Integrating Mobile Computing Solutions into Distance Learning Environments

This paper assumes that in the near future most students at universities are in possession of a mobile device with the ability to access the world wide web and display multimedia content. Observing the current development trends of mobile hardware, this seems to be justified. Even common mobile phones have multiple wireless communication interfaces and colour displays. More expensive devices are equipped with a large touch screen and are able to play videos in a reasonable quality. It is attempted to exploit this development and enhance the learning experience of students by gradually building up a pervasive computing infrastructure. A design is proposed that offers an open and extensible (distance) learning environment. Flexible standards such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for communication and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for document transfer are used. This design allows to access and modify learning material stored in learning management systems (LMS), multimedia repositories and electronic voting system (EVS) locally and remotely. The supported technology ranges from PCs and laptops to mobile devices.