Issues in Position Determination for Mobile Learners

Supporting the mobile learning process raises a number of difficulties from a course design, delivery and evaluation perspective. In the case of the delivery component, these difficulties are most acute in those circumstances where educational content should be delivered in a context-sensitive fashion. For the purposes of this paper, discussion is restricted to just one vital aspect of the mobile learner's context: their physical location. Of the technologies that exist for determining physical position, none are guaranteed to provide a position of adequate quality and consistency in all circumstances. In this paper, a review of the prevailing satellite positioning technologies currently available is presented and their suitability for deployment in mobile learner scenarios assessed. Finally, where the quality of the calculated position is variable, the incorporation of a predictive component based on Neural Network techniques is proposed.