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MC-Supporter: Flexible Mobile Computing Supporting
Learning though Social Interactions
Nelson Baloian
(Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
nbaloian@dcc.uchile.cl)
Gustavo Zurita
(Management Control and Information Systems Department, Universidad de Chile
Santiago, Chile
gzurita@fen.uchile.cl)
Abstract: Nowadays, we are experiencing a rapid development in mobile computing because
of the sinking prices of the mobile devices and the availability of wireless networks that can
connect them. The ability of many of these devices to set up ad-hoc networks by proximity
allows face-to-face interaction combined with mobility. However, mobile devices are much
weaker in computing power compared with desktop or laptop computing. Therefore, a key
aspect to ensure success of an application supporting mobile learning is whether mobility is
really needed for the activity it supports and if mobile devices do really represent an added
value compared with the same application implemented on non-mobile devices. This work
presents MCI-Supporter, an application supporting collaborative learning practises in the
classroom. MCI-Supported was conceived by first analyzing the best known collaborative
learning practices trying to find out which are the real needs for mobility and face-to-face
interaction and then designing the application supporting learning activities where mobile
computing does really represents an added value compared to the desktop computing scenario.
Keywords: Computer Supported Collaborative Llearning (CSCL), Mobile Learning, Social
Interactions
Categories: L.6.2, L.7.0
1 Introduction
Many authors have already stressed the importance of social interactions in the
learning process. For example, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory [Vygotsky, 1978]
points out at the importance of using artefacts that allow learners to interact
promoting knowledge acquisition. Bellamy [Bellamy, 1996] also proposes that
learners should create and share artefacts within their community. He also says that
educational environments should be designed in order to involve a close collaboration
among their peers as well as between students and experts. Many other authors like
[Barab, 2000], [Brown, 1989] and [Resnick, 1987] emphasize the social nature of
cognition and learning. Lave [Lave, 1988; Lave, 1991], has shown using
anthropological approaches that meaning and identity are constructed from social
interactions. Wenger states in his Social Theory of Learning [Wenger, 1998] that
people learn through participation in activities and that knowledge can be considered
as our ability to contribute to valued practices. Participating in a social unit provides
Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 15, no. 9 (2009), 1833-1851
submitted: 15/8/08, accepted: 25/4/09, appeared: 1/5/09 © J.UCS
meaning to experiences and activity, and provides shared perspectives and resources
for sustaining engagement in activity. Thus the social nature of experience provides
motivation for engagement, leads to joint enterprise, and shapes what is learned [SCRG,
2005]. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a discipline that promotes the
development of computer-based systems facilitating learners' communication, enabling high
levels of social interaction in the classrooms [Liu. 2003].
With the popularization of mobile computing devices many authors have highlighted
the interesting role that mobile computing can play in the development of CSCL systems
fostering social interactions in collaborative learning environments [Liu, 2002] [Zurita.,
2008]. Because of their reduced size, mobile devices allow a better face-to-face contact
between learners and mobility facilitates the dynamic configuration of the groups during a
computer supported learning activity as compared with the situation of learning supported by
desktop computing devices.
However, we think that in many cases the use of mobile devices to implement CSCL
activities is not fully justified. In fact, mobile devices have many drawbacks compared with
desktop computers: they have less computing power, a much smaller screen, and shorter
battery life, just to mention a few. For this reason, we think that before implementing a
mobile computing-based CSCL system it is important to analyse whether the advantages of
mobility compensate the drawbacks that mobile computing imposes for the particular
learning activity the system is going to support.
In this paper, we present a prototype of a system called Mobile Collaborative Interaction
Supporter (MCI-Supporter) based on PDAs and Tablet-PCs wirelessly interconnected,
implementing artefacts and techniques that can improve teacher-student social interaction. In
order to design the system’s requirements we start by analysing which pedagogical practices
can benefit from the mobile situation PDAs can provide despite of their drawbacks.
MCI-Supporter supports various pedagogical practices requiring rich teacher-students
and student-student interactions. It helps a teacher to create and distribute two different kinds
of problems to the students and provides tools to asses their work when solving them, thus
allowing the teacher to provide immediate feedback and promoting reflection. All this is
made in real time while allowing at the same time rich face-to-face interaction during the
teaching/learning session [Wright, 1995], [Skinner, 1993]. The system makes use of the
PDAs’ capabilities to automatically build an ad-hoc network among them by proximity
implementing a full peer-to-peer architected. This allows the system to be used anywhere,
without the presence of neither an external wireless network nor a central server. The next
chapter presents related work about CSCL and mobile learning. The third chapter presents
various learning practices and the way mobile computing in general and MCI-Supporter in
particular is able to improve them. The fourth chapter describes the functionalities that MCI-
Supporter implements in order to support the described learning activities. Chapter 5
presents its architecture. Chapter 6 presents a testing experience using the system in a real
teaching/learning scenario and chapter 7 concludes the paper.
2 Related Work
Some authors have already pointed out to the fact that research and technology are moving
towards ubiquitous computing [Sturm, 2005], where computers are there ready to be used
anytime, anywhere, not being the center of attention of the users but integrating swiftly and
subtle into the working scenario. Because of its characteristics, mobile devices are very
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suitable to integrate these kinds of scenarios. The classroom situation has been also
considered by many authors as an interesting scenario for implementing the principles of
ubiquitous computing. This term has also been associated with the concepts of pervasive
computing and calm technology [Roberts, 2006], and the “electronic classroom” has become
a quite popular term to describe a computer-integrated classroom [Müldner, 1996] [Baloian,
2008].
The contribution that mobile computing can offer to enrich the teaching/learning process
inside and outside the classroom has been acknowledged soon after the popularization of
mobile devices [Rochelle, 2003], and many systems supporting collaborative, mobile
learning have been developed since then.
In [Marcelino, 2007] the authors describe an authoring-tool for handhelds supporting
educational simulation and modeling, called Sim-H (SIMulation for Handhelds). The
software consists of several modules, each one relating to a type of simulation application
that can be used in an educational context. In [Bravo, 2005] the authors present an approach
to the classroom context by identification process using RFID technology as an implicit
input to the system. The main goal is to acquire natural interaction, because the only
requirement for the user (teacher or student) is to carry a device (smart label), identifying and
obtaining context services. In [Liu. 2003] and [Liu. 2002] we can also find more example of
handhelds supporting learning inside the classroom. In [Molina, 2005] the authors argue that
mobile devices can make some collaborative learning activities more realistic and accessible
using mobile devices because they allow students to benefit from the mobility features of this
kind of devices. They also present a system called DomoSim-Mob which supports the
learning of designing automated control facilities in buildings and housing design using
PDAs.
Although the previous works represent a valuable contribution to mobile computing
supporting collaborative learning, we think there is still room for improvement in many
aspects: first, the previously developed scenarios use a centralized communication system
attached to a non-mobile server, which does not allow the system to be used in settings
where a server and a wireless network connecting the handheld devices with the server is not
available. Second, the system is designed to support a specific and very structured learning
activity. It does not allow to define new problems to be delivered to the students “on the fly”
during the learning activity. Third, they offer limited options to assess the students’ work
“online” while they are working, before they complete the task. Nor they offer flexible
mechanisms to reconfigure the working groups during the learning activity.
Reconfiguring groups dynamically during the students’ work according to their
performance is a well known collaborative learning best practice [Johnson, 1996]. According
to the available literature, this feature has not been supported yet by any existing system
supporting mobile learning in the classroom.
3 Pedagogical practices supported by mobile computing
Suthters, [Suthers, 2005] holds that CSCL should focus on the design of technologies that
facilitate and foster teacher-students and student-student interactions, as this is a requirement
for interactional and especially intersubjective learning epistemologies. An intersubjective
learning epistemology goes beyond an information sharing conception of collaborative
learning in two ways: 1) it can be about sharing interpretations as well, and 2) these
interpretations can be jointly built through social interaction among participants, in addition
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to those created by individuals. Intersubjectivity is to be understood in a participatory sense,
and may involve disagreement. In this epistemology, learning is not only accomplished
through the interactions of the participants, but learning also consists of those interactions
themselves [Koshmann, 2005].
Developmental learning through social interaction can be understood as the
internalization of interpersonal processes as intrapersonal processes, [Vygotsky, 1978].
Therefore, the new practices in CSCL must be reflected in concomitant creation of novel
technological artefacts that support and help to replicate these practices of internalization.
3.1 Social Interaction in CSCL
Active participation of individuals conforming a learning group, as well as dynamic
construction of meanings by higher order cognitive processes is required in order to achieve
high levels of social interaction. This may involve logical thinking, conceptualizing,
analyzing, reasoning, and evaluating [Anton, 1999]. Based on this point of view,
construction of meanings and knowledge during social interactions involves making students
express their ideas and respond to others’. According to [Anton, 1999], some critical factors
of promoting social interaction in the classroom context are: 1) Motivating students'
participation: the teacher can trigger the learner's disequilibrium through posing just-in-time
appropriate and meaningful open problems. This will motivate them to inquire, and enhance
the need of collaboration by assessment and feedback. 2) Focusing students’ attention: to
ensure that students retain their focus is an important task in classroom interaction. For this,
the teacher can provide coaching to the student [Baloian, 2008]. 3) Externalizing internal
thinking: thinking does not “expresses” itself but must be shared by creating and exchanging
artefacts reflecting ideas, for example during reflection, and challenge-based learning
[Baloian, 2006]. 4) Constructing mutual and collaborative understanding: the interlocutors’
intention changes constantly before, during, and after the process of interaction. This affects
how he/she expresses thinking and responds to the others (peer-review).
It is difficult to get students develop collaborative strategies in the classroom setting
[Collazos, 2003]. Collaborative knowledge building in a classroom often requires students’
mobility in order to establish face-to-face interactions. Mobile CSCL (MCSCL) applications
enable three types of interactions among members in the classroom [Lagos, 2007],
including: (1) one-to-one interaction between two students either in the same or in different
groups; and between a student and the teacher (2) one-to-many communication between the
instructor and students; and (3) many-to-many communication among students.
Nevertheless, mobile CSCL design cannot effectively improve students' social interaction
(and learning) without the support of appropriate pedagogical practices embedded on the
design of the application.
With MCI-Supporter we do not want to propose a new pedagogical practice and test its
effectiveness but take the existing ones recognized as best practices and support them in
order to enhance the social interactions. From all the practices described by Barkley
[Barkley, 2005] as “best practices” for collaborative learning, we now describe which we
think are those most suitable to be supported by a mobile collaborative application and how
our system supports them:
Problem based learning: The characteristics of this learning practice are: 1) learning is
driven by open-ended problems; 2) students work individually or in small collaborative
groups; 3) teachers take on the role of “facilitators”. Accordingly, students are encouraged to
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take responsibility for themselves and the group, organizing and directing the learning
process with support from a teacher. It can be used to enhance content knowledge and foster
the development of communication, social interaction, problem-solving, and collaborative as
well self-directed learning skills.
Using a mobile computing device, the teacher sends to the students previously created
open problems or problems created “on the fly” during the learning session. This material is
distributed in real time and can be set either to individuals, to a certain students group or to
the whole class. While sending this material, the teacher can still interact face-to-face with
the students in order to explain, contextualize and/or clarify the problem the students have to
work on.
Assessment: It is a participatory, iterative process that: 1) provides information required
by the teacher in order to improve teaching and learning; 2) produces evidence about the
learning outcome of the students; 3) evaluates whether changes made improve/impact
student learning, and documents the learning and teacher’s efforts. Assessment of in-class
students’ work is a fundamental activity, since only when teachers are able to determine the
learning process and the learning stand of the students they are also able to provide the
students with the right learning environment (learning material plus learning activities) at the
right moment [Grüntgens, 2004]. This is also coherent with Cotton, who says “The body of
educational research literature which has come to be known as the effective schooling
research identifies the practice of monitoring student learning as an essential component of
high-quality education” [Cotton, 1988].
With MCI-Supporter the teacher can monitor each student individually or the whole
group displaying on his device the students’ workspace. The teacher can physically approach
a student or a group in order to give feedback in a face-to-face manner. Additionally the
teacher can use the mobile device to join the workspace of the student or the group at the
same time.
Coaching: It is a learning technique that involves observing individual or collaborative
work and providing advice to enhance performance or correct deficiencies from “behind the
scene”. It used: 1) to develop or provide new skills through on-the-student training; 2) to set
learning objectives and expectations together with the individual or among the group
participants; 3) to mutually develop and agree on a course of action for enhancing
performance; 4) to facilitate learning and enhance performance through using observation,
listening, and guidance skills. Give constructive advice and encourage and reward
accomplishments
With MCI-Supporter the teacher can join the workspace of an individual student or a
group of them working together. In this way, the teacher can add annotations and work
together leaving hints for the solution if necessary, complementing this device mediated
communication with face-to-face explanations
Reflection: It allows students to take a metacognitive stance to their involvement in the
project to explore their own individual and collaborative learning and to determine how the
experience has increased their abilities for future academic and professional experiences, as
well as informed them as to what skills they need to strengthen. Effective learning situations
require time for thinking. Students also reflect on themselves as learners when they evaluate
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the thinking processes they used to determine which strategies worked best. They can then
apply that information about how they learn as they approach learning in the future.
Feedback: It is used to inform learners about the quality and/or accuracy of their
responses. Feedback is distinguishable according to its content, which is identifiable by: 1)
load, i.e. the amount of information given from yes-no statements to fuller explanations; 2)
form, i.e., the structural similarity between information in the feedback compared to that in
the instructional presentation; and 3) type of information, i.e., whether the feedback restated
information from the original task, referred to information given elsewhere in the instruction,
or provided new information. Researchers recommended immediate feedback for
conventional educational settings. Some types or levels of feedback include: 1) a mark or
grade or success/fail classification of outcome; 2) the right answer; 3) procedural or surface
explanation of the right answer; 4) explanation of what makes the right answer correct: of
why it is the right answer; and 5) explanation of what's wrong about the learner's answer.
Challenge-based Learning: In CBL the question or the problem proposed is replaced
by a challenge, which the student has to face recurring to different resources that might be
available. The assignments or “challenges” to be solved might include ways to develop,
design and implement solutions for problems related to scientific phenomena. A meaningful
learning activity consistent with CBL is to present learners with a challenge scenario and to
ask them to think about a number of possible solutions using a variety of interactive tools.
Such an activity serves to centre thinking on meaningful problems and is typically effective
in facilitating small group collaboration.
MCI-Supporter allows the teacher to generate and send open questions or “challenges”
to the students (individuals or group) during the lecture in three different ways: 1) the teacher
can send not fully delimited problems or questions, created on the fly specified by
incomplete free-hand drown sketches generated and edited by gestures. 2) same as 1 but the
teacher can send along a selection option set to chose the correct answer, 3) same as 1 but
with multiple choice option, or 4) same as 1 but sending a sequence of selection (selection of
answers in the right sequence). Correspondingly, the answers from the students can be totally
open, based on sketches or closed, based on selection. Teacher can use face-to-face
interaction to discuss the questions and answers with the students.
The interface allows the teacher to create and send material to the students to work on
without having to interact face-to-face. Since the material can be free hand created sketches,
the teacher can modify them or add new elements to during the learning session thus the
original problem can “evolve” according to the performance of the students.
Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCSCL): Mobile technology opens up potentials
for students to work collaboratively while they are in movement, rather than working with
allocated partners at a fixed desktop. Students can move inside the classroom and interact
with other students in any way that they need. In a MCSCL application it is possible to
recognize the technological and the social network: they can communicate face-to-face or by
means of the interconnected mobile computing devices.
With MCI-Supporter the teacher can reconfigure the working groups during the exercise
in real time, as well as send new problems in order to put students to work together which
best fit together taking in account their background knowledge, working style, personal
characteristics, etc. Students belonging to a same group can open a shared workspace and
work synchronously. Group reconfiguration is also necessary when implementing the Jigsaw
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learning practice (Aaronson, 1997) with mobile computer support. Especially during group
reconfiguration face-to-face communication between students and teacher and among
students themselves may be of crucial importance to coordinate the new situation
Peer-Assisted Leaning: Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) involves students consciously
assisting others to learn, and in so doing, learning more effectively themselves. PAL
encompasses peer tutoring, peer modelling, peer education, peer counselling, peer
monitoring, and peer assessment, which are differentiated from other more general
"cooperative learning" methods.
With MCI-Supporter the teacher can select a certain workspace of a student or group of
students in order to present it to the rest of the class if there is an “interesting solution” which
may be a good, or a novel solution or a “near miss”. At the same time, the teacher uses face-
to-face communication to explain the interesting characteristics of the solution being shown.
Figure 2: Interactions between teacher’s and students’ modules
4 Description of MCI Supporter
The MCI-Supporter has been developed to address the pedagogical practices and
interactions described in the previous section. For this, the teacher must be able to define
groups, assign students to them, create and send problems and asses the students’ work by
visualizing and joining their workspaces. The students should be able to work on their
assigned problems collaboratively and send the answers to the teacher. An application
implementing a teacher’s and a student’s module implementing these actions was developed.
The application runs either on PDAs and Tablet-PCs, automatically adapting the interface in
order to fit to the respective screen. It has a teacher’s and a students’ module. The figure 2
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shows the interactions between the teacher’s and the students’ module, and the interaction
between the students’ modules among them.
Groups’ setup: In order to implement collaborative learning, working groups have to
be established. This has to be done by the teacher in order to have groups with equal number
of participants and distribute them according to their skills. Thus the teacher module has to
implement this action. In order to configure the groups, the teacher must enter the “Group
making” mode. By clicking the “Create group” icon she will create a new “Group sandbox”.
A group sandbox will represent the common workspace of a group. Each sandbox displays a
scaled version of the group’s workspace in real time. For every student participating in the
activity an icon with her/his name will be displayed. Several sandboxes are shown in the
teacher device, allowing her/him to have an overall view of what all groups are doing. Figure
3 shows an example of an activity with 3 group sandboxes.
To assign a student to a certain group the teacher may drag participants and drop them
over group sandboxes. In order to allow fast configuration of groups, especially in those
cases where the groups have to be conformed with students having different levels of skills
the teacher may use the “Randomize groups” functionality, by which students are randomly
distributed to the groups trying to create groups of the same size. Group sandboxes display
“participant icons” in order to represent the number of members. When students are assigned
to a group, they are notified and a message displays the id of the assigned group. Other group
members will be displayed on the student’s interface by an icon and the name.
In order to manage students from a group, the teacher must “enter” into a group’s
sandbox by double clicking it. This will zoom in and display the detailed information of the
visualized group, including members’ icons with their name labels. Reconfiguration of the
groups is always possible by dragging the icon of a student out from the original group
sandbox to another.
Figure 3: Teacher’s module, in Group setup mode
Problems management: In order to allow teacher to create and distribute the problems
students have to work on the teacher’s module implements a “Problem manager” mode. This
mode allows teachers to both create problems, using pen-based sketching and gestures, and
load previously created problems. To create a new problem, the teacher must click the “New
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problem” icon. The system will create the new problem icon, and zoom in, entering the
“Problem edit” mode. Teachers can also load previously created problems by clicking the
“Previous problems” icon.
Problem edit mode: In this mode, teacher can define the nature of the problem. There
are two main types of problems: open and closed. Closed problems are more suitable to be
used with a larger number of students since the feedback can be made automatically without
the direct intervention of the teacher during the class. On the contrary, open problems allow
the teacher to specify a richer variety of them. It is also easier and faster to change the
specification of an open problem during the class. However, open problems require the
direct intervention of the teacher for feedback and assessment.
Open problems are based on written or drawn instructions, which students will follow
once problems are assigned. Closed problems consist on choosing the right option from a list
of possible answers. For open problems, teachers are not required to configure possible
answers sets and correctness assessment must be performed manually. For open problems
students write or draw a solution.
a) b)
Figure 4: a) writing the problem definition and the answers; b) delimiting the
elements by closing them in rectangles
For closed problems students must chose the right alternatives. There are three subtypes
of closed problems: Single answer, multiple answers and sequence answer, (see “Answers
assessment” section). Closed problems include a drawn or written description of the problem
and a set of alternatives. The teacher defines the correct answer in order to enable automatic
assessment (see “Problem answer” section). In order to create a problem’s description and
alternatives, the teacher must type, hand-write or draw texts and images. A closed problem
consists of three parts: the problem description, the right answer and a set of wrong answers.
Figure 4 shows this process. On the figure 4a) the teacher’s hand-writing of the different
elements of the problem is shown. The figure 4 b) shows how the elements can be defined
and delimited by closing them into rectangles. The rectangle gesture is interpreted by the
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system as a special instruction, which defines an element containing the strokes surrounded
by the rectangle define by the gesture. Once the parts of the problem have been defined, the
teacher must drag problem description into the description area, correct answers must be
dragged to the solution area (more than one right alternative is allowed) and wrong
alternatives must be dragged to the alternatives area. This is shown in the figure 4 c).
Figure 4: c) dragging the problem parts into the respective areas
Problem distribution: Once created, problems’ have to be distributed to the various
groups. For each problem an icon is displayed in the “problem manager” mode. The teacher
can assign a problem to groups by dragging its icon into the group’s sandbox. One problem
may be assigned to several groups and one group may receive several problems. After the
problem is assigned, the teacher may enter the “problem edit” mode to modify it or to create
a new version of the same problem. This means, new problem proposals can be created
starting from the existing ones, or that the same problem can “evolve” from simple to more
complex challenges.
Problem answer: In order to show the students the problems that have been assigned to
their groups the icons are shown in their devices as a list. A small figure shows if the
assignment is pending, it is being worked, it has been completed and evaluated, or is waiting
for the teacher assessment (for open problems). In order to answer a problem, students have
to double click its icon, accessing the assignment in full screen. For closed problems the
problem description is located in the upper region and the alternatives are located in the
lower region. The middle zone of the screen varies depending on the subtype, displaying
instructions for students. These instructions describe if students must choose a single answer,
define a group of alternatives or define a sequence among the alternatives. First, each single
member of a group must answer the problem individually, dragging the alternatives from the
bottom area into the middle region.
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Closed answers: In order to promote discussion and interaction among the member of a
group, closed problems require all members of a group to agree on the correct answer before
submitting it to the teacher. Once each student has defined her/his choice she/he must click
the “Share answer with group” button, located in the “interaction palette” (Figure 5). As
other members chose their answers, coordination lights turn red or green. For each member
of the group, a light will turn green when the other student’s answers coincide or red if not.
Members who have not chosen their answers yet have all their lights off (grey). This tool
allows students to coordinate their answers, to encourage debate, and to empower majorities.
Figure 5: The figure in the right shows the students must chose an answer by clicking
on the “Share answer with group” button. After choosing an answer, the button turns
into and agreement indicator (center). Here, the button shows the student’s answer
coincides with one student but differs from two other. Once all members agree on the
answer, it turns into the “Submit answer” button (right),
Collaborative answer to open problems: Open problems allow students to write and
draw their solution (Figure 6). Collaboration allows students to achieve a common answer,
based on all group members’ participation. For these problems students share a common
writing/drawing area, where they can build a collaborative solution based on pen-based
gestures.
Submitting Answers: Once the group has agreed about an answer (using the
coordination indicator for closed problems or drawing the answer together in open
problems), all members must agree to submit the problem to the teacher. Using the same
interaction palette shown in the figure 4, each group participant must click the “Submit
answer” button. Again, coordination lights are displayed to represent how many members
have agreed to submit the solution. Once all members have agreed about submitting an
answer, it is sent to the teacher.
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Figure 6: Screenshots of two students’ PDAs jointly working in the same group work
solving different part of a problem
Close problems’ instant assessment: Because closed problems have defined answers,
the system can automatically assess a group’s answer to a certain problem. Therefore, as
soon as the group agrees to send a closed problem answer, the system checks its correctness
and sends a notification to the group. Students can immediately see the evaluation in the
problem list.
Answer update: As far as an answer has not been submitted students can change their
choice for the correct answer. For of closed problems, this would require the repetition of the
solution agreement and the submitting process.
Online-assessments: As described in the section “Group Setup” of this chapter, the
teacher can visualize the current activity of all groups at the same time (figure 3). This helps
the teacher to check whether groups are working correctly, or to find out if any group may
need feedback or further assistance. Once the teacher realizes a group needs help, she/he may
enter the group’s sandbox and input the feed back directly into the current working area of all
participants. In this way, Students receive teacher’s feedback in real time.
Activity results: The Activity Results mode of the teacher’s module shows all assigned
problems as a table containing reduced views of the answers where the teacher can check all
answers at the same time. The teacher can check the solutions to any problem by clicking on
any problem preview. Figure 7 shows an example of the activity results table. Tick and cross
icons allow the teacher to quickly view the current state of the activity. Clicking again on any
problem preview allows the teacher to provide feedback to students.
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Figure 7: The teacher’ view showing the results mode
5 The MCI Supporter Architecture
MCI Supporter has been developed on top of a framework previously developed by the
authors of this work for supporting the development of other mobile applications for
different purposes [Baloian, 2007] Some of them have been collaborative face-to-face design
[Zurita, 2008] and meetings [Zurita, 2006]. The framework supports the development of
applications in two ways. The first one refers to the programming of the communication
functionalities of peer-to-peer applications and offers support at three levels: peers
discovering, information exchange and group management. The bottom level is the
discovering of peers, which is implemented using multicasting: each application sends
multicast packages to announce its participation. All other applications will notice the
presence and establish a TCP/IP communication channel in order to share information. This
process is transparent for the application programmer and is initiated just by the fact of using
the platform. The second level is the information exchange, which is implemented as a
library of classes implementing what we called Shared Objects. A Shared Object is an
abstract class which should be extended in order to create an object class whose state will be
transmitted to all active participants when the object changes its state, this is, when one or
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more object variables change their value. The programmer implements a shared object by
extending the SharedObject abstract class. The third level is tightly coupled with the level
implementing the Shared Objects and is the Application Group Management level. It was
mainly the in-classroom learning scenario that motivated the development of this
functionality as part of the framework because of the need to define subgroups of partners
inside the whole group of active participants. For example, the teacher may want to propose
a task which should be accomplished by small groups which do interact among them, but
she wants to keep the possibility of looking what the different groups are doing. For this we
developed the necessary mechanisms inside the middleware in order to create groups and
have applications join and leave them. Any shared object created inside an application within
a group will be also created in all the applications belonging to the group. If the state of the of
the shared object changes, this will be transmitted to all applications of the group.
Resizing Rotating
Figure 8: Some of the most interesting gestures supported by the platform in order to
develop gesture-based application interfaces
The second the framework supports the development of applications for mobile devices
is by providing the programmer with a class library that supports the development of
application interfaces where user-machine interaction is based on gestures. This is especially
convenient for implementing interfaces in small touch sensitive screens. Interaction based
exclusively on gestures, minimizes the number of widgets and the need of a virtual keyboard
and maximizes the space available for entering content when it consists of exclusively free
handwriting inputs. Some of the most important gestures supported by the framework are
described in figure 8.
a
b
c d selecting
Deleting
1846 Baloian N., Zurita G.: MC-Supporter: Flexible Mobile Computing ...
6 Preliminary testing
The main hypothesis of this work is that MCI-Supporter mobile nature does take advantage
of the mobile situation to promote social interaction inside the classroom environment. To
test this hypothesis a large scale experiment is needed. However, the system has already
been preliminary tested in a real scenario in order to test the suitability of the system to be
used in the classroom and have some preliminary results about its usability in order to
prepare it for a larger scale formal testing. During two weeks, 24 students and two different
teachers from a pre-graduate university course used MCI-Supporter. The activity was aimed
at exercising concepts learnt during course about software development. All type of
problems where used during the experience as well as the group reconfiguration
functionality. They used the system twice a week in sessions of one and a half hour each. As
far as possible, all learning activities described in table 1 were tried. Teacher used a Tabled
PC and the students used PDAs.
Figure 9: On the right pictures we see students belonging to one group working
together during the preliminary test On the left pictures students during
reconfiguration of the groups
During the activities we could observe high levels of social interaction for all the
pedagogical activities. The teacher could easily and swiftly perform the activities of forming
groups, distribute exercises and assess the student’s work while maintaining the face-to-face
communication with them. We also noted that group reconfiguration and inter-group
interaction was eased by the fact that they were using mobile devices. We conducted a
survey among the students in order to know their opinions about the usability and
effectiveness of the system for supporting their work. 67% “agreed” that the system was
easy to learn and to use, 33% “strongly agreed”. 75% of the students “agreed” that they felt
comfortable using sketches, gesture based interaction and overall with the visual metaphor
the interface was based on. Another 25% “strongly agreed” with the same sentence.
Regarding the effective support the system offered to boost the social interactions 66.6%
“agreed”, a 16.6% “strongly agreed”, and a 16.6% took a neutral position. All students
agreed that they felt more motivated to participate in learning activities supported by mobile
computing since mobility enabled the face-to-face interactions with other students and with
the teacher. Regarding the teachers, both agreed that the system can be applied to any type of
content and that its operation is on the whole simple. Some comments from the teachers and
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Baloian N., Zurita G.: MC-Supporter: Flexible Mobile Computing ...
the students revealed that the collaborative editing of the sketches was difficult at the
beginning and that they had to “learn” how to synchronize themselves. For this, face-to-face
interaction was very helpful. They recommended use to improve this part of the system by
incorporating more awareness hints.
7 Conclusions
The goal of MCI-Supporter is to support a pedagogic style that turns traditional face-to-face
teaching into more of a two-way conversation between instructor and student. One of the
most important design principles was to combine computer-mediated with face-to-face
interaction for a more motivating learning environment. With this design principle in mind,
the mobility of students and teacher turned into a requirement, and the problem-based and
challenge based learning style was used in order to actively engaging students in the learning
process. Although there are other works using also mobile technology to engage students in
problem-base learning activities, we can conclude from the literature that this system is
unique in the following aspects:
• It is a full peer-to-peer architecture, not using a central server, which allows the
system to be used without restriction in any scenario, for example, outside the
classroom in a laboratory, a museum, an exhibition to support learning “in the
wild”.
• Since creation of problems (and its solutions) is based on free-hand writing and
sketching input, the system is independent of the subject being taught (as far as
the teacher can imagine problems based on sketches and text) and it allows the
creation of new problems with open or closed answers “on the fly”. During the
preliminary test, we saw this feature to be used by one teacher to modify the
original problem several times, thus the problem evolved stage by stage to a more
complex one.
• It allows the teacher to overview all the workspaces of the groups at the same
time. The teacher can choose to give immediate feedback (or proposing a new
problem) to any of the groups by joining the synchronized workspace of that
group.
Finally, we would like to stress that, although mobile technology represents a big
potential for supporting students’ learning, they have important limitations. Therefore
mobile PDAs-based applications must be carefully designed to account for these
limitations.
Acknowledgements
The work of this paper was funded by Fondecyt project 1085010 and a NICT scholarship.
1848 Baloian N., Zurita G.: MC-Supporter: Flexible Mobile Computing ...
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