Supporting pervasive learning environments: adaptability and context awareness in mobile learning

Abstract

In the mobile learning context, it is helpful to consider context awareness and adaptivity as two sides of the same coin. The purpose of the adaptivity and context awareness is to better support a variety of learners, given that they may have very different skills and motivations to learn in varying contexts. The recent research on adaptivity and context awareness has turned towards supporting pervasive environments and this is coupled with the increasing trend in seeing learning environments from an informal learning perspective. In this paper are presented experiences of developing an adaptive and context aware mobile learning system, with examples of other systems underlining the development towards supporting pervasive learning environments. We then consider approaches for the future development of systems supporting pervasive learning environments.