
intersection of the following factors: (i) intrinsic features of u-
learning environments; (ii) intrinsic characteristics of mobile ap-
plications; (iii) analysis of the profile questionnaires; and (iv) com-
petitor analysis.
3.3. Prototyping
In the life cycle method of Interactive Design, the process of
prototyping is recommended for requirements validation and sys-
tem evaluation practice. The intent of this activity is to prevent
errors related to aspects of usability to propagate to the other
phases of the project. First, during design of the Mobile Client was
produced paper-based low-fidelity screens (Fig. 3) to identify the
components of GUI and to validate requirements. It is noteworthy
that also was adopted prototyping of high fidelity wireframes tools,
however, the paper prototypes were more dynamic and efficient to
sketch and test the usability of screens for mobile applications.
Then to assist in more comprehensive understanding of the
flow of screens, a diagram of the navigation screens (Fig. 4) was
prepared. This artifact proved particularly useful to maintain con-
sistency of the interface (Barbosa and Silva, 2010), and thus reduce
the learning curve for the user when interacting with the GUI of
the u-learning environment.
3.4. Development: Base architecture
The ubiquitous learning environment developed in this work is
called “Youubi”. Due to the complexity of this software system,
firstly, it was necessary to design and implement a base architec-
ture. This architecture supports development environments based
on u-learning approach, and therefore seeks to satisfy the princi-
ple of ubiquitous computing.
The Youubi architecture consists of eight components, server-
side, and its services can be consumed by client applications for
the following platforms: Mobile, Web, iDTV, SmartWatch, or other
systems through a service API. This API provides methods of in-
stances that support incremental use of a digital social network, as
well as specific to ubiquitous environments.
When using the generic term “architecture” in the context of
software engineering, it can refer to the reference architecture or
software architecture, which are pegged to a reference model. First,
a reference model refers to the breakdown of a known problem
into parts that cooperatively solve it. From experience, reference
models define characteristics of a mature domain and describe in
general terms how the parts interrelate to achieve their goals (Bass,
2007; Domingos, 2004).
In this project we adopted the reference model Client–Server
because there is always a service provider in operation that re-
sponses the requests of client subsystems. Some advantages in
adopting this model: it does not require the high processing re-
quirements of customers, it is easy to be scaled in cases of over-
load, usually requires more expensive hardware and server up-
grades are made transparent to customers (Kurose & Ross, 2006).
Then, it was designed a reference architecture consisting of a
schema mapped onto software elements that cooperatively imple-
ment the functionality defined in the reference model. It also de-
fines the common infrastructure and interfaces of the component
systems that implement it. Next, Fig. 5 illustrates a high-level rep-
resentation of the proposed reference architecture.
Then, this reference architecture has been instantiated, or im-
plemented, to give the software architecture, which is directly re-
lated to structural and technological issues in the development of

Table 4
Most shared and consumed media on smartphones.

Media Texts Videos Personal Images Other Images Other files

Sharing (first preference) 37% 12% 13% 22% 16%

Sharing (average preferences [1–5]) 2.4 1.9 1.7 2.4 1.7
Viewing (first preference) 30% 24% 14% 22% 10%
Viewing (average preferences [1–5]) 2.2 2.3 1.6 2.4 1.4
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164 1151

Table 6
Functional requirements of the u-learning environment.

Requirement Description

Login User can access the u-learning environment if email and password are correct
Logout User can finish his session in u-learning environment
Recovery password If user forgets his password, he may recovery it
Recommended Contents System displays contents strongly recommended in the home screen like: Person, Place, Post, Event, Group and Challenge
Create Person User can create new account in the u-learning environment
Edit Person User can edit profile attributes
Search User can search for: Person, Place, Post, Event, Group or Challenge
List Persons System displays friends list and requests for friendship
Display Person System displays person profile and possible options to interact
Add Person User can add a person to his friends list
Remove Person User can remove a person from his friends list
Send message User can send text messages to other Person
List Post System displays favorite Posts that were added by user
Create Post User can create new Post
Edit Post User can edit Post, if he’s the author
Display Post System displays Post’s details and possible options to interact
Rate Post User can rate: positive or negative
Comment Post User can add a comment related the Post
Add Post User can add a Post to his favorites list
Remove Post User can remove a Post from his favorites list
List Locales System displays favorite Locales that were added by user
Create Locale User can create new Locale
Edit Locale User can edit Locale, if he’s the author
Display Locale System displays Locale’s details and possible options to interact
Rate Locale User can rate: positive or negative
Comment Locale User can add a comment related the Locale
Add Locale User can add a Locale to his favorites list
Remove Locale User can remove a Locale from his favorites list
List Challenges System displays favorite Challenges that were added by user
Create Challenge User can create new Challenge
Edit Challenge User can edit Challenge, if he’s the author
Display Challenge System displays Challenge’s details and possible options to interact
Rate Challenge User can rate: positive or negative
Comment Challenge User can add a comment related the Challenge
Answer Challenge User can answer a Challenge. If user wins, the Challenge is added to the favorites list
Remove Challenge User can remove a Challenge from his favorites list
List Group System displays favorite Groups that were added by user
Create Group User can create new Group
Edit Group User can edit Group, if he’s the author
Display Group System displays Group details and possible options to interact
Rate Group User can rate: positive or negative
Add Group User can add a Group to his favorites list
Remove Group User can remove a Group from his favorites list
Add content into Group User can add an existing content (Post, Event, and Challenge) into a Group
Create content into Group User can creates a new content (Post, Event, and Challenge) into a Group
Remove content from Group User can remove content (Post, Event and Challenge) from a group
Notify System displays notifications with news to the user
Display Map System displays Person, Place, Post, Event, Group and Challenge around user
Display Tags System displays contents related with Tags (hashtags with “#”)
Setting User Preferences User can set up preferences about privacy and notifications

Fig. 3. Examples of prototypes on paper.

1152 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

Fig. 4. Simplified diagram of the navigation screens.

Fig. 5. Youubi Architecture.

 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
the final software system. Developing a system on an architecture
has the advantage of helping the management of problems arising
from the complexity of the project (Domingos, 2004).
3.4.1. Essential components
To ensure high cohesion, the main components are divided and
placed according to their function in architecture. The considera-
tions on the description of each component of the architecture, and
implementation details, are made below.
Communication: This component implements the communica-
tion layer on Web Service, which provides API services Youubi.
Currently, this API provides 90 methods, and allows to answer
the requests made by client applications, and independent sys-
tems, through HTTP requests. Thus, there are no restrictions on
language or technologies used in applications that consume those
services because, as it is a standard protocol, the application layer
of the Internet, any modern language is capable of sending HTTP
requests. More specifically, for its implementation was adopted the
RESTEasy framework that uses the technique REST (Representa-
tional State Transfer), which presents itself as more efficient al-
ternative to front SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) (Fielding,
2000).
Manager: This component receives the requests coming from
clients and implement their respective business rules. Because of
its importance, it can be considered the core of the system as it
is responsible for managing all components of the architecture. For
this reason, it is also responsible for updating indicators that pro-
vide identification of patterns of behavior of users, based on their
interactions with the system. These indicators, updated constantly
by the Manager component are represented by classes (belonging
to CommonModel component): Scores, Context and Times.
Scores class consists of attributes responsible for telling all ac-
tions performed by the user in the system, organized by specific
types. For each user interaction in the system, the corresponding
attribute to this action is incremented. The maintenance of these
attributes in real time ensures that they are always updated and
prevents additional processing is required to collect these indica-
tors.
Context class represents the state of a Person object at a given
instant of time, location, state of the device he is using to access
the system, and the action that the user performed. A Context ob-
ject can be created by the system periodically or whenever the
user performs some action. Therefore, the set of those objects form
the history of user actions.
Times class represents a histogram (ie frequency distribution)
of all actions performed by the user divided by units of time (time
of day, and day of week). You can register the following actions:
content creation, content editing, adding objects as favorites, com-
ment on some content, assessment of some content, viewing con-
tent or user acceptance of suggestions, search for content or users,
rejection suggestions, removal of content or social bond, performed
logins, messages, among other interactions.
Collector: this component is responsible for collecting data on
other systems that provide an API for access, such as Google,
YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Redu, Moodle, and others.
Thus, the user profile can be enriched with information coming
from other systems, making the most accurate recommendations.
Analyzer: This component is responsible for analyzing the data
stored in the database in order to identify new information that
might enrich the user profile. This processing is performed by pe-
riodically Threads, which guarantees the parallel processing. An ex-
ample application of this component, supported by Youubi, refers
to the adoption of features of Gamification (Deterding, Sicart,
Nacke, O’Hara, & Dixon, 2011). This concept, applied to the edu-
cational context, is a trend that is attracting the attention of re-
searchers and businessmen, as can be seen in the annual report
1153
2014 Horizon Report (Johnson & et al., 2014). In this sense, it seeks
to analyze all the actions performed by users in order to encourage
them to continue interacting in the environment through partici-
pation indicators, medals and rankings. Another example of appli-
cation of this component is to identify the learning style, which is
also part of the project scope. Through the dimensions and indica-
tors developed by Felder and Silvermann (1988), we seek to iden-
tify the learning style of the learner by analyzing all of his history
of interactions and types of content consumed.
Recommender: This component is responsible for analyzing the
data stored in the database in order to generate recommenda-
tions for all elementary entities Youubi (described in the next sec-
tion). This processing is done in a single phase and is triggered by
Threads, which ensures the parallelism and processing efficiency.
However, because it is a u-learning environment, client applica-
tions need to inform the user context (represented by the Context
class), even with your current location and details on the access
device.
Persistence: this component is responsible for the persistence
of the data in the database, which ensures isolation between per-
sistence and business rules. The implementation of this compo-
nent uses the standard JPA (Java Persistence API) with framework
EclipseLink.
Common Tools: This component is comprised of a number of
commercial methods such as conversion algorithms. Thus, by con-
centrating such methods, prevents business rules are implemented
in the classes of the CommonModel component. It can also be used
by both, client applications and components that run on the server,
without the risk of cyclic dependency.
Common Model: This component focuses JavaBean classes that
represent the entities of the architecture. By respecting this stan-
dard and do not perform any business rule, it can be used by all
components of the architecture, including by client applications
without risk of cyclic dependency. This component also represents
the data model through the use of standard JPA annotations.
Finally, it is noteworthy that all these components run on the
application server, and they were implemented using the Java pro-
gramming language. However, this does not preclude other imple-
mentations of this architecture are carried out on other languages
and platforms, such as PHP, Ruby, Python or C#.
3.4.2. Elementary entities
Although CommonModel component which represents the data
model of the system is composed of dozens of classes, six of them
represent the fundamental system entities: Person (person), Post
(posting), Location (location), Event (Event) Challenge (challenge)
and Group (group).
Person: This class represents the users of the system and can be
considered the primary model class, because it is logically located
in the center of all other classes. Support requirements for social
networking, the Person class has relationships n: m with the other
elementary grades. This class also stores the following lists: list of
devices used by the individual; list of contexts, which represents
the history of all changes in the context of the individual, and the
list of tags, which represents the set of keywords related to the
interests of that individual, automatically aggregated to measure its
interaction on the environment.
Location: This class represents a geographical point, made nat-
urally by its coordinates (latitude and longitude), as well as other
attributes that add meaning. A Location object can be created au-
tomatically by the system, but can also be created, discussed and
shared by individuals.
Post: This class represents posts, commented and shared by in-
dividuals. A post can consist of text, links and files. A post can also
be associated with a Location object, which allows you to link the
objects of the virtual environment with the everyday life of the
1154 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
individual.
Event: This class represents an event time, which can be cre-
ated, shared and commented on by users of the system, and can
also be associated with a Location object. The adoption of this ele-
ment is based on the possibilities of self-regulated learning strate-
gies (Souza, 2012).
Challenge: This class is a challenge, for example, a multiple
choice question that can be created and shared by users of the
system, and can also be associated with a Location object. This ele-
ment enables teachers and learners themselves to the development
of recreational strategies related to the principles of Gamification
(Johnson et al., 2014; Deterding et al., 2011).
Group: This class represents a set of persons who share com-
mon interests with each other in the form of posts, events, places
and challenges. In a group, you can also participate in chats
with all members of the group, which facilitates social interac-
tion among them. In addition, groups can be created and shared
by users of the system, and they are also associated with a Lo-
cation object. The adoption of this element is supported by the
theory of situated learning (Monteiro and Gomes, 2013) and socio-
interactionist theories of learning (Vigotski, 2007).
3.4.3. Client applications
Due the development of an API to provide services on WebSer-
vice, other systems and other client applications, regardless of de-
vice or programming language, can consume the services offered
by IYouubi interface by simply your support platform perform Web
requests (ie http protocol). Additionally, by having its development
based on the concept of ubiquitous computing, the scope of this
work includes the development of client applications over these
platforms: Mobile, iDTV, Web and Smart Watch.
Mobile Client: due to the popularization of mobile devices, as
already mentioned (session 1), they can contribute, and also enable
popularizing ubiquitous learning scenarios? To answer this ques-
tion, Dey, Wac, Ferreira, Tassini, Hong, and Ramos (2011) analyzed
the proximity of users of their smartphones through a field study
in a period of four weeks to verify the following hypothesis: “the
phone is always close to its owner”. The results showed that when
phones were connected, they were within arm’s reach 53% of the
time, however, in 88% of the time were within arm’s reach or in
the same location as its owner, for example, in the same room, of-
fice, bedroom, etc. These data point to the relevance of the use of
these devices in development based on u-learning systems.
Web Client: according to Brazilian Media Research in 2014
(Brasil, 2014a), commissioned by IBOPE for the Department of
Communication of the federal government in 2013, 46% of the pop-
ulation had access to Internet. These data demonstrate the impor-
tance of offering services on Web clients. Moreover, the provision
of personalized services, independent of access that the learner has
at his disposal device, is one of the characteristics of ubiquitous
learning. It is also worth noting that Web clients can be devel-
oped not only for computer and laptops, but also for any platform
that delivers this kind of application, eg, smartphones, tablets, and
some models of televisions and conventional mobile phones.
iDTV Client: IBOPE poll (Brasil, 2014a), in 2013, 97% of the pop-
ulation had access to television. While not everyone has access to
cable TV, Interactive Digital TV by FTA (iDTV) or smart TVs (ie
smart TVs), it is remarkable that type of device penetration among
the Brazilian population. Furthermore, it is known that the shut-
down of the analog signal is expected to happen by 2018 (Brasil,
2014b). Given these facts, the Youubi also provides access to its
services through platforms running on televisions, whether propri-
etary or open system.
Smart Watch Client: in making the Youubi ever closer to the
concept of “ubiquity”, also adopted the device support the Smart
Watchs type (ie smart watches). Although these devices are not
yet popular, perhaps due to the prices, more companies are mar-
keting these products. In general, these devices allow the installa-
tion of applications, have touchscreen display and can connect to
the Internet and / or smartphones through Bluetooth communica-
tion. Currently, many companies provide SDK (Software Develop-
ment Kit) to develop applications for their products, which is seen
as a way to popularize the commercialization of these devices.
External clients: in addition to providing services to specific
customer applications, Youubi also allows other independent sys-
tems can consume its services. For this, the access can be made
through the authorization protocols, for example, OAuth. It is an
open standard protocol that allows other systems to access user
data, with your permission, without knowing your password.
3.5. Development: Mobile client
For development of the Mobile Client was adopted the Android
system. This platform was chosen based on data from market share
(KWP, 2014) which show that, in Brazil, in 2013, the Android sys-
tem was present in 87% of smartphones. Additionally, we adopted
the Ice Cream Sandwich (API 15) version of Android, which allows
you to use important features of the platform and at the same
time, be compatible with 80% of smartphones.
To implement the screens and graphics components (Fig. 6),
was made use of guidelines, ie a specialized guide to good prac-
tices for the development of GUI applications for mobile devices
and Android systems (Lehtimaki, 2012).
3.6. Design evaluation
The experimental evaluation was conducted by five participants.
First and in person, along with the researcher, they were asked
to answer a questionnaire to identify profile. Then they received
some instruction on installing the application, could exploit it in
an ad hoc manner, and had the opportunity to clarify their doubts
(Fig. 7). Then the participants were given a script composed of
tasks that reflect the main features of the application.
Because it is an application that exploits the ubiquity require-
ments without barriers between formal and informal learning en-
vironments, participants had the freedom to use the application
and run proposed for a week in the places and times they prefer
script. After this period, they also were asked to answer a ques-
tionnaire of acceptance.
Finally, after data collection, the analysis phase, which aims to
structure the collected data and interpret them started. The infor-
mation from the analysis phase were the basis for the corrections
and the consequent evolution of the application and the compo-
nents that implement the Youubi on the Server side.
Table 7 provides a summary of the mean ratings made by
the participants. For each set of criteria participants were able
to add comments about their impressions regarding the applica-
tion and the system in general. Thus, it was possible to identify
the strengths and weaknesses along with their respective causes
(Tables 8 and 9).
Based on these results, new versions of the application (Android
Youubi) and Youubi Server components could be developed in or-
der to remedy the complaints raised by the participants. Similarly,
the points that received positive ratings and comments have also
been enhanced and better exploited.
3.7. Results and discussion
The following Table 10 shows the summary of the responses
from questionnaires engagement that were answered. Thus the
rate of engagement was the same in the control group and the
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164 1155

Fig. 6. Examples of screens from Youubi’s Mobile Application.

Fig. 7. Initial meeting with researcher and participants.

Table 7
Quantitative summary of responses.

Criteria Average [1–5]

1. General reactions 4.1

1.1. General reaction (Terrible–Admirable) 4.2
1.2. General reaction (Frustrating–Satisfactory) 4.0
1.3. General reaction (Tedious–Stimulant) 3.4
1.4. Overall reaction (Hard–Easy) 3.8
1.5. Overall reaction (Inadequate–Adequate) 4.8
1.6. Overall reaction (Rigid–Flexible) 4.4
2. Reactions about Screens 4.2
2.1. Characters on the screen (Hard to read–Easy to read) 3.8
2.2. The screen layout was helpful (Never–Always) 4.2
2.2.1. Amount of information displayed (Inadequate–Adequate) 4.6
2.2.2. Organization of displayed information (illogical–Logic) 4.2
2.3. Sequence of screens (Confused–Clara) 4.2
2.3.1. Next screen in the sequence (Unpredictable–Predictable) 4.2
2.3.2. Returning to the previous screen (Impossible–Easy) 3.8
2.3.3. Progression of work (Confused–Clear) 4.2
3. Reactions about Terminology 4.8
3.1. Terms, words and concepts used (Inconsistent–Consistent) 5.0
3.2. Execution of a task leads to a predictable outcome (Never–Always) 4.6
4. Reactions about Learning Curve 3.9
4.1. Beginning (Difficult–Easy) 3.6
4.2. Time to learn to use the system (Slow–Fast) 4.2
5. Reactions about Multimedia 4.1
5.1. Image quality (Bad–Good) 4.2
5.2. Colors (Inadequate–Adequate) 4.0
1156 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

Table 8
Summary of qualitative responses, specifically related to causes of positive ratings.

1. General Reactions (positive)

Attends the requirements of usability: “It has a cool and pleasant layout”, “Interface with great usability” Basic requirements for ubiquitous environments found in
other systems have been attended: “I like the app because it showed me to be a mixture of several other app into one, so instead of having three or four app on my
cell now I can have only one”
Innovative system: “I loved it, I thought super innovative and I hopefully want to use it a lot with my friends” Approval of feature Gamification: “the idea of medals
is interesting”
2. Reactions about screens (positive)
Attends the requirements of usability: “All [screens] are really cool”, “Fairly intuitive”
3. Reactions about Terminology (positive)
Attends the requirements of usability: “Easy to understand, It uses terms of day-to-day”, “Clear and objective”
4. Reactions about Learning Curve (positive)
Attends the requirements of usability: “The functions in sidebar are organized, It’s possible to unwind pretty quickly”, “Well easy”, “I thought it easy to interact, It
has several boxes which are well divided”
5. Reactions about Multimedia (positive)
Neutral colors: “The shade of blue is nice”

Table 9
Summary of qualitative responses, specifically related to causes of negative ratings.

1. General Reactions (negative)

The small number of users affects the motivation of the participants: “It was not so exciting because I did not found friends in common”The performance Youubi
Server was probably the cause of negative reviews regarding the slowness and transition screens: “It spends a lot of time locked up”
2. Reactions about screens (negative)
Need more tests on devices with screens of different sizes: “The characters are sometimes smaller than the usual size of the other apps”, “In my smartphone screen
took a little work to see everything”
Need to add more customization features: “I think it should be done in a setting where the user himself has the ability to customize your screen is as desired”
3. Reactions about Terminology (negative)
There were no negative comments
4. Reactions about Learning Curve (negative)
Shortcut on the home screen of the device: “The icon was not easy to visualize so I installed three times the application”
5. Reactions about Multimedia (negative)
Increase the quality of the images displayed: “When loading profile image is distorted”

experimental group: 3.05. However, it must take into considera-
tion some variables that may influence this result, for example, the
grade from Biotechnology / Control Group class was 8.2, well above
the average of the other three classes, which may influence the re-
sponses of participants, especially the criterion “3. Mastery eval-
uation”. Furthermore, it is understood that the sample was small,
therefore should continue analyzing the data obtained in the other
collection techniques, especially in the interview and diary of par-
ticipants through qualitative analysis.
Analyzing the interaction history of the Youubi u-learning en-
vironment was possible to identify the main activities carried out
by participants (Table 11). These data match with the narratives of
the participants. For example, the challenges were the most talked
about content by participants in interviews and diaries, and this
feature appears first position in the history of interactions.
3.7.1. Reports from control group
Following will be presented the reports of the students in the
control group who did not interact with Youubi u-learning envi-
ronment. These reports express their needs, desires and expecta-
tions for their academic everyday life. These reports were collected
from Engagement Questionnaires and Diary Notes techniques.
Below are presented some reports of students regarding ac-
tivities and strategies more adopted during their studies:
“Directed studies and activities related to the test.”
“Some students help each others, but to get good grades the
interest is individual.”
“The study group is still a very effective practice.”
“I study after class to learn the content presented in the class-
Yearning related to putting into practice the knowledge ac-
room.”
quired at the university, ie, students do not know how to relate
“Sometimes I share with other students what I understood
and apply this knowledge to their daily lives:
about a particular subject or I try to solve their doubts when
they can not assimilate properly.”
“Reading a lot, discuss and work practices are essential.”
“In general, the studies are done in the three hours of the day,
with intervals of 25 minutes to rest.”
“I have a good relationship with my university colleagues.
Whenever possible we study in group because it is good
to solve possible doubts. I do not usually ask questions to
teachers, only when I have no colleague who can help.”
“I have a good relationship with colleagues, though I not always
attend all disciplines together, they are essential to my stud-
ies. I solve questions with them in study group and I try to
help them in the activities.”
“It’s bad teamwork when all or a large proportion of its mem-
bers are uninterested, but when the group is struggling, it’s
good to work in groups.”
“What motivates me more to study in practice classes is when
the teacher proposes problems to improve my grade.”
“The practice of group studies and sharing of knowledge in
problem solving”
“I like solving exercises to identify where I am not doing well.”
Attitudes recognized by students that need to be changed:
“Generally I usually study when is already close to the date of
exam.”
“I often make plans to study more, but I can never fulfill that.”
“The time that I devote myself to the study is not always
enough, I believe that the cause of this is the lack of organi-
zation of study time.”
“I usually only study a subject periodically when the teacher
proposes activities periodically, otherwise I only study when
approaching exam dates.”
“Lessons should be in complete harmony with the daily lives of
students and possible performances as professionals”
Table 10
Summary of engagement questionnaire answered by students.

Student Group Course Age Genre Grade Actions in 1. Motivating 2. Autonomy 3. Mastery 4. Self- 5. Mastery 6. Performance 7. Perceived 8. Study General
ID Youubi tasks support evaluation efficacy goals goals instrumentality strategies Mean

1 Con. Biot. 20 F 8.3 3.375 2.80 4.00 3.40 4.00 1.25 4.00 3.56 3.30
2 Con. Biot. 25 M 7.3 3.38 3.20 4.00 2.60 3.40 1.00 3.50 1.67 2.84
3 Con. Biot. 20 F 8.0 3.50 3.60 4.00 3.60 3.60 2.75 4.00 3.11 3.52
4 Con. Biot. 20 M 8.0 3.50 3.00 4.00 3.40 4.00 1.25 4.00 3.67 3.35
5 Con. Biot. 23 M 8.2 3.75 3.40 4.00 3.60 3.40 1.00 4.00 3.78 3.37

B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

6 Con. Biot. 21 F 8.3 3.38 2.60 4.00 2.40 4.00 1.25 4.00 2.22 2.98
Means 21.5 8.2 3.48 3.10 4.00 3.17 3.73 1.42 3.92 3.00 3.23

1 Con. BCT 20 M 7.0 2.50 3.20 3.80 3.40 3.40 2.50 2.25 3.00 3.01
2 Con. BCT 21 M 2.8 3.63 3.60 3.60 3.40 3.80 2.75 4.00 3.44 3.53
3 Con. BCT 29 M 7.1 3.13 2.80 3.20 3.20 4.00 1.00 4.00 3.56 3.11
4 Con. BCT 25 F 2.6 2.75 2.00 1.80 1.40 2.80 3.00 3.75 2.78 2.53
5 Con. BCT 18 M 2.50 3.80 3.40 4.00 3.00 1.00 4.00 3.33 3.13
6 Con. BCT 21 F 8.3 2.50 2.40 3.00 3.00 2.80 2.25 4.00 2.22 2.77
7 Con. BCT 23 F 2.8 2.50 2.80 2.80 2.40 2.20 2.00 2.75 2.44 2.49
8 Con. BCT 18 M 1.50 2.40 2.80 2.40 2.80 1.00 4.00 3.78 2.58
9 Con. BCT 23 M 6.8 2.63 4.00 2.60 2.20 3.60 1.00 3.25 1.89 2.65
Mean 22.0 5.3 2.63 3.00 3.00 2.82 3.16 1.83 3.56 2.94 2.87

Means (Control Groups) 21.7 6.8 3.05 3.05 3.50 2.99 3.44 1.63 3.74 2.97 3.05

1 Exp. Biot. 20 F 6.6 77 3.63 3.80 3.20 3.40 3.40 1.50 3.00 3.00 3.12
2 Exp. Biot. 21 M 5.5 70 3.00 3.20 4.00 2.80 3.20 1.00 4.00 2.89 3.01
3 Exp. Biot. 22 M 4.4 75 3.25 3.40 3.00 2.60 3.00 2.50 3.50 2.33 2.95
4 Exp. Biot. 21 M 5.0 166 3.00 2.80 3.60 3.00 3.00 2.25 3.50 2.44 2.95
5 Exp. Biot. 21 F 6.4 103 3.13 2.40 3.20 3.40 3.40 1.25 3.75 3.00 2.94
6 Exp. Biot. 23 F 3.4 209 3.50 3.80 3.60 3.60 4.00 1.50 4.00 2.89 3.36
7 Exp. Biot. 21 F 7.2 224 3.00 2.80 3.40 2.40 2.80 1.50 4.00 2.44 2.79
8 Exp. Biot. 22 F 7.5 87 3.25 3.00 4.00 3.60 3.80 3.00 3.75 3.00 3.43
Means 21.3 5.8 126 3.22 3.15 3.50 3.10 3.33 1.81 3.69 2.75 3.07

1 Exp. BCT 19 F 7.0 318 3.63 3.80 3.20 3.60 3.60 1.75 4.00 3.11 3.34
2 Exp. BCT 19 M 5.8 176 3.25 3.60 3.20 3.20 3.80 1.00 3.75 3.22 3.13
3 Exp. BCT 22 M 7.0 46 2.63 2.60 3.20 3.00 3.20 1.50 4.00 2.33 2.81
4 Exp. BCT 19 M 7.9 199 4.00 3.60 3.80 3.20 3.40 3.25 3.50 3.67 3.55
5 Exp. BCT 21 M 5.4 99 3.00 2.60 2.60 2.80 3.20 1.00 2.75 2.89 2.60
6 Exp. BCT 19 F 7.7 151 2.63 3.00 3.40 2.80 3.20 1.50 3.00 2.44 2.75
Means 19.8 6.8 165 3.19 3.20 3.23 3.10 3.40 1.67 3.50 2.94 3.03

Means (Experimental Group) 20.60 6.3 146 3.20 3.18 3.37 3.10 3.36 1.74 3.59 2.85 3.05

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Table 11
Summary of Youubi interaction history.
Functionality Challenges viewed Persons viewed
Amount of interactions 421 387
“All the knowledge imparted by the teacher and acquired by
our own will, will be useful for future professional activi-
ties, as well as for application in a practical way in everyday
problems.”
“The classes are very boring due the theory without the prac-
tice: what good is learning something if I do not know
where to apply? Where to apply is not mentioned by some
teachers, and this is certainly a negative point.”
“I do not usually connect the subjects studied in everyday situ-
ations, most teachers also do not talk about it in class.”
“I think it’s very important that the teacher to introduce new
content to show us their usefulness. They would always
answer that old question ‘To what or why am I studying
this?’”.
Recognition of the importance of attitude and commitment
of the teacher:
“The teacher who promotes enjoyable activities motivates stu-
dents to research and study more”
“In this class the teacher helps to establish a direct relationship
of the knowledge given in class to the practice of everyday
life”
“I like the methodology that uses exercises every week to de-
liver the following week. This makes the matter be studied
constantly thereby sheds subject to study for exam.”
Expectations of students relative the teachers and the
classes:
“Realization of dynamic classes”
“Several ways to evaluate the course content”
“Interaction among students in class for solving activities.”
Attitudes criticized by students relating to teachers’ prac-
tices:
“Teacher uses blackboard to copy content.”
“The teacher uses most of the class for exercise. Good, but very
tiring.”
“I do not feel motivated to go to class ... it’s always the same
thing, theory, theory and theory.”
“Most of the activities that teachers spend are not fun.”
“Some teachers with no teacher-student relationship. This lack
of interaction is negative.”
“Classes are not motivating. I learn more when I study at
home.”
“It is important to student to learn from differents methods be-
cause there are only contents presented on the blackboard.”
“The autonomy of students is small. The student is almost prac-
tically obliged to follow what the teacher tells.”
Difficulties faced by students:
“I live in a neighboring town, so I need to wake up every day
at 5:00 am, and I arrive at 7:00 am at the university.”
“Lately I am unable to study hard due the social networks and
chats. I confess that I am very addicted and the worst is that
I realize that both are harming me.”
“I can’t ask the teacher about all my doubts. I feel scared of him
think I’m disinterested or even low IQ.”
Locations viewed Posts viewed Events viewed Friendships accepted Chats
285 275 62 70 78
3.7.2. Reports from experimental group
Below are presented some of the main issues identified in the
reports of participants who interacted with the Youubi, in other
words, that refers to students in the experimental group. These re-
ports were collected from Engagement Questionnaires, Diary Notes
and Interviews techniques.
Spontaneous reports recorded in the diaries and interviews
showed that the possibility of creating and answer challenges
by the participants was considered the functionality of Youubi
that most impressed and pleased participants:
“Really, the challenges were the most exciting.”
“It is nice the news alerts and challenge notifications.”
“I participated in a few challenges and I saw the scores and
medals like superuser etc, is very cool”
“The challenge was the most used feature and I thought the
best strategy to learn.”
“Challenges were really cool and interactive as the other stu-
dents were there competing with us. We were challenging
each other to see who will win more challenges”.
“I used more the app to answer the challenges, for example,
this morning I was answering some.”
“The most important features of APP were Challenges, Posts,
Chat, Places/Map”.
Participants also demonstrated the impact of challenges to
their learning. They stressed that the challenges motivated to
research and study to answer correctly:
“I learned many things from the answered challenges”
“With the challenges, I think a good proposal targeting study.”
“The challenges are good strategies for learning, but I’m not
competitive, I answered to know my performance no mat-
ter who hit me or not.”
“At app that part of challenge, we become more motivated to
search for things on the Internet right answer, we have re-
searched and this is a way to study, okay?”
“I liked the option of being able to propose challenges and
to share links with groups of friends, it makes it easier to
study.”
“This competition will encourage the student to research about
many contents.”
“The challenges positively influence because you want to hit,
you want to learn the subject.”
“People send a challenge and so I saw and I tried to answer and
searching the Internet to be able to answer”
“In APP professor posted some challenges and I answered
wrong, so I went searching the right answer, then hit”.
“I think the challenges were really a beautiful lesson. Something
created by the users that stimulates others to study more, to
predict what will and increase your score. It was excellent.”
It is noticed in the reports of the participants the impor-
tance of interacting with fun and challenging resources to
learn:
“I see this app as something for leisure as it was when I was
answering the challenges. It was enjoyable learning because
the challenges were also to provide learning, even if it is not
only related to the course, for example, one about ’specific
heat’ [which was not a subject I’m studying now]. It was a
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
form of entertainment, entertainment with learning. When
there is this relationship there is an optimal learning.”
“The application can help find places and talking to friends
about any topic. I made a group to talk to my friends about
all the issues and challenges about football to unwind.”
“The challenge is a fun and interesting way to ask about some-
thing”
The challenges also serve as a starting point for further dis-
cussion among the participants:
“I commented something or other. It was interesting. I found
pretty cool. It’s like that challenge, for example, if only the
“start” to start a conversation within that content.”
However, due the small amount of users that participated in
the experiment, they felt the need to respond more challenges.
This need appears in the following reports:
“I believe that there should be challenges created by the appli-
cation itself”
“The application should have its own challenges to not be de-
pending on people get posting anyway, because students
will not have much time available to formulate and posting
challenges”
The resource Challenge was complemented with features of
Gamification. This combination provided a higher level of com-
petitiveness within the environment. However, this competitive-
ness is seen as positive by participants, including teachers. In
addition to motivating students, they also report that needed to
interact collaboratively to address the challenges correctly, mo-
bilizing people around them:
“I felt the competitive challenges, because we do not want to
lose, ok? I looked at the medal wall to see some of the
medals I got. Yes it influences learning. For example, I was
at home and had a question, and I wrapped everyone who
was there around me to help me to answer, I seek knowl-
edge through other people to answer right”
“Because if there is a competition you will get more information
to win, because you never want to lose, everyone wants to
win. So people seek more information for this. I was very
competitive with respect to challenges, to always be there
watching and doing the questions and see who would hit
more than others. I also looked at the wall, it’s pretty cool
medals.”
“Challenges contribute to learning, therefore, to answer right,
the person will research. I think a healthy competitiveness.”
“I felt competitive in the moment to respond the challenges.
Also I used to look at the score. ‘Everybody hit and just me
who lost this one’ But it’s a healthy competition. Some ques-
tions of challenges I searched on Google. Even about a ques-
tion that I know, but even so I researched about that topic
later.”
“I felt competitive, but it was not intended to be better than
others. But I think it is natural, we want to make things
right. Also looked at the medal wall of my colleagues. A
ranking would be a stimulus to study more. If my name was
the last, I think I would create more posts, not to be out-
done.”
“I looked at the score of others. I still sometimes looked the
wall of medals.”
“I felt more curious [during the period I used the Youubi]. For
wanting to win the challenges, they motivated me to learn-
ing. People put a challenge, and if I did not know I was going
to look on that subject, eg, geography, then I went looking. I
learned a lot not directly related to the university.”
1159
“I felt a sense of competition, but in a good way. I was talking
to a friend who was participating. He said, ‘come on into my
profile and see how many medals I have. Let’s see who is re-
sponding and participating’. It was cool because it motivates
us to participate even more.”
“The competitiveness helps you learn more so, because it was
an added incentive, was dosed right.”
The activities and interactions within the virtual environ-
ment also seem to influence the formal classroom activities:
“I knew the app and I saw how good it was to be communica-
tion and debate the issues reported in the classroom.”
“The chats and issues and everything the teacher put us into
the application sought outside the classroom, we could seek
information to turn the class more interactive”
“I was in college, and wanted to know where the teacher and
co-workers was, so the app showed where they were. This
is very useful and interesting”
“It’s a pretty cool resource, especially for people who do not
know the place I am, I can take a photo and put on the map,
they can get there more easily, for example, new students,
who do not know the city well, who do not know where
the class rooms are. Take pictures with classmates on places
was really fun.”
“The teacher put a challenge in the application, the question
was about an topic he had commented in class, I researched
more about it and I started to pay more attention to the spo-
ken subjects in class”
“In class, the teacher usually always ask questions to make peo-
ple in the blackboard. But this week, I thought ‘go there’,
I studied before, and I did the question on the blackboard.
Then, I noticed the change in my routine studies was to in-
vestigate further.”
The u-learning environment can bring people together in
physical spaces:
“If in Living Center there is a group, I will be able to talk
with people I do not know and post things that interest
those people who frequent that place. I guess that makes
us closer.”
“We could post a challenge to play, and we could give our
opinion and continue playing and talking among themselves.
This motivated us to talk even more personally.”
“We can know more others. In the university there is a kind of
network of friends. For example, arriving at the Living Cen-
ter, who I do not know anyone and to post something that
people may have fun there, is better than these other private
social networks that all is closed and that do not facilitates
interaction with those who I do not know.”
Participants also emphasized the importance of being able
to share knowledge with their peers:
“It’s great to create thoughts and opinions and share it with
friends.”
“With comments you can assign concepts and aggregate values
that post. You will put more details on that information. Be-
sides adding value, you can exchange information with those
people, it is very useful.”
“This feature to create things encourages to study and to be
able to share with friends and to propose challenges”.
“What motivated me the most was seeing other people, even I
did not know, who were disseminating information, we kept
working together, arguing about things that the teacher was
talking and sharing information”
1160 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
Ratings influence students to research and to create more
content:
“Because if you post something related to your area and the
people are enjoying, that shows that you are going the right
way.”
“I think that influences because the guy will think twice be-
fore posting something stupid, ‘ah! I will not post anything
here because I’m in an environment focused on learning and
study, so I’ll try to put something related’.”
“I thought that cool because we can get a sense of how popular
is the challenge or post that we create.”
“I saw many people enjoying the things I’ve created. I felt like I
was doing something useful.”
The possibility to negatively evaluate a content divides opin-
ions of students:
“Dislike feature do not discourage me. I know just what not to
post. It would be more like a touch ‘look that’s not cool’”
“Receiving a dislike gives an insecurity. Because no one likes to
be judged negatively. It was better to have only the like op-
tion”
“If people start to dislike those your posts, you should stop
posting those unnecessary subjects.”
“The dislike is a way to know people’s opinion. But I would not
be discouraged if I received an dislike. But I thought it was
cool”
“Even the person thinking ‘I’ll try to do something relevant’ on
receiving dislike the person takes a step back. Lose the spon-
taneity. Imagine the teacher give dislike in your post. ‘Wow!
I’ll take zero! ‘It is better to have just the like option”.
Students argue that it is possible to develop autonomy and
use the ubiquitous learning environment even with little input
from teachers:
“It would be more interesting if all students use, it would be
more interdisciplinary, even without the teacher. With more
people, more interesting would be.”
“I was more curious to see the contents of the students. The
APP is more interesting to see all the posts, and not just
the teachers’ posts. For example, I was more curious to see
the events, because of the GPS, I thought much cool, see the
map of the university, the location of things. This was the
best feature I used a lot the map. Especially here at the uni-
versity that there are different courses, we may be able to
have knowledge of other areas from there. For example, I
saw that the teacher posted the PDF of a book. I thought it
very cool app by knowing the book and be able to download
the PDF.”
“With the teacher did not have changes, but rather with the
students. Students spoke: ‘I will create a challenge, try an-
swer it!’. They were forming little groups. There was much
interaction among students. Everyone wanted to use the app
and wanted that you evaluate what you did there, that you
answer the challenge, that you answer the chat. People I did
not know I got to meet personally thanks to APP.”
“With the teacher did not have changes, but rather with the
students. Students spoke: ‘I will create a challenge, try an-
swer it!’. They were forming little groups. There was much
interaction among students. Everyone wanted to use the app
and wanted that you evaluate what you did there, that you
answer the challenge, that you answer the chat. People I did
not know I got to meet personally thanks to APP.”
“We are also engaged more to join more to form study groups. I
think I had had no more use because few people were using
the application, [because it is a experimental phase yet].”
“I was hoping the teacher to put a list of questions and to post
more challenges, but he used little. But the posts of students
I was always reading. I used to rest a bit and after I came
back to read new posts. For example, before sleeping, I tried
to answer a challenge.”
“Even if the teacher does not adopt, I would use the Youubi. Ev-
eryone met each other better. The people was very close. If
there were other universities using the app, the people will
meet easily and to know how things work there.”
“The thoughts are different between student and teacher, the
challenges posted by a student are differents. You can iden-
tify more with these challenges created by the students. You
will want to know which are common questions, which are
questions from people like you. Because some have this vi-
sion that the teacher is the one who is up there at the top
and will offer you things that have no relation with you. On
the other hand, you know that your colleague on your side
is going through the same things, difficulties and problems
you are living.”
“Just sometimes I add teachers in my other social networks, but
only to those who have better interaction, which is not that
distant person. Varies from teacher to teacher. Because some
them try to hold distance from students. While others use a
different method, they try to approach, to generate a bond
of empathy to decrease the fear that students have with re-
spect to teachers and facilitate learning. Because this fear
disturbs you, you’re afraid to ask anything. When you do not
have this fear you feel more comfortable to talk, to ask, talk
about your concerns and problems.”
Some students recognize the difference in profiles: producer
and consumer of content:
“I’m more a content consumer than a producer. I define myself
that way.”
“I may even comment on anything, but to create something
from zero for people to look is not much of me does not.
However, I created a place and a course group in the app.
I created a place of the class that I was studying and I cre-
ated this place we are now in the app, I took the photo, etc.
I thought it interesting and cool.”
Students highlight the importance of the notification feature
in the u-learning environment:
“I thought was cool the notifications of new things and chal-
lenges.”
“Very cool the Application several functions, however, the noti-
fications could be sharper”
“You could see the notifications of who performed in the appli-
cation.”
“Notifications and recommendations were great.”
“APP has greatly influenced, because we see the notification
that the teacher posted something, so instinctively we look
to see what is, is a spontaneous thing”
“I left the APP always minimized to receive notifications; I liked
to receive these notices.”
Students highlight the possibility of increasing learning
strategies interdisciplinary:
“The APP was really cool because my routine has changed
somewhat because I looked for about things I had not in-
teresting. Normally students here have some focus, but peo-
ple talking to other people we end up learning about new
things and not focus only on that specific discipline. Each
was replaying different subjects, and motivated me to seek
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
new information on those things I did not know. For exam-
ple, the challenges were pretty cool, because if there was
something I did not know then I was researching to be able
to respond.”
“The APP prompted me to learn new knowledge I then changed
the way I learn. It encouraged me to learn extra information
that normally I would not go after. It encouraged me to learn
things to get out of my comfort zone.”
Students highlight the experiences regarding the use of the
map in u-learning environment:
“Depending on where you are, you will realize the events and
people around and interact with them, exchange ideas, in-
crease your circle of friends.”
“Content distributed in the city may influence on learning. For
example, if I saw an event on biotechnology, I would want
to know all about it.”
“It is extremely useful that map, is better than being something
random, for example, have an event and the location. I also
quite liked the location of people.”
“I thought it was pretty cool to know the distance, know the
things that are close to you and in the distance, knowing
what is happening in the library and university events.”
“You get curious to know what is close. So it takes you to see
the profile of people to see who is near.”
“I thought cool to see where people and groups of people are
located. I have never seen anything like it”
“It was good because I discovered that there were people in the
class who lived near me and I did not even know. I saw the
cities that other people live. On the map, I paid more atten-
tion on events and places. But if I saw a challenge around
me, I think I would try to answer.”
“The idea of establishing a local, know the distance, greatly fa-
cilitates studies, can create a place and establish it as a place
to study, and the people will see the exact location. You have
the map and there is the visual appeal of how to get there.
This greatly facilitates the interaction among students.”
Students realized the difference in interaction between an-
swering a challenge and see the map:
“Competing with others is something more active. Only seeing
things in map is something more passive. But I liked the
map to find people at the University. I only used the app at
the University and at home, I’m not much for not leaving.”
Influence of Social Networking on learning and student mo-
tivation:
“The more friends the more application makes you want to
use.”
“With friends in your application you can exchange ideas, mark
locations to do work, research, study together, go to parties.
Would be pretty boring an application that does not have
contact with other people.”
“Learning together is better. People to discuss it helps learn-
ing in general, to have different opinions, we can get other
knowledge.”
“Eu acho que a experiência foi boa usando o APP. É uma APP
intuitiva. Ela ajuda a absorver novas informações. Ela ajuda
a interagir com professores e outros alunos.”
“When I saw another class using the app too much, I came back
to motivate me. This application should involve the entire
university and people should have the practice of posting.
We would use it in a positive way as well. If people really
posts things related with the university would be very inter-
esting to learn.”
1161
“I used to chat with people I knew, but I answered challenges
of people from other courses”.
“I thought cool and curious [receive recommendations of con-
tents], even though [people] out of my social network of
friends.”
“The Youubi should be a social network of universities. For ex-
ample, a person studying there a university in another state,
I would like to talk to her, ask how your class, to exchange
information in the application, exclusive of universities, it
would be less banal than these other social networks. It
would be good to know about events and teachers from
other universities.”
Impact of contextual recommendations on student learning:
“Recommendations are very interesting because it prioritizes
things depending on where you are, APP already puts peo-
ple, challenges, and related events that location matters, this
is quite interesting, because you know what is happening
there or you can do at that location, for example, an activity,
anyway.”
“It’s very interesting. You enter in the app and do not need to
looking for anything. Things were already there for you to
see. For example, posts from people you know who are in
the same place. This information has come to you. There are
always interesting things for you to see.”
“The recommendations influence in a positive way, because
they indicate things I did not know, including related my lo-
cation. For example, APP showed me an article that I did not
know, and that was related to the area I want, and it is eas-
ier to get interested in the subject.”
Youubi comparison with other applications:
“Other social networks are more related to post pictures and
videos. The Youubi would be more academic, to share
knowledge, in addition to the interactive part, that a person
can mark places to meet. Also, it is good to be academic, and
show challenge questions, locations that are close by.”
“I thought an APP very interesting form of scholarly commu-
nication, for example, other apps are to things outside the
university. The Youubi is a friendlier for the academic pro-
gram, for example, to create a group to a course, put there
extra class notices, warning that has already posted notes,
schedules, to ask questions, and various other things.”
“The highlight of Youubi is the geolocation, knowing where
things, an event, a lecture are, thought that was pretty cool.”
“If the application had only university people, I would use You-
ubi as much as the other social networks, inside the univer-
sity, because I only interact with the people from here.”
“In Youubi I quite liked the challenges and map, because other
social networks does not have.”
“If I wanted to use all functions of Youubi out of it you would
need more applications of different things. While in Youubi
you have it all concentrated there, you do not need to keep
switching application to have all features and information”.
Prejudgment in word “educational”:
“I started using the app with academic objective, because it was
proposed by the teacher. If I had downloaded outside the
university, to see things the city, to see the events of the
city, I would have a completely different purpose. I would
see things not directly related to learning. I lost this pre-
judgment with the “educational.” We saw that is possible to
interact more with the APP to use for leisure too.”
1162 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
Influence of contents created by students:
“Influence of contents created by students: When someone cre-
ates a post, you can start a discussion, and this greatly in-
fluences the learning, because one of the largest facilities for
learning is discussing subjects that you like.”
“It’s nice to put related content that location, or we can relate
a post with the class or the place of the class room, or the
location of the school and we can use hashtag too.”
“I thought great this APP because the subjects that I am inter-
ested and I want to talk to other people I can create an event
or a group and meet people who like the same things that
me, so that is easier to work with.”
“I have created several places, challenges and events. This mo-
tivates a lot. To create challenges you need to research and
to learn. Of the challenges that I created, I had a vague idea
about the topic. So It was necessary to search and to study
to write the challenges and the answers.”
Influence of events in learning:
“For example, getting a recommendation from a congress,
knowing the place, I can analyze the possibility to partici-
pate in it, or publish future works.”
Influence of groups in learning:
“In the groups you can exchange experiences, discuss issues re-
lated to biotechnology or bioinformatics, for example.”
“I created a group. I think it’s cool, join the students in the class
to talk only of the subject class, for example.”
New features and tools in the learning environment moti-
vate students:
“Young people love novelties and innovations that can help aca-
demic life in a new concept, and very interesting.”
“I’m not much for using social networks, but I was very inter-
ested in this project, because it is a different thing, a differ-
ent way of learning more.”
Some students explained that they like applications that
unite learning with leisure, even using these APPs in your
leisure time:
“I really like APPs that stimulate learning, like learning lan-
guages, and news”.
“A lot of people associate mobile APPs with leisure and spend
time. Few people use mobile APPs only for learning. If you
use the APP to learning, but with elements of entertainment,
as it has in Youubi, social network, chat, challenge, etc., you
end up getting more engaged.”
Students highlight the importance of interaction with the
teacher in the u-learning environment:
“With this APP, the content of the course is beginning to be-
come clearer. I solved several doubts. Now it’s a pleasure to
study.”
“The application is a very propitious tool for teachers because
communication allows us to realize that he is very impor-
tant for learning.”
“I was interested by the fact that we can be in touch with the
teacher always. That’s good, because of a nudge to animate
the study.”
“Email not always he is looking, and he’s online chat and will
always be there to answer our questions quickly.”
“As there are students and teachers in the environment, if I
want to talk to a teacher from another area that I have no
direct contact, I can speak through the application.”
“With the application he can talk to us and propose challenges,
including other subjects. The best we end up interacting
with the teacher and ends up treating him as equals.”
“The importance of the teacher is not only inside the room. The
student takes the contents of the class room and study at
home, but he will always have doubts. With the teacher in
the class group, it is easier said ‘hey teacher what is this?’.
It is much easier to ask questions.”
Help for shy students:
“For example, the teacher send a challenge for students to know
who answered right and who answered wrong. So he will
know who is understanding and who is not, hence I will not
feel unmotivated and I will not be afraid to ask the teacher.”
“On other social networks we interact more with people who
we know more, but on Youubi I get more comfortable talk-
ing to people who are not my friends. I would use the You-
ubi easily, because it facilitates communication, could ask
questions more easily.”
“With this connection [created by the APP] you lose some of
this fear. You know that the other person also has that prob-
lem or that interest. We’ve lost that desire to come face to
face, we lose courage, we have fears. But then with the help
of information in this app, you can see everything that is
around you, you can integrate better, you can get into that
group at that place, without first having to reach, establish
a nervous initial contact, trying to figure out what they are
doing. This app helps us to move from virtual to real world
easily.”
Influence of content created by the teacher:
“The APP provides a path for us to follow the studies. For ex-
ample, the teacher publishes some file and we try to search
related things. For example, after class, he can post a related
file for us to go deeper.”
About the privacy of students:
“I did not feel uncomfortable to share my location. But if it were
out of academic context I would not feel the urge. As was an
application of university to university, I saw no problem and
I did not feel uncomfortable.”
“I’m very wary with exposition and sharing photos and posts,
but on Youubi I felt safer because it is always people my age,
many friends. I left enabled the option to share my location.
But, if it was a more open network, maybe I stayed on the
back foot.”
“I felt the urge to share my location in Youubi. At other social
networks I don’t usually do that.”
Few people and few content:
“At the moment there is little content, but the system is
promising.”
“If no general engagement, it is discouraged.”
“I see the application with great potential, to stimulate learn-
ing here within the university, with academic things. But as
it is at the beginning, with few users, not just taking this
whole interaction. But I see it with a lot of potential, espe-
cially within the university.”
“I was expecting other people to post more, so I think to post
something related to the course or the lab.”
3.7.3. Reports from Professors
The following will be presented stretches of the reports ex-
pressed by teachers who used Youbi u-learning enviroment.
 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164
Expectations of professors on student participation:
“Students are not participating as expected.”
“The lack of interest in this class is striking. They are not inter-
ested in delivering some activities.”
“I think my students did not interact as much as students from
other classes.”
Teachers recognize the Youubi as a facilitator of communica-
tion:
“As I have no social network, it is difficult to interact with them
outside the classroom. With Youubi it gets easier.”
“I was able to ask questions of students who have actually used
the APP”.
“Because I do not use as much social networking, I speak more
per message, so I ended up using the chat. I like talking with
people at that time. I do not like to post something to com-
ment on. I think more practical for me the chat feature.”
Teachers used Youubi to see if the students were really learn-
ing:
“It helped to clear doubts of students and whether they had
learned content through the challenges. For example, I put
questions of challenges, relatively simple, and many students
missed, so I thought ‘they have not learned, that will be the
first thing I’ll ask in the seminars.’”
“I taught the same way. The difference it made was clear doubts
by APP, the challenges and used to ask questions to them, to
see if they actually learned what they had to learn, helped
mainly that.”
About privacy:
“I have no problem sharing my location with the students.”
Interdisciplinary:
“Students from other courses answered my challenges.”
Resource recommendations:
“I used [the recommendations] to know who were the people
who were in the APP, and to see the types of questions that
were being asked.”
Tendency to use only in the context of formal learning:
“I started using the app to use more in the course context, but
then I saw that the people was posting challenges of other
topics, ‘ah, so great, I’ll post questions about other topics as
well’.”
Key features of Youubi considered by teachers:
“First the chat, second the challenges.”
“I used the map to find also the students at university.”
Youubi may help to improve their teaching method in class-
room:
“It’s handy to know what they are discussing and use it to their
advantage in the classroom as examples.”
The challenges and competitiveness in the environment does
not hinder collaboration:
“They actually are very collaborative. For example, the groups
had different jobs and often happened that one student in a
group, in the room, get up and go help another group.”
1163
Find collaborators:
“For me to know that other teachers have interface with me,
for example, if in a few years, Youubi become a university
application, teachers will be able to talk about areas of work.
It would be very practical and useful in this regard.”
Professors recognize the Youubi as an ally:
“If I had a chance to use, without being in an experiment, I
would, if it were possible, I would use both Web Client and
Smartphone Client”.
“The APP is a way to talk with students outside of the work
environment and they talk to each other. Obviously I would
use more formal activities, ask questions, etc. Because the
communication tools of the LMS of the university do not
work well, and the students do not really get in there in the
LMS.”
4. Conclusion
This article presents a proposal for development of a ubiquitous
learning environment, open source, which enables its rapid adop-
tion by educational Institutions and consequently by students and
teachers.
For this development, we propose a method that involves par-
ticipatory design and validation using quantitative and qualitative
techniques in order to determine whether there was acceptance,
motivation and engagement on the part of teachers and students.
The ubiquitous learning environment called Youubi was devel-
oped and provided to a set of participants through an Android ap-
plication to mobile smartphone.
The analysis of the questionnaires and reports from participants
showed that there was indeed accepted by users who participated
in the experiments. Reports from teachers showed that they see
the Youubi as an important ally to their practices. The results also
showed that the intrinsic u-learning environments features, com-
bined with features of gamification, social network and challenges
can balance learning and leisure, and consequently promote moti-
vation and engagement of learners.
5. Future works
Although Youubi environment has been tested by end-users,
within a case study using a Mobile client for smartphones and
tablets, the following are some points that need to be developed so
that this project can be used in a production environment. There-
fore, once the concept and requirements have been validated, it is
understood that the evolution of these points will enable to ac-
celerate the development of this project to produce a stable and
viable product:
1. Reduce the complexity of recommendation algorithms (Recom-
mender component) to enhance the attributes of efficiency.
2. Developing Web Client component.
3. Develop Customer iDTV component.
4. Develop Customer Smartwatch component.
5. Evolving Communication component to provide services, pro-
vided by API Youubi, the Redu and Amadeus LMS systems
through an authentication protocol.
6. Evolving Communication component to enable asynchronous
communication toward server-clients, to ensure notification
of recommendation and social interaction in real time.
7. Adapt the Collector component to facilitate content creation
that reference learning objects present in repositories of
Open Educational Resources, as well as the specific content
from other repositories (for example, links to Wikipedia and
YouTube).
1164 B. de Sousa Monteiro et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 55 (2016) 1145–1164

8. Adapt the Analyser component to identify “learning styles” of Greene, B. A., Miller, R. B., Crowson, H. M., Duke, B. L., & Akey, K. L. (2004). Predict-
learners. ing high school students’ cognitive engagement and achievement: Contributions
of classroom perceptions and motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology,
9. Develop “panel of the teacher”, span the Web Client component 29(4), 462–482.
to display detailed interactions and indicators of apprentices Hwang, G.-J., & Tsai, C.-C. (2011). Research trends in mobile and ubiquitous learning:
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of Educational Technology, 42(4), E65–E70.
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