Investigating the use of Bluetooth enabled mobile phones as part of a classroom response system'

1
Investigating the use of Bluetooth enabled mobile
phones as part of a classroom response system.

• Lee Griffiths
• School of Computing, Science and Engineering
• University of Salford
• 3T Productions Ltd, UK.
• Mustafa Shewibak
• School of Computing, Science and
  Engineering
• University of Salford

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Introduction and Background

• Electronic Personal Response Systems (PRS), have
  been around since the 1980s, and using them in
  the classroom is becoming very popular,
• e.g. individuals responding to a question using a
  handheld device and the responses are collated.

• There are several propriety solutions available
  at some cost, and most research has found the use
  of these systems to be highly beneficial to the
  learning experience.

• Typical systems use propriety wireless equipment
  which has to be transported, in volume, around
  campus.

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Enter Bluetooth

• Wireless enabled Personal Digital Assistants
  (PDA) have also been used
• typically are not available under the budgets of
  most institutions for a large scale
  implementation.
• With the upsurge in mobile phone ownership, it
  seemed appropriate to investigate whether these
  devices could be used to build a PRS on a very
  small budget
• utilising their existing Bluetooth technology.
• Until all mobile devices come wireless-LAN
  enabled, then it remains the only wireless
  technology which is already owned by a
  significant proportion of the student population.

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Bluetooth

• Typically built into virtually all mobile phones
  and PDAs
• Short range (10-100m) wireless technology for
  connecting devices together
• Useful data transfer rates can be obtained
• Theory suggests that the number of simultaneous
  devices that can be active in a small area is
  fairly limitless
• Each device has a unique ID and a user defined
  name ID
• can be set up as the student name or id number

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System Development

• The work presented here was conducted to see if
  using students' own Bluetooth-enabled mobile
  telephones would provide a viable alternative
  solution to a proprietary PRS and novel register
• We had to
• Develop a Bluetooth based system to acknowledge
  users devices (mobile phones)
• Develop a client application for users to install
  on their devices
• Carry out experiments to test the viability of
  this Bluetooth solution for a PRS and automated
  register

Bluetooth enabled base station and user devices
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Outcomes Register system

• The idea was to develop a system which would
  register students in a classroom (say a lecture
  with 150 students)
• Built a desktop application which could run on
  any Windows machine with a Bluetooth dongle
• Turn up with your laptop and setup ready for
  students to arrive
• As they enable their devices they are
  registered.

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Outcomes Personal Response System 1

• The idea was to develop a system which could
  collate response information from a users
  device
• Built a desktop application which could
  communicate with a special client user
  application
• Desktop application similar to the register
  application
• Users regular mobile phone would require a
  special client application to be written (in
  J2ME) to allow responses (such as pressing A)
• Requires knowledge of a users Bluetooth pass key
  to allow communication to take place
• Sometimes requires intervention by user

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Outcomes Personal Response System 2

• These factors complicate the concept, but we
  believe there are solutions
• Users with PDAs which run more advanced Operating
  Systems (Windows CE or Symbian) are easier to
  develop for but less common.

Press A,B,C or D then ok ok cancel

• System takes time to poll each user for a
  response
• Difficult to achieve simultaneous polling

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Conclusion

• Development of the desktop application was
  complex using Java and JavaxBluetooth classes (
  still resolving some of the problems but are
  hopefull
• however Microsoft will simplify making this kind
  of application with the inclusion of Bluetooth in
  Visual Studio 2005
• Integration of ad-hoc Bluetooth PR systems with
  databases will also be easy
• Range testing confirmed the viability of the
  concept for the register and PRS
• We need to field test the idea with a real group
  of users and devices.
• Complexity of development has delayed this.