Abstract:

The past few years have witnessed a growing interest in pedagogies that employ recent mobile technologies in order to create novel and engaging educational environments. There has been a big emphasis on creating an interactive environments that are more focused towards involving the students in the information delivery process, and giving them the freedom to present their own viewpoint and perception of the topics and issues being discussed. The introduction of mobile devices in the learning process allows information delivery to be no longer restricted to the classroom, and expands the available learning content from written and spoken information to tangible objects in the physical world. This ability of mobile devices allows students to engage their own movement and senses while collecting data, and to form their own connections to create new knowledge and understanding. This paper presents the design and implementation of a ubiquitous learning system that incorporate the use of inquiry-based learning with mobile devices and attached sensors to create novel embodied learning experiences. The system allows learners to move around physical spaces and interact with strategically placed learning devices called learning pods. Each learning pod consists of an Android-based mobile phone connected to a variety of external sensors like temperature, humidity, and movement etc. that are interfaced using the audio-jack of the phone using a specially designed hardware. A learner connects to a learning pod using a cross-platform mobile app running on their mobile phone and can retrieve data, post and answer questions, or leave comments for other learners. The learning pods and the students are all connected via the mobile Internet. This inquiry-based pedagogy is expected to improve learning experience for both students and the teachers. By enabling students to think of and to propose their own unique and contextual questions, students’ engagement, meta-cognition and learning should improve. Incorporating physical characteristics acquired by the sensors with inquiry-based learning enables the students to compare their perception of their environment against quantitative values and hence allowing them to relate their own experience to their surroundings, as well as their peers’ perceptions. The system is built with the goal of eventually deploying it as a global learning system where learners and teachers from different regions of the world can interact collectively. The general architecture of the system, therefore, follows architectural principles of Internet of Things. The students are able to join the system by downloading a mobile application, and the peer-to-peer communication over the internet is achieved using the MQ transport protocol (MQTT).

Keywords:

Arduino, inquiry-based learning, ubiquitious learning, MQTT.