A Study of Mobile e-Learning Applicability for Disadvantaged Minority People and the Establishment of the User's Mode(III)

Focusing on the welfare design, the project is a continuing research work in its third year, in which particular interests are paid to the development of e-learning environment for the disadvantaged person, i.e. the elder person and the special education children, by means of combining tablet PC and digital learning materials. Such a combination is expected to provide the mobility of e-learning, and therefore to reduce limit in learning accessibility due to time and place. On the other hand, the fact that the designer usually has a notebook in hand and the involvement of designing mobile e-learning tools for the disadvantaged person prompt a research interests to explore the potential of mobile tool supporting industrial design practical learning. Given the above, the overall aims of the project described in this proposal are to: 1. establish the design principles for digitalizing the learning material according toe the requirements and characteristics of the disadvantaged minority, 2. enhance the mobile e-learning tools for design practical learning, and 3. establish the mobile e-learning modes of disadvantaged minority and design educational communication The whole three-year project contains of eight working packages, in which the final two working packages (the seventh and the eighth) will be conducted in research work of this stage. Four sub-packages are included in the seventh working package concerning with the disadvantaged people, which includes the design of digital learning material, learning mode establishment, database building-up, and design requirements of mobile learning environment. Meanwhile, the eighth packages is dedicated to the issues related to mobile industrial design learning containing of two sub-packages that are to identify of the problems in mobile design practical learning, and to establish the mode of mobile design practical learning. In essential, the whole project follows the framework of design research concept including three steps (investigation, design and evaluation). Prompted by the findings and results in the first two year, the research in this year will commences with the design of digital learning material for the special education children, and a revised e-learning webpage for the elder person. Afterwards, to the exploration of the special education children e-learning, the method - case study is used addressing the learning practice and assessment. To the elder people mobile e-learning, users trial together with observation and interview is employed to evaluate the mobile e-learning. On the other hand, breakdown analysis is used as the primary method to investigate the affordance of mobile tools for the design practical learning. Given the achievements above, the project could make contributions to the knowledge in the fields: 1. to establish the design principles for digitalizing the teaching material for the special education, 2. to establish the user mode of mobile e-learning, 3. to identify the design requirements for the design of mobile e-learning tools for the disadvantage person and design education, 4. to develop a design-for-aging database for the future work, and 5. to give the disadvantaged person equal learning opportunity and reduce the digital divide in learning between the normal and disadvantaged person.

Project ID:PB9406-0058
External Project ID:NSC94-2524-S182-001