Kaanbal: A Mobile Learning Platform Focused on Monitoring and Customization of Learning

Abstract

For the new educational models, it is essential to include teaching strategies that allow students to customize their learning based on their competencies, skills, and preferences, as well as strategies that support individual monitoring of student learning. However, the implementation of these strategies in teaching is complex for professors, and it gets complicated, as the number of students in the class-room increases. In this work, the design and development of a mobile learning platform are presented, which provides the professor and student with multiple services for the learning monitoring and customization based on learning styles, context information, and mobile learning objects. Our platform is composed of three main components: (1) A mobile learning object generator system, (2) A learning object repository, and (3) A student-oriented mobile application. The in-tegration of these three components allows and facilitates the professor the im-plementation of various strategies for monitoring and customization of learning systematically. We carried out a usability assessment of the learning object gener-ator system through a field study with five research professors. According to the obtained results, the learning object generator system presents a good acceptance, satisfaction, and applicability from the professors' perspective.

Mobile Learning Platform focused on Learning Monitoring and Customization: Usability Evaluation Based on a Laboratory Study

“…In this work, we carry out a usability evaluation of the learning monitoring and personalization services of the mobile learning platform proposed in [18] based on a laboratory study in which nine teachers and ten students participated. In the subsequent sections, we present the details of the usability evaluation carried out, starting with the description of the mobile learning platform, the definition of the laboratory studies, the description of the instruments generated for the evaluation, and ending with the details on the execution of the evaluation.…”

“…The mobile learning platform presented in [18] is characterized by the related works proposed in the specialty literature by the following aspects: a) Consider learning styles while incorporating mechanisms to obtain students' physical activity to provide recommendations of learning objects related to student preferences and conditions; b) Provide recommendations of learning objects that were useful to other students with equal or similar learning styles; c) Allow monitoring of the studied learning objects by students; and 94 carrying a complete flow from when the professor designs and creates a mobile learning object, until the student consults it from a mobile device, and subsequently obtains feedback and selfassessment, see Fig. 1.…”

“…However, in practice, it is difficult to carry them out within the framework of traditional education since it is difficult for a teacher to keep track of each of his students and even more difficult to personalize his education based on his skills and abilities. In this context, some works have proposed mobile learning systems [3] - [18]. Nevertheless, the mobile learning platform presented in [18] is characterized by providing the teachers and students with various learning monitoring and personalization services that include mobile learning objects, considering the students' learning styles and context information.…”

“…In this context, some works have proposed mobile learning systems [3] - [18]. Nevertheless, the mobile learning platform presented in [18] is characterized by providing the teachers and students with various learning monitoring and personalization services that include mobile learning objects, considering the students' learning styles and context information. This platform comprises three main components: a mobile learning object generator system (SiGOAM), a mobile learning object repository (MLOR), and a mobile application (MoApp) focused on the student.…”

“…Some of the possible problems derived from a lack of usability evaluation in these types of systems are potential errors in the interface design, unacceptable ease of use, errors that the user makes when interacting with the software in a real environment, among others [28]. This work presents a usability evaluation of the learning monitoring and personalization services of the mobile learning platform proposed in [18] based on a laboratory study in which nine teachers and ten students participated. In our usability evaluation, the aspects evaluated were effectiveness, efficiency, and level of user satisfaction as proposed by the standards ISO/IEC 25010 and ISO/IEC 25022 [19], [20].…”