DIGITAL LIBRARY
ADAPTING THE "M@T-EDUCATE WITH SUCCESS" PLATFORM TO MOBILE LEARNING OF MATHEMATICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
School of Technology and Management - Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo (PORTUGAL)
About this paper:
Appears in: EDULEARN16 Proceedings
Publication year: 2016
Pages: 3421-3428
ISBN: 978-84-608-8860-4
ISSN: 2340-1117
doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2016.1753
Conference name: 8th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 4-6 July, 2016
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Abstract:
In the last decade its huge the increase on using mobile systems. Devices such as smartphones and tablets enable innovation and help students, teachers, and parents gain access to digital content and personalized assessment. Mobility and accessibility are becoming stronger in our day lives and this requires the adjustment of learning platforms, in order they become more versatile at the user level.
Access to multimedia content is no longer limited to a personal computer and was also extended up to mobile technologies (e.g. smartphones and tablets) providing a new educational paradigm: the mobile learning.

The attitudes and teaching practices are essential in the motivational process of students, which may be helped through the introducing of mobile learning platforms in order to enhance students’ motivation to learn and to like Mathematics.

The “M@T-Educate with Success” is a web platform supporting interactive mathematical content. Previous studies indicated that this platform contributes on student motivation for learning mathematics and in particular, integral calculus. Additionally, the prior exploration of content through the platform contributes mainly to the development of autonomy and the ability to apply the knowledge produced to solve tasks of different nature. Consequently, and considering the widespread use of mobile devices by higher education students, it became necessary to adapt the “M@T-Educate with Success” platform to the new educational paradigm, the mobile learning, in order to be a more flexible and responsive platform, and also increasing its usability to the user.

This paper presents the defined strategies in order to adapt this platform to the mobile environment, the main difficulties encountered and the solutions implemented to overcome them.
Keywords:
Mobile Learning, Virtual Learning Environments, "M@T-Educate with Success" Platform, Higher Education, Mathematics Learning, User Interfaces Usability.