| dc.description.abstract | Mobile learning, which has become widespread in educational settings, faces students with diverse background, in terms of knowledge, skills and needs. Two approaches, i.e., Customization and Personalization, can be applied to sort out diversity. These two approaches have different advantages and disadvantages. To this end, two empirical studies are conducted to examine how students react differently to customization and personalization in the context of mobile learning. In Study One, a customized mobile learning system (CMLS) is developed and it is applied to investigate how cognitive styles affect students’ reactions to the CMLS. According to the results obtained from Study One, the different preferences of Holists and Serialists were identified and such preferences were employed to develop a personalized mobile learning system (PMLS) in Study Two. Furthermore, how students reacted differently to the CMLS and the PMLS was examined in Study Two.
The results from Study One suggest that Serialists with the best learning performance mainly used the main menu and the keyword search. In addition, they tend to put the reading tools on the right side and the searching tools on the left side. On the other hand, Holists with the best learning performance mainly used main menu and the previous/ next buttons. Moreover, they prefer to put the searching tools on the right side and the reading tools on the left side. On the other hand, the findings from Study Two demonstrate that student in the CMLS and those in the PMLS obtained similar task scores, gain scores and post-test scores. However, the former spent significant more amount of task time than the latter, regardless of Serialists or Holists. In addition, students in the PMLS showed more positive perception than those in the CMLS. Based on the results of each study, a user model is produced. This model can be applied to support students, designers, researchers and instructors to promote the effectiveness of mobile learning. | en_US |