This document discusses a case study of integrating virtual communities and mobile applications for web education. It describes the Mobile Community (MobiC) project which aims to move services from online communities to mobile settings. The project exported services like authentication, chat, quizzes, events, blogs, friends and maps from an online learning platform to mobile devices. This allowed for interaction between students and teachers from anywhere at any time but also led to issues with porting desktop applications, performance, development frameworks and more. The study found that transferring services between web and mobile helped improve both.

1. VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND MOBILE
APPLICATIONS IN WEB EDUCATION: A
CASE STUDY
Luigi Colazzo, Andrea Molinari, Nicola Villa
Laboratory of Maieutics, University of Trento, Italy
ICELW 2010 9 -11 june 2010

2. Contents
From Online Communities to Online
Mobile Communities
Mobile Community (MobiC) project
Services available, first experimentations
and results

3. The idea
integrating mobile value services into a system oriented to
the management of virtual communities.
Collaboration with the Institute of Advanced Management
System Research (IAMSR), Åbo Akademi of Turku (FIN)
VC and e-learning particularly stimulate the idea of mobility
◦ request for “anywhere, anytime” services
◦ many services could be “mobilized”
◦ time management and integration with mobile devices
◦ integration with Faculty / University Information systems
and redirection of these services to mobile devices

4. Previous implementation
First experimentation: Virtual communities and mobile
technologies interesting convergencies
among useful extensions:
◦ time management
◦ SMS
◦ Chat
◦ forum
◦ Sticky notes

5. Changes
There is no doubt that compared to the past the scenery
has greatly changed because of:
◦ more powerful devices;
◦ removal of many typical m-limitations;
◦ the availability of m-Internet at reduced costs;
◦ web 2.0 and social networks phenomena as a result of
the connection “anytime, anywhere”;
◦ geo-reference services
◦ removal of other “taboos” typical of the public bodies,
i.e., using this device for activities not strictly related with
telephone calls

6. Online Communities
Collaboration platform currently used mainly in
educational settings
Virtual learning communities
Objectives:
extend the interaction between teachers and students,
Extend the boundaries of the classroom toward the
community
Currently used in some italian public administration
training organizations and in other Projects

7. The difference between a
“community” and a “classroom”
Communities and their services better help to manage
situations like
The community of teachers’ thesis students
The community of Faculty members
The community of the Faculty’s secretary
The community of labor union
The community of the “HCI” course
The community of the secretary of “University games”
The community of people involved in the Project “XYZ”
The community of people following the stage of student “ABC”
…….

8. Online Communities

9. MobiC -
Long-time collaboration with Åbo Akademi – Turku
(Finland)
◦ Specialized in mobile value services analysis and
deployment
Objectives: move the concept of virtual community
into mobile settings
◦ i.e., move human relationships of real-life in a mobile
settings

11. The University of Trento
7 Faculties
• Economics
• Engineering
• Humanities and
Philosophy
Trento • Law
• Sciences
• Sociology
16000 Students
550 Professors &
Researchers
Economics Sciences Engineering Humanities 11 11

12. Mobile Community
S
D
Mobile Communities R
V
B
S
D
Online Communities R
V
B
We exported some of the services of
Online Communities into mobile
◦ Authentication

13. Mobile Community - CHAT

14. Mobile Community
Authentication
Chat
Quiz

15. Mobile Community - QUIZ

16. Mobile Community
Authentication
Chat
Quiz
Events

17. Mobile Community - EVENTS

18. Mobile Community
Authentication
Chat
Quiz
Events
Blog

19. Mobile Community - BLOG

20. Mobic-
Mobic- BLOG revised

21. Mobile Community
Authentication
Chat
Quiz
Events
Blog
Friends

22. Mobile Community - Friends

23. Mobile Community
Authentication
Chat
Quiz
Events
Blog
Friends
Maps

24. Mobile Community - MAPS

25. Conclusions
Briefly presented the experience of integrating a VC
platform and mobile technologies
◦ transferring services from Web to mobile, enriching
them with peculiarities offered by a different device.
This aspect revealed an amplification of problems related
with the usage of the online platform
◦ The transfer of a service from web to mobile revealed
improvements for both web- and mobile- services.
MobiC offers transparent access both to traditional
services / possible new versions of existing services thanks
to the peculiarities of modern devices.
new version: read RFID devices (at least the passive ones)
or bi-dimensional bar codes (QR-Codes).

26. Conclusions -2
extra issues
◦ porting a “desktop” app into mobile settings
◦ performance issues
◦ development framework issues
◦ connection management
◦ devices’ memory management
◦ offline / online management
◦ roles and permissions management on mobile
devices: pros and cons

27. Conclusions-
Conclusions-3
extra issues
◦ mobile frustration
developers
users
◦ …not forgetting usual “m-objections”
costs, screens, keyboard, “do we really learn from
mobile devices”, etc. etc.

28. Thank you
Andrea Molinari
Laboratory of Maieutics
University of Trento, Italy
Andrea.molinari@unitn.it