Mobile versus desktop facilities for an e-learning system: users´ perspective

The technology of mobile computing can assist considerably the educational process in general, since both students and instructors may have access to educational software applications form anywhere at anytime through handheld devices or mobile phones. However, there may be drawbacks as well, such as difficulty of use. In this paper we examine the degree of usefulness of mobile facilities for students who wish to read parts of the entire theory of a particular lesson and give tests by using their mobile device as an alternative way of interaction. In addition we investigate usability issues. The approach that we have taken for this investigation is through a study that involves students from different university departments who were asked to use both the mobile and standard desktop facilities of an educational system, so that we could compare usability issues among the two modes. As a result most students approved the ´´new´´ way of interaction with excitement and found mobile facilities useful and easy to use. Students with previous computing experience would prefer to combine mobile facilities with standard desktop computing rather than depend on them exclusively. On the other hand, students with no computing experience were rather computer phobic but quite happy to use their mobile phones