Opportunities of Interactive Learning Systems with Evolutions in Mobile Devices: A Case Study

Rapid technical advances and proliferation of mobile devices in recent years have created chances for its application in learning activity. Its strength lies in distribution and access of multimedia content and context aware service provisioning. However, heterogeneity in hardware, software and user preference of mobile computing systems has brought forth new research barriers for cross-platform application. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness, this paper presents the design and implementation of a Wireless Response System (WRS) for in-class interaction between teacher and learners based on the latest mobile phones as a case study. This research aims at utilizing the latest mobile devices and internet technologies such as XML, Ajax to improve the simplicity, friendliness, speed and multimedia capability of the traditional approaches with mobile device features. Tests and evaluations are carried out in class, and results show that the system is user friendly, fast and reliable. The performance evaluation of the system demonstrates that the application of the latest mobile technologies has greatly improved the performance of the system compared with traditional approaches, and the application of mobile devices in learning activities deserves more research effort.