Using Personal Digital Assistants to Support Students

1
Using Personal Digital Assistants to Support
Students

• John Traxler Brendan Riordan

2
Learning at University the Difficulties

• non-traditional students
• parents, mature, no formal qualifications
• unused to higher education
• substantial part-time work
• attendance and performance at-risk
• personal information management skills
• complexity of mass HE
• rooming
• modularity
• timetabling

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Mobile Learning the Potential

• Mobile Learning
• personal
• spontaneous
• portable
• Personal Information Management
• times, dates, tasks, people
• Content Delivery
• web-page updates
• office functions
• document readers
• Online Community
• wire-less / telephony

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Handheld Computers

• because
• performance/ functionality
• memory/ speed/ battery
• build quality/ reliability
• image/ style
• leisure/ entertainment
• preloaded applications
• software costs and variety
• specifically Sony and PalmOS

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Initial Plan

• HND computing at-risk yr. 1, 2003/2004
• SONY lending 30 SJ22s, entry-level Clié
• 150 each, prestige entertainment brand
• Focus on
• personal admin (deadlines, appointments,
  contacts, course regs, assessments),
• plus course material
• Word assignments, handouts
• PowerPoint lecture notes

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Initial Plan

• Synching
• Weekly, updates
• Technically challenging
• Attendance check
• used cradle, not IR
• Data Protection problematic
• Equity
• eg choosing at-risk students, 50 deposit for
  loan
• Training
• PalmOS emulator on PC
• functions and synching
• Evaluation problematic
• satisfaction not retention

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Technology

• Synching
• See paper
• Software
• PalmOS
• PIM plus note-taking
• Third party
• Many solutions / few free
• Avantgo
• PDF for PalmOS

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Technical Evaluation

• Colour screen, battery life excellent text entry
  clumsy peer-to-peer beaming unused
• Usability and reversioning time-consuming
• Not all original functionally (esp. animation)
  could be reversioned
• And converting formats (e.g. Word ,
  PowerPoint-gtPDF)

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Interim Student Evaluation

• General
• enthusiasm, interest
• street/leisure image
• links to cameras, mp3 etc
• Specific
• revision, convenience, access, portability
• But
• Mugging
• Data Protection
• Short-term buy-in
• Phase 2 with revised synching protocol, semester
  2

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Final Student Evaluation

• Focus Group Results
• Qualitative feedback to identify future research
  questions
• Buy-in
• Extra box
• Didnt use public transport
• Entry-level PDA model
• No WiFi, no email, no web but students found
  games
• Minimal software (cf. MS)
• No information skills to support
• High-spec mobiles

11
Looking Back

• What else have we learned?
• Getting IT support for project hardware is still
  difficult
• Universities still can't afford kit
• Getting kit from manufacturers is still difficult
• PDAs are still precarious