CoMobile: Collaborative Learning with Mobile Devices
Duc Phuong Nguyen, Martin Guggisberg, Helmar Burkhart
Computer Science Department, University of Basel
50 Klingelbergstr, CH-4056, Switzerland
Phuong.Nguyen@unibas.ch
Abstract
One of the common tools that support collaborative
learning is web-based forum. A web forum is a place
where students can ask questions, exchange their
ideas, learning materials, learning experiences, and so
on. As mobile devices can be used to access
information from anywhere and at anytime, it would be
useful to integrate these devices into such learning
activities. However, it is a challenge to adapt web
applications to mobile devices because of the
limitations of screen size and processing power. In this
paper, we introduce a novel application using mobile
phones for accessing multimedia contents efficiently.
Our system, the Interactive Multimedia Forum for
Mobile Users (CoMobile), supports collaborative
learning with various devices such as PC, PDA, and
mobile phones.
1. Introduction
Web forum is a popular tool used in learning
environment. Many universities have student’s web
forums. The forum is a place for students to ask
questions related to lectures, to share their learning
materials (e.g.: electronic books, online tutorials,
useful links), to discuss about exercises, or difficult
topics. Using the forum, the students work
collaboratively in order to solve some problems or
enhance their knowledge by sharing information.
As mobile devices are increasingly used for
learning activities, it is reasonable to think about
integrating these devices into the forum system.
However, new design methods should be considered
because complex web applications like web forum
might not be used efficiently on the small screen of
mobile devices.
Current web browsers for mobile devices just
display web pages as in a shrunken desktop. It makes
web browsing on mobile devices extremely difficult
and frustrating. The users must navigate the pages by
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
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scrolling and paging on the small display. Most of web
pages which are designed for a desktop PC (normally
1024x800 pixels) fits badly into a small screen and
require a lot of scrolling both horizontally and
vertically. Some approaches for browsing on small
screen have been proposed. They fall into the
following categories:
x New markup language or new file format for
mobile devices: For example using Wireless
Markup Language (WML) [1] instead of HTML
for web pages. A page contains of short text items
with low quality images that can be retrieved by
navigating a series of menus. New file formats such
as SMIL [2]; Flash Lite [3] can be used for
delivering multimedia contents to mobile devices.
x Scaling: The original layout of the HTML pages is
kept. The pages are scaled down to fit into the
small screen. As the device’s screen is much
smaller than the desktop, scaling down the web
pages reduce readability.
x Manual changing: The web pages are designed for
specific target devices. Therefore, for the same
information, there will be many versions: the
desktop PC version (with all possible elements
such as images, tables, long text) and other
compact versions for handheld devices (with small
images, and summarized text). Because of the labor
required for the duplication task, only a small
number of web sites have been done for mobile
devices.
x Dynamically transforming the HTML to be
displayed on mobile devices [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]: Some
algorithms are used to filter out “less” interesting
information of the HTML pages. The layout of the
pages might be also compressed (for example:
remove some tables, reorder items).
x Data overview, also known as “focus + context”
model [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]: The layout of the
pages is kept as they are. The browsing experience
is improved by enhancing the interaction
techniques. For example, using thumbnails to give
an overview of the whole pages (context); the users
 can see more details by going into a specific
section.
x Split the link navigation and reading activities into
separate modes [15]: all the links of a HTML page
are displayed in one mode and the text is displayed
in another mode. The idea is that sometimes users
only want to read the content of the page without
going to another page (e.g.: reading stock
exchanges, weather forecast). In some other
situations, reading all the hyperlinks of a HTML
page is enough (e.g.: finding an email address).
These approaches either require a lot of duplicate
work or provide few interaction possibilities.
Moreover, displaying long text on small screen is not
the optimal solution. In addition, it is convenient if the
contents that are available for web browser clients also
available for mobile clients and vice versa. In this
paper, we introduce a new way to use mobile devices
in learning activities. The structure of the paper is as
follow. Section 2 discusses about some related work.
Section 3 describes the system in details, for example
the scenarios that the forums can be used as well as the
advantages of using mobile devices with the system. In
section 4, we describe the system’s software
components. Finally, we summarize the result and
outline future work.
2. Related work
There exist some applications that use Personal
Digital Assistant (PDA) or mobile phones for
collaborative tasks in classroom such as discussion,
and chat. For example, PDA devices are used in [16] to
send short text messages to a central server. The users
query the database each minute for new messages. The
system can be used for group discussion. However, the
exchanged information is limited to short text message
only.
In the MoCoCoMa system [17], concept maps are
constructed collaboratively by sending structured SMS
(Short Message Service). The concept maps data are
stored in a database and can be viewed on PC by Java
applet. There are also some applications that use SMS
in non-interactive ways such as announcement [18],
reminders of submissions and hints [19], and English
learning by pushing vocabulary materials to students’
devices [20].
Another kind of application is the mobile blog
(moblog for short) [21]. A blog is a website in which
entries are posted regularly and displayed in reverse
chronological order. Moblog sites consist of contents
posted from mobile devices such as mobile phones or
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
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PDA (by sending email, SMS). However, moblog sites
use mobile devices solely for data submission. The
issue of how to accessing multimedia contents
efficiently is not considered in moblog.
3. CoMobile - Collaborative Learning
3.1. Overview
CoMobile uses mobile devices as a new client type
to access web forum. The system has two types of
client: The normal web browser clients and the mobile
clients. CoMobile supports various multimedia content
types such as text, pictures, video clips, and audio. In
CoMobile system, the contents that are available for
web browser clients will also be available for mobile
clients and vice versa.
The system overcomes mobile devices’ limitations
by providing diverse input and output channels.
3.2. User scenarios
Web browser clients
Like any web forum, the common working process
is as follow:
Using the web browser, the users login to the
system, select some category (e.g.: mobile computing,
computer network), read the posted entries, submit a
new topic or reply to a posted entry. Text is submitted
using HTML form; pictures and voice are uploaded to
the server as files.
Mobile clients
The user access the forum using: SMS, MMS,
WAP, HTML browser, and dialing.
Scenario 1 “Asking anytime”
Alice is in the library and reading a book about
“Mobile computing”. She has a question regarding the
Multimedia Message System (MMS). Unfortunately,
Alice did not bring her laptop with, so she could not
search on the Web for information about MMS. Alice
composes an SMS and send to the CoMobile: “Does
anyone know how the MMS system works?” One hour
later, while Alice is still reading the book, she receives
one SMS from the CoMobile, “There is an answer to
your question, but it is too long to send as SMS. Please
call 555 to hear the answer”. Alice calls the short
number, the answer is very good and Alice tells the
system to send the answer (an audio file) to her per
email.
Scenario 2 “Learning anywhere”
 Bob is in the train back to home. He wants to
review the lecture “Computer tools” that he just took 2
hours ago. Bob doesn’t have a laptop. In addition,
internet connection is not support in the train.
However, Bob can access to the learning material
using his mobile phone. He calls the CoMobile
number, press 5 and listens to the recorded voice of the
lecture (which is immediately available in CoMobile
after the lecture).
Scenario 3 ”Sharing experiences”
Alice is attending an international computer
exhibition. There was a demonstration about how to
setup a telephone system with VoIP client and the
open source PBX software Asterisk. It was a very
interesting and useful demonstration. Alice recorded
the whole session (about 3 minutes) as a video file
using her mobile phone. She wanted to share this
experience with other students. She composed an
MMS with the video attached and posts it to the
CoMobile via MMS. After that, the video is available
online to other students and it can be accessed via web
browser or mobile phone (request to get the MMS
message stored in the server or get the video file via a
WAP-push).
Scenario 4 “Convenient tool”
Alice and Bob are in the Cafeteria. They are
discussing about the open source SMS gateway
Kannel. They wonder if there exists an open source
MMS gateway (as the MMS system is related to SMS
system and they think it is possible to extend the SMS
gateway to support MMS). They decide to ask the
community about this issue. Bob finds it is difficult to
formulate the question within the 160 characters limit
of SMS, so he uses the “post voice entry” of the
system: Bob call the CoMobile number, press 2 to
record a voice question and says
“We wonder if there is an open source MMS
gateway. If no, does anyone interest to join our project
to write an open source MMS gateway? Please contact
me by email Bob@university.ch”
Scenario 5 “Collaboration”
Christian is in the train to Basel. The CoMobile
sends him an SMS, notifies that there are 5 news
forum entries related to the category “Mobile
computing” which Christian subscribed as one of his
interested channel. He calls CoMobile to browse the
new posts. He is interested in the MMS project idea of
Alice and Bob. Christian calls CoMobile and submits
his answer as recorded voice. At the same time, there
are also two other students who want to join the MMS
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
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project. They posted their comments on the CoMobile
web site.
Scenario 6 “University radio”
The University provides a new kind of service:
“University radio”. It is an extension of “University
news”. The service “University news” is a notification
system via email to all members such as colleges,
students about events, and activities within University.
Now the same information is available as audio and
accessible via Web and phones using CoMobile.
3.3. Advantages of the CoMobile Forum
There are several benefits of using CoMobile for
learning activities:
+ Leverage collaboration and lifelong learning: with
SMS notifications (e.g.: when someone post a reply to
a forum entry), the students can immediately access to
the forum using mobile devices (get voice data;
Internet connection is not required).
+ Avoid limitations of mobile devices: listening to
audio can improve the students’ comprehension in
compare to reading only a small amount of text on the
small screen. If the users find it is difficult to input text
with mobile devices, they can post “voice entry” to the
forum with “record during phone call” feature.
+ Support a variety of devices: PC, PDA, mobile
phones and even fix phones can be used to access the
forum. The mobile devices have small display and less
power than PC but they don’t require Internet
connection and can be used to access the forum when
the users are on the move (on train, in bus, etc). If the
users have mobile phones with MMS support, they can
access to additional contents (text and pictures). With
old mobile phones, text and voice data are accessible.
+ New kind of service for students: Internet radio can
be access through mobile phones using CoMobile (call
the radio service to hear). Examples of application are:
University radio, student group’s radio, and Podcast).
+ Support various types of multimedia contents
(pictures, audio, and video).
4. System architecture
4.1. Overview
Figure 1 shows the CoMobile software
components. The system composes of the following
components: the Control Servlet, the SMS gateway,
the MMS gateway, the Interactive Voice Response
(IVR) system, and other plug-in components such as
web forum system, database, and speech synthesis
system. The control servlet communicates with other
 components via HTTP. All components of CoMobile
are open source software.
MMS gateway Interactive Voice
Response System
Control
Servlet
SMS gateway Plug-in
components
Figure 1: CoMobile modules
CoMobile is based on open source components
4.2. Control Servlet
The system works as follow. Each content type will
be managed by a specific component. For example, the
SMS gateway is responsible for sending notification
SMS to user. It takes care of incoming SMS and
forwards the SMS to the control servlet for further
processing. Similarly, the MMS gateway manages
multimedia contents (text, pictures, and audio) which
are sent to and received from the users.
To achieve reusability and extensibility, these
components don’t communicate with each other
directly. The application logic is implemented in the
control servlet. For example, the control servlet
communicates with the MMS gateway to know the
location of the stored MMS. The control servlet takes
care that these contents will be accessible from the web
forum. The Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
component allows the user to browse the forum
content using phones, and provides the “record by
call” feature. The control servlet communicates with
the IVR component and then inform the web forum
application about the location of the audio data.
4.3. SMS gateway
Kannel is an Open Source SMS Gateway [22]. It is
used to access the CoMobile application (run on a Web
server) through the mobile network. A mobile phone is
connected to a PC that runs the Kannel Server which
manages incoming and outgoing SMS. Incoming SMS
are searched for predefined patterns (keywords). If a
match is found, the Kannel sends a HTTP request to
the CoMobile servlet running inside Tomcat, the
servlet engine. Outgoing SMS are created by sending
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06)
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an HTTP request from the CoMobile servlet to the
Kannel Server.
4.4. MMS gateway
Mbuni is an Open Source MMS Gateway [23]. It
extends the Kannel code base in order to support
sending and receiving MMS messages. Mbuni works
very similar to Kannel system. Incoming MMS is
decoded into files (e.g.: pictures, text, and audio).
Mbuni will pass the location of these multimedia
contents to the control servlet. Outgoing MMS can be
sent from command line or through HTTP request.
4.5. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System
Asterisk is an open source Private Branch Exchange
(PBX) system [24-25]. Simply speaking, a PBX
system is used to connect the telephone from an
organization to the Public Switch Telephone Network
(PSTN) and to centralize telephone management such
as call retrieval, call transfer and parking, call routing,
voice mail, and so on. PBX is a complex system and
provides a lot of functions related to tele-
communication. The features of Asterisk which are
interesting for our system are:
- Receive a phone call, get the user’s keypad input
and execute some actions according to the input (e.g.:
sending an HTTP request).
- Call and connect to a telephone channel, and play
back some audio on that channel.
- Record the voice data during a phone conversation.
4.6. Other components
The current prototype of CoMobile uses the Drupal
Content Management System [26] as the web forum
application. However, it can be replaced by any other
open source web forum.
When a text is too long to send via SMS, the text
will be converted to speech. CoMobile uses the
Festival open source speech synthesis system [27].
5. Conclusion
We introduced a novel mobile learning application.
Our multimedia forum allows the students to work
collaboratively using heterogeneous devices, at
anytime and from anywhere. The system lets the
mobile users access efficiently the same information
that the web browser clients have. The system is
flexible as the user can use several channels (WAP,
MMS, SMS, email, and voice) to submit and access
the multimedia forum.
 There are several issues that should be considered
when using mobile devices to access multimedia
contents (video, audio).
x Bandwidth: The CoMobile users download the
video files to their mobile devices. The size of a
good quality mobile video file is around 1MB (for
1 minute length). With a General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS) connection (approximately 100-
160.0 kbit/s), it would take less than half a minute
to download a video from CoMobile.
x Scalability: The software components used by
CoMobile are stable open source projects. They
exist already several years and are widely used.
When the number of users increases, the system
has to be upgraded (e.g.: more telephone lines are
required). However, this is the hardware issue and
can be solved easily.
x Cost for the users: The users still have to pay
when sending SMS, MMS. However, many
telephone service providers have already offered
attractive “flat-rate” package. We believe that
such offer will be common in the near future.
An evaluation of the prototype is planned for the
coming semester.
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