Device Independent Mobile Applications for Teaching and Learning: Challenges, Barriers and Limitations

Ferial Khaddage1 and Gerald Knezek2 Deakin University School of Information Technology Burwood Australia 2 University of Northern Texas, Department of Learning Technologies Denton Texas fayekhaddage@gmail.com gknezek@gmail.com
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Abstract: Mobile applications for teaching and learning are becoming an increasingly popular method of content delivery. Universities are being confronted with a rapid surge in the penetration of mobile devices amongst students. The majority of these devices are designed to manage multimedia content, multiplayer gaming and applications, social media and a variety of services. But since there is a wide range of mobile devices and there is no one standard device chosen by each particular university, the challenge that universities are facing today is how to design and develop device independent mobile applications which can be easily implemented and integrated and are effective for teaching and learning, regardless of the mobile device in use. In this paper mobile applications (Apps) and technologies are discussed, design issues and implications are described, current methods of some proposed applications are reviewed, and challenges, barriers and limitations which came along with these applications are also described and analyzed. Finally the emerging cloud-based computing platform is discussed, and is also recommended as the most effective method for a device independent mobile model for teaching and learning.

Keywords: Mobile Apps, Cloud-based computing, device independent mobile learning

Introduction
This unprecedented spread of mobile devices amongst university students has played an important role in the rapid evolution and development of mobile applications (Apps). This has presented a valuable opportunity for interaction and a direct distribution channel for developers to produce Apps for educational purposes. These Apps are a form of educational interaction delivered via mobile technology and accessed by students from anywhere without them being restricted to a certain location. The benefits and potentials of educational Apps have been discussed by researchers in the educational community. However, the development and implementation approaches to date have been faced with various challenges and some technological limitations. This is because the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for accessing, processing, editing, streaming, and managing multimedia content, are still limited in some mobile devices. Also other issues, such as small screen size, low battery power, limited processing and memory capacity have emerged. Therefore performing a simple task such as retrieving an image or attaching a file may take a long time and would consume significant amounts of battery power, eventually reducing the mobile device general use time. Therefore there is a need to mesh the most ideal mobile Apps from a scientific perspective, while at the same time keeping them simple, cost-effective, efficient, accurate, easily accessible and device independent. The application of mobile technology for learning purposes is boundless, especially because mobile devices are now common amongst students, and the mobile phone in particular is the most commonly used device by the majority of students (AMTA, 2007). Therefore building Apps on the underlying platform of various mobile devices represents a significant challenge for institutions to consider. So far there are only a few mobile Apps in the area of higher education, especially at universities, and there is very little mobile support in the current online course delivery systems at most institutions (Seibu and Biju, 2008). Also since mobile learning forms a crucial part of the e-learning environment and will soon be the sole distributer of learning content to students at universities (Tatar et all,2003), it is a crucial fact that there is an urgent need to develop unique approaches that can form the base of new mobile Apps for teaching and learning in higher education. This challenge could be made possible with

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the deployment of the emerging new and unique cloud-based computing for teaching and learning. In the following sections technological issues in relation to mobile Apps developments are discussed and the fast emerging Apps and their deployments are reviewed. Also device independent mobile Apps for teaching and learning are described as well as how these advancements and limitations of current Apps has led to the emerging of a new technology called cloud-based computing for teaching and learning in higher education.

Technological and Development Considerations for Mobile Apps

A recent study by the mobile research specialist group indicated that the mobile Apps market has reached 2.2 billion USD worldwide (Jahns, 2010). This rapid penetration is due to an open, easy and direct access to App stores globally. Also it is due to the availability of tools and resources for developers to develop manage and maintain Apps for any particular purpose. Currently there are many stores worldwide and they are constantly expanding at a rapid pace. In fact the App stores were established only in 2009, and within less than a year the numbers of available Apps have been increasing at an enormous rate. They are still growing rapidly. In the near future users will be able to find Apps for business, Apps for health, Apps for education, and Apps for almost anything (Jahns,2010). This will even simplify the process of Apps integration for teaching and learning for non-technical users from all different educational backgrounds, as the only task they would be required to do is to get the App and integrate it into their curriculum to support an efficient, effective and flexible delivery mechanism. It is worth noting that Apps development and design for teaching and learning require the application of good design principles. According to some usability experts, such as Jakob Nielsen (2000) and Rolf Molich (2007), usability is an important aspect to consider during Apps and systems development processes, and especially for the ones that are built for teaching and learning. Usability is the degree to which the design of a particular interface takes into account the human aspects and physiology of the students, and makes the process of using Apps effective, challenging and satisfying. Nielsen and Molich wanted to find the most effective interface solutions that users prefer, find easy to use, and are able to use to maintain their engagements with the Application (Nokia, 2002). The results did vary, depending on how experienced users are with the technology itself. Most of generation Y users found the Apps very easy and engaging, while the older generation were slow in grasping the content and preferred the audio instruction provided by some Application (Nokia, 2002). Since designing Apps for teaching and learning to suit everyone is not an easy task, designers should have opted to support the lowest common denominator, and this should be applied not just in regards to who will be using the Apps, but also what type of mobile devices are being used to access the Apps. Designing and implementing mobile Apps for teaching and learning requires also a deep understanding of the major components of each application, and how the components can be classified into software, hardware, and the network: The software is the Apps and programs which are developed to a serve a specific purpose, such as, readers, Gmail mobile, and QQ. These have all attracted millions of active users. The success of these applications is due to their ease of use, accessibility, and their rich and multiple functionalities (Nokia,2002). The hardware is all the devices that are able to run the mobile Apps, such as mobile phones, PDAs, Laptops, iPods and iPads, as well as any device that is capable of running mobile applications. The network is the wireless application protocol which is responsible for the data connection and transmission.

Operating systems are another major issue. There are eight major mobile operating systems platforms that are being used today: iOS (iPhone), Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Java ME, Windows Phone, Flash/Flash

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Lite and mobile web which includes WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Mark-up Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and Java-Script (Parton, 2010). Therefore device independent Apps should be developed to support all these mobile operating systems in order to enable the Apps to run on the largest possible range of devices. This combination of mobile devices gives the user access to Apps and information anytime, anywhere and via any device. The minimum requirements should only be that the device supports Java and has access to a data connection, and this is true for almost all mobile devices that are being used today. Khaddage and Chonka (2009) also identified a list of technological aspects and design guidelines that should be considered when designing educational content for the small screen mobile device. They emphasised the technological capabilities of mobile devices, with one of the many important issues they discussed being about the character encoding, which determines how the pages render in a browser. This is especially important when developing Apps for a mobile phone device. Correct character encoding should be specified for all pages, because if it is not specified then the page may display with strange characters. Correct character encoding is essential to ensure that pages render correctly on any mobile device. Different character encodings are required for different document types, for example if using XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) documents should always have a UTF-8 character set. UTF-8 is a multi-byte encoding, where each character can be encoded in as little as one byte and as many as four bytes (Davis, 1999), (Rabin,2008), (Khaddage and Chonka, 2009).

Considerations for Teaching and Learning via Device Independent Mobile Apps
The most important aspects to consider when developing mobile Apps for teaching and learning are: 1) to understand the technological aspects and barriers discussed above, and also 2) to understand how to provide easy access to content thus making learning content meaningful, beneficial, engaging and reachable by all students. It is also important that mobile Apps should remain useful long enough for students, and that they should have the ability to maintain student engagement at all times. Singh (2003) discussed ten important factors to consider when designing educational content for any mobile device. Despite the advancements and the rapid technological changes, these factors are still considered valuable, and can be applied as a framework for designing mobile Apps for teaching and learning. These factors are summarized in [table 1]. Security Battery life Display size Data input Form factor Storage capacity Processing Power Communications options Tools Lack of comfort with mobile communication by some users, login setting and secure details. Optimizing the device's power management features, Strain on battery life imposed by mobile Apps User Interface, how adjustable is the screen resolution, format and size of displayed font

Touch screen, key in code, voice audio. keys are difficult for some to use or even see Check box option or fill in text The storage space provided within each device Certain interactive Apps require high levels of power consumption when in use Via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or any other wireless connection Type of Apps running on the device

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Cost

High price and the cost of data services Price of voice services, & Multimedia content Affordable plan types (flat-rate, pay-go etc.)

Table 1: Factors to consider when designing educational mobile content On the other hand Khaddage and Chonka (2009) discussed the possible use of a file called WURFL (Wireless Universal Resource) File which is a simple XML file, and can be integrated to identify the mobile device being used, and can deal with different screen sizes, orientations and device capabilities and retrieve the content according to that specific device. But WURFL comes with a few limitations as well, such as: it detects only if the device in use is a mobile phone or desktop, it requires resources (thus making it harder to implement), a profile must reload each time (this will slow the process of retrieving the content down), and often the file requires frequent updates to catch up with new technologies, tools and devices. Therefore it is unlikely that any of these initiatives can be a permanent solution for the current mobile application, but at the same time, they do offer students more choice, and a wide range of applications will become available to students via different mobile devices. However, in this new open world of information, students are diverse and they use different mobile devices and are willing to use them to download and access application, so Apps alone should not be the only option available to them. Hence comes cloud-based computing as a unique and alternative solution to overcome most of the barriers and limitations universities have faced while trying to integrate mobile technologies and applications into their curriculum. Also students with basic and low-tech mobile devices are likely to find that using cloud-based computing is both easier and far better suited to the limitations of their device.

Cloud-based Computing Options for teaching and Learning

Cloud-based computing is considered an innovative solution for the above discussed issues in relation to mobile Apps development. Recently the development of cloud-computing and its application and tools are becoming very popular for teaching and learning, and are considered a step forward for educational institutions. Therefore developing a shared and mobile learning environment may now be possible through this advanced and emerging technology (Hamms,2009). Cloud-based computing consists of three layers and they form the three building blocks of cloud computing as illustrated in Figure 1, and they are as follow: The Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), the Platform as a service (PaaS) and the Software as a Service (SaaS). This gives the user the flexibility in selecting the appropriate service of their choice (Creeger, 2009). The combination of the three layers allows users to run and access Apps from anywhere and at anytime and store information and content online. The three layers can be identified as follow: The Infrastructure layer (Iaas): is the major foundation layer, where everything is built, it is responsible of the cloud hosting applications, and user can run any App of their choice, or any existing Apps can be migrated to the cloud using the cloud hardware. The Platform layer (PaaS): allows user to develop and implement their own Apps using certain tools resources. A good example of this is Google Engine App; it allows users to develop their own App tailored to their needs. The Software layer (SaaS): allows users to access and run existing online Apps such as Google Apps. The most advantages of this is they are excellent for global collaborative work and they are free of charge.

[Figure 1] is an illustration of the three layers of cloud-based computing.

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Figure 1: The three layers of cloud-based computing Cloud-computing can also be considered the process of developing cloud-based Apps that work on multiple devices, such as mobile, desktops, browsers and Apps within the cloud-based computing environment. This is illustrated in [Figure 2].

Figure 2: Device independent cloud-based computing PDAs, iPods, the web, phones, iPads, laptops and other wireless and online technologies can be merged together on the network. This has the potential to improve the use of different kinds of mobile devices for educational purposes without the full understanding of the programming behind the Apps. Also it has the potential to provide an inexpensive layer of functionality and performance to the university, while protecting the infrastructure that is increasingly supported by cloud services and by the technologies that all students bring to campus. The Apps are stored in the one cloud and users can have fast and secure remote or local access from just about any client device or OS. The plug-and-play feature within the cloud-computing technology is responsible for publishing the Apps onto the network or the Web. Tools such as cloud-based email, calendar, chat and forum to improve messaging, as well as interaction capabilities and shared resources, data, and information can all be integrated. The students can make multiple copies of the learning content, viewable on a variety of sync-able devices, and hence all users within the same field can have access to share and use the information in the account. Cloud computing applications should be designed for scalability to support large numbers of students and surges in demand. Universities can develop and remotely host custom built educational applications within the cloud, and this can reduce costs and time spent, thus providing benefits to students as

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well as to the university. In order to create such Apps it is necessary to develop these applications on the underlying platform and using design principles mentioned earlier, in order to cover most mobile devices such as iPads, Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc. There are many good examples of cloud-based mobile applications such as Gmails mobile provided by Google, Google documents, etc. and they are all accessible via the small mobile device. Since the current cloud-computing environment enables different platforms to communicate, access and share content, information and resources, this technology is considered device independent, location independent, flexible, global and can provide an effective collaborative learning environment. Furthermore cloud-based computing is not limited to a specific physical location and it is not only about having access to mobile Apps and content on demand, but also about students from diverse backgrounds and different areas of study who can collaborate and share resources. In the near future that would take universities towards a more open and global educational environment, and ensure greater future prospects for todays students as they strive to reach out to an open access global learning environment.

Cloud-based Computing Barriers and Limitations

Security concerns remain an issue for cloud-based computing. Despite what this technology has to offer, it has raised questions about the security and privacy of data and information sharing processes in a wireless network environment. All educational institutions are governed by legislation and regulations and the deployment of any new educational technology is comparatively more difficult than in most other industries. Certain security protocol should be deployed to protect the security and privacy of students as well as the security of the learning material, especially during the transformation process in and out of the cloud. The student will connect to the cloud via a mobile device and the requested content will pass over the Internet and can be a subject to threats. Therefore universities should carefully consider security aspects when moving data and information into the cloud, as in the near future more appropriate tools for data security will be developed. Universities should also ensure that cloud-based data storage and back-up are integrated and deployed. But if the deployment of an Internal Cloud (private access) could be applied, where will the cloud with all the Apps be kept within the university firewall and security settings? And even this mechanism cannot 100% guarantees that the transmitted content and learning material does not reach unauthorized users. But again by applying cloudbased computing it is possible that hackers may find it difficult to determine the exact physical location of the server that has been used to store content data and information. Therefore low confidence in cloud-based computing security, privacy, authentication and authorization still a major concern especially with regards to education (Hamms,2009). Another concern is the bandwidth and the high cost of data transfer, since bandwidth costs do vary with most cloud computing services, and applications which require frequent data transfer between the cloud and the university may incur high bandwidth charges. In this case a locally hosted service may be more cost efficient. It is also believed that this limitation will be overcome in the near future, as mobile network operators continue to increase data speeds, and performance can only get better.

Conclusions
Mobile technologies and applications for teaching and learning have a promising future and could potentially change university settings and environments. Cloud computing has the potential to empower mobile learning with its unique advantages. Since the advent of the Apps and cloud-based computing as an innovative educational model, the uptake of information on mobile devices has been phenomenal. It seems that applications will soon be the primary modes of presenting information processing on mobile devices. Universities and administrators should begin now to make informed decisions about mobile technology integration via Apps, tools and devices and provide a set of standards for proper deployment in the near future. It appears that there is no going back. Therefore, in this paper the characteristics and methods of a device independent mobile learning technologies and applications are analyzed, some technological barriers of various existing methods are explained; the advantages of a mobile learning environment under a cloud-based computing, device independent Apps are described.

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