Abstract:

The integration of Learning Management Systems (LMS) with mobile devices is increasing their presence on many educational scenarios in Higher Education. As a consequence, we have designed a responsive virtual environment called AIM-Mobile Learning Platform focus on integrating smartphones in class. The learning environment permits teachers to assess students during classes by sending to them questions through their smartphones. Then, it instantaneously stores and processes every student’s data permitting to automate the continuous evaluation process of students. Moreover, the learning environment also permits teachers to design interactive learning packets to be used by students using their smartphones. This functionality promotes a more flexible and dynamic learning scenario. Finally, the AIM-Mobile Learning Platform provides an automatic and transparent management of teachers, subjects and students.

One advantage of the AIM-Mobile Learning Platform is its generic and versatile design and interface, so its implementation in different educational contexts can be direct. Indeed, the platform was designed so that teachers do not require a deep knowledge in informatics. In this way, the first experimental prototype was applied in different multidisciplinary scenarios such as the Faculty of Telecom, the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Industrial Technology. The experimental experience demonstrated that the environment promotes a dynamic learning-teaching process inside class, increasing the motivation, participation and attention of students and helping them to be more conscious of their self-learning process.

However, the combination of the AIM-Mobile Learning Platform with other learning tools such as Moodle could increase their potential, since Moodle is one of the most spread learning platforms used in a high variety of educational scenarios. Consequently, in this paper we propose the integration of both online learning platforms, by means of a new functionality developed in Moodle that permits to import the students’ marks achieved with the continuous evaluation process made with the AIM-Mobile Learning Platform. In fact, we have programmed a new module in Moodle that can access to the database of AIM-Mobile Learning Platform and import and visualize these marks in Moodle. Besides, the module is able to load these marks to the database of Moodle incorporating this assessment in a transparent and easy way. This new functionality will promote the use of AIM-Mobile Learning Platform due to the easy integration with Moodle.

On the other hand, the use of the learning platform inside class has positively encouraged students to demand more implication with it, asking for designing questions to be sent to their classmates. This learning strategy allows students to build knowledge, promoting a very interesting collaborative process between students. Besides, they can check the acquired knowledge and it helps to increase the autonomy, motivation and work capacity. Then, we have conducted a study case in the Faculty of Education to evaluate this functionality in one particular subject along one semester and the main results are shown in this article.

Keywords:

m-learning, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Learning Platforms, Moodle, High Education.