User-centered Design of m-Learning System: Moodle On The Go

In order to truly integrate e-Learning system into regular curriculum at a university, mobile access to Learning Management Systems has to be enabled. Mobile devices have the potential to be integrated into the classroom, because they contain unique characteristics such as portability, social interactivity, context sensitivity, connectivity and individuality. Adoption of Learning Management Systems by students is still on the low rate, mostly because of poor usability of existing e-Learning systems. Our initial research has confirmed this hypothesis. Usability issue is rising to the higher level on the mobile platform, because of the mobile devices' limited screen size, input interfaces and bandwidth, and also because of the context of use. Our second hypothesis was that it is wrong to consider a mobile device as a surrogate for desktop or laptop personal computer (PC). By just adopting the existing Learning Management System on mobile devices with adaptive technologies such as Google proxy, we do not acquire the satisfactory results. Usability can prove to be even lower compared to desktop application. One possible solution to the problem could be development of rich client applications for today's mobile devices that would raise the usability to a higher level. We developed a PocketPC prototype application by using user-centered design principles, which we presented as a third alternative in usability research conducted among university students. Results gathered in such a way have confirmed that development of e-Learning system, in order to be widely accepted by students, needs to have the user(student) in the center of development process.