Yau, J. Y.-K., Joy, M., & Dickert, S. (2010). A Mobile Context-aware Framework for Managing Learning Schedules ��� Data Analysis from a Diary Study. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (3), 22���32. 22 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). �� International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at kinshuk@ieee.org. A Mobile Context-aware Framework for Managing Learning Schedules ��� Data Analysis from a Diary Study Jane Y.-K. Yau, Mike Joy and Stephan Dickert1 Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK // j.y-k.yau@warwick.ac.uk, m.s.joy@warwick.ac.uk 1Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany // dickert@coll.mpg.de ABSTRACT We report the results of a diary study to determine whether a diary approach could be used as a successful way of retrieving a) the user���s learning contexts, b) which learning contexts are significant for consideration within an m-learning application, and c) which learning materials are appropriate for which learning situation. Analyses of data provided by 32 participants have helped us to establish the applicability of using a learning schedule for retrieving a learner���s location and available time contexts. This understanding was required in order to determine the realistic usability and potential deployment of our mobile context-aware learning schedule (mCALS) framework, which uses a learner���s schedule (i.e. electronic organizer) to retrieve their location and available time contexts. The purpose of this framework is to suggest appropriate learning materials to students based on the values of the proposed contexts (including learning styles, knowledge level, concentration level and frequency of interruption, at the point of usage). The study suggests that the framework should include verification methods to counter against the possibility of students not adhering precisely to their planned learning schedules. Motivation was established as a crucial learning context which should be incorporated into adaptive mobile learning applications. Keywords Context-aware, diary study, mobile learning Introduction Context-aware mobile learning (hereafter, abbreviated as m-learning) applications emphasize the use of learning contexts and the automatic retrieval of these using context-aware technologies such as location-tracking devices. Advantages include improving the learning situation and providing convenience to learners (Yau and Joy, 2009a). Learning contexts are defined by the student���s situation and are used in applications in order to match, adapt or select appropriate learning content suitable for their situation and/or environment. These contexts can include the student���s internal characteristics, the activities being undertaken, their location, their available time, and types of mobile device being used (Wang, 2004). Three perspectives should be considered for evaluating these applications. These are 1) pedagogical - how materials should be designed to enhance the learning experiences and to meet the learning requirements of students 2) usability - how the user interfaces of applications on mobile devices should be designed to enhance human-computer interaction and 3) technological - the physical layout of learning materials and how they can adapt to different sizes of mobile device screens (Yau and Joy, 2010). Our mobile context-aware learning schedule (mCALS) suggestion mechanism was initially proposed as a theoretical framework in Yau and Joy (2008). The two main aspects of mCALS are 1) the context-aware suggestion mechanism, and 2) the learning schedule approach. A context-aware suggestion mechanism is potentially desirable for a student because the system is able to find out automatically their current learning contexts and suggest only appropriate materials to them for that situation. The intention is to create and maximize learning opportunities for learners in different m-learning situations. Other suggestion mechanisms have been proposed by Cui and Bull (2005) and Martin and Carro (2009), however, these applications require users to enter contexts information directly onto the mobile device and are not context-aware. Our framework���s learning schedule approach can be deployed by using electronic organizers integrated in mobile devices. This approach uses the student's study schedule (timetable) information entered in advance, to retrieve their location and available time information at moments when they may wish to study. This approach is proactive (as opposed to interactive) because it does not request users to enter information at the time of usage. The learning schedule approach removes the burden for users having to enter their location and available time information onto the device directly and we wanted to investigate an alternative simple and effective method of retrieving contexts automatically. We also proposed this approach in order to eliminate the need for context-aware sensor technologies because these would not be necessary if learners adhered to their schedule and had kept it up-to-date (in order to

23 retrieve location and available time information accurately). Finally, data analyses of our interview study have shown that the act of pre-planning scheduled events can be motivating for some students to carry out their studies. Therefore, this learning schedule approach can potentially provide a motivational strategy for self-regulated students (Yau and Joy, 2009a). Five learning contexts ��� learning styles, knowledge level, concentration level, frequency of interruption and available time ��� were identified as important contexts to be considered and have been incorporated into our framework (Yau and Joy, 2009a). The framework consists of a suggestion mechanism, which selects appropriate materials (from a learning object repository) to students based on the values of the proposed contexts, at the time of usage. A learning object repository such as www.codewitz.org can be used for retrieving Java learning materials. The methodology used to design our framework consists of three stages: 1) theoretical design development, 2) pedagogical, usability and technical feasibility studies, and 3) framework validation. The rationale for proposing this framework includes that students may want to make use of their idle time and/or whatever available time they have for learning/studying (Yau and Joy, 2009a Martin and Carro, 2009). Our purpose is to support these students by providing them with appropriate study materials for the circumstances that they are situated in. In the theoretical design development of our framework, we incorporated self-regulated learning theory and proposed that the learning schedule approach can be a successful time-management technique and an effective self-regulated learning approach for motivated students. Results of an interview study supported this claim (Yau and Joy, 2009a). We conducted feasibility studies in terms of three different perspectives ��� pedagogical, usability and technical i.e. interview study, diary study and technological framework design, respectively. 37 volunteers participated in our interview study and we were able to provide an insight into the learning requirements of intended users and whether our framework can be potentially used by them. Detailed results of this study are in Yau and Joy (2009a). The usability diary study forms the focus of this paper. The technological feasibility study was conducted to determine the feasibility of implementing our framework at present with current technologies, and this forms the focus of a future paper. This paper is structured as follows ��� a literature review is provided in section 2 the ���diary: diary-questionnaire��� methodology we used for data collection is presented in section 3 the data analysis of our diary study is described in section 4, and finally, in section 5, we present our conclusions and future work. Literature Review A literature review on some of the evaluation methods deployed from the pedagogical, usability and technological perspectives are provided below. Pedagogical Methods Typical methods used for evaluating m-learning outcomes include interviews, questionnaires and diary studies all of which require learners to give their own retrospective accounts of their learning. Limitations of these methods include (a) there may be inaccuracies in students' recall and rationalization of information, and (b) some learners may not possess the meta-cognitive skills necessary to reflect on their own accounts of learning experiences and be able to convey this information accurately (Vavoula et al., 2007). Usability Methods A usability inspection may consist of a number of data collection and analysis methods. Its aim is to (a) identify usability problems in order to incorporate suitable usability application functions into the design of the user interface, and (b) to specify and fulfill system requirements of potential users. A user-centered system design usually begins with an extensive analysis of potential users, tasks and environment, where potential users are involved in the process of system design from the beginning of system development and are consulted at each incremental stage of the development and evaluations. It is completed when the system usability criteria are satisfied (Petrelli and Not, 2005).