Background

Below is an extract from the original funding bid to JISC, giving some background to the MCFE project and a description of its aims. In the following pages, we discuss several underlying concepts of Context-Aware Computing in greater depth:

• Mobility Issues,
• Context Awareness,
• Ubiquitous Computing,
• Other Research Projects, and
• Hardware.

Mobile Computing in a Fieldwork Environment

This project investigates a number of benefits to HE which would arise from the extension of desktop computer learning and research aids into the field. It is based on the idea that the combination of an inexpensive hand-held computer, or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver provides a suitable platform for data collection, the authoring and delivery of field exercises, and student field experiments. University undergraduate fieldwork is increasingly seen as an expensive activity. This project aims to make it more cost-effective.

PDA and GPS technologies are now well established. They are represented by readily available products that are widely used outside the HE community, but much less so within it. This imbalance needs to be addressed so as to ensure that students who will later encounter these technologies are adequately prepared.

Approaches to the provision of on-line teaching aids have, understandably, concentrated on classroom or laboratory based provision using desktop computers or terminals. Similarly, the concerns of many of those who are addressing the provision of distance learning materials have been focused on replicating or replacing such provision on individual, remote machines.

In some cases, the material presented in such teaching packages has been used to prepare students for fieldwork by developing skills such as map reading or the recognition of landscape features, flora or fauna. There has, however, been less work on the role of portable computers and context-aware computing during the conduct of the fieldwork exercise itself. There is a danger that fieldwork, which forms an important element of many disciplines, may be largely neglected in the development of technology based learning.

The project is primarily concerned with a range of applications in which GPS derived location and direction can be used, usually with other information about the immediate environment, to select the appropriate tasks or questions to present to the student. Equally, locations may be associated with the student's own field observations, a requirement that is shared with researchers. The main aim of the project is to design and develop suitable tools for the authoring and delivery of field exercises and the collection of data in the field.

A core concept informing the development of the proposed system is the stick-e note metaphor. This was introduced by one of the participants as a metaphor for mobile computing applications. These notes are attached to an environmental context and become active when the user enters that context. They are an electronic equivalent of the Post-it note. Examples of the elements of a stick-e note context include location, states of external sensors or of the computer itself, imaginary companions or temporal events. Notes are prepared in SGML form and look similar to WWW pages, but with extra fields specifying context (at some location, during some time-period, etc.). The ability to share notes, whether of exercises or observations, offers a significant potential for making the preparation and conduct of fieldwork more cost-effective.

Here we are concerned with monitoring spatial and temporal context and presenting the user with appropriate instructions or tasks, and allowing them to make notes that are automatically associated with that context. The notion of imaginary companions, typically people with a particular specialised knowledge, may prove to be an attractive metaphor in targeting tasks at students with different abilities or at different levels. For example, an ecologist might select an archaeologist or geologist as companion in order to learn about their interpretations of landscape formation. These companions would be provided by parallel sets of stick-e notes.

MCFE Home

Mobility Issues