Students' experiences with PDAs for reading course materials

Abstract

Abstract:The availability of text reading and editing software for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) makes it timely to consider whether PDAs are useful tools for reading learning materials. This paper describes a study that evaluated the use of PDAs for reading by students on a Masters course run by the UK Open University. The evaluation consisted of pre-and post-questionnaires, and follow-up interviews. In addition, students discussed their experiences in a computer-based conference. Findings show that while the portability of the device was welcomed by students, and the electronic format was advantageous, limitations such as the small screen size, navigation difficulties, and slow and error-prone methods for entering text, made it difficult to read and interact with documents. The paper recommends that further research consider the value of PDAs as reading devices in the context of other potential ways that PDAs can be used as learning tools.

Ubiquitous Learning on Pocket SCORM

“…Portability of the PDAs was welcomed by students, and advantageous was advantageous, limitations such as the small screen size, navigation difficulties, and slow and error-prone methods for entering text, made it difficult to read and interact with document on the PDA [6]. Some students' experiences for reading course materials by PDAs were experimented.…”

Mobile information access in the real world: A story of three wireless devices

“…combined information and entertainment) return is not going to justify the initial outlay. However, whilst research in the area has focused on themes such as usability, multimodal interaction and haptics (Buyukkokten et al, 2000;Fulk, 2001;MacKay, 2003;Waycott and Kukulska-Hulme, 2003;Yue et al, 2006), the field of context aware computing has primarily concentrated on application-centred issues (Nylander et al, 2004), as well as personalisation (Chandrasekaran and Joshi, 2002;Hinz, Fiala and Wehner, 2004) and adaptation based on location and device (Hodes and Katz, 1999;Satyanarayanan M, 1996;Zhang and Ma, 2004). Nonetheless, comparatively little work has been done examining the user mobile infotainment access experience when this is mediated by different devices -which is the precise issue we address in this paper.…”

Anotações com PDAs: extensão da área de escrita e integração com projeto InCA-SERVE

“…Além disso, existem programas que permitem a leitura e a edição de livros eletrônicos (e-books) para a maioria dos dispositivos pessoais. Isso significa que os PDAs também podem ser usados para ler e interagir com textos eletrônicos, podendo, inclusive, ser explorados como ferramentas de ensino [Waycott e Kukulska-Hulme, 2003]. Os PDAs podem ser aplicados em bibliotecas, museus, no trabalho, em salas de aula, ou mesmo dentro de casa.…”