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Top1. Introduction
In the past decade, the development of mobile and ubiquitous technologies (e.g., smart mobile devices, personal digital assistance and wireless sensor networks) have offered an opportunity to learn anytime and anywhere. By using such kind of mobile learning tools, learners can immediately access to their learning system via online wherever they are such as at home, library or on the road. Many researchers report the advantages of applying mobile and ubiquitous technologies to the learning activities of different courses, including science, history, sports and language courses (Chu, 2014; Hoppe, Joiner, & Sharples, 2003; Hwang, Tsai, & Yang, 2008; Ogata & Yano, 2004; Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2007; Wu, Hwang, & Chai, 2013; Wong & Looi, 2001). For example, Chiou et al. report their ubiquitous learning system that the learners can study the features of butterflies using a PDA (Personal Digital Assistance) at a butterfly museum natural science course in Taiwan (Chiou, Tseng, Hwang, & Heller, 2010). Moreover Ogata and his colleagues propose a system called JAMIOLAS that utilizes the environment data to support Japanese learner to master the Japanese mimetic words and onomatopoeia (Ogata, Miyata, Bin, & Yano, 2010). In this way, most of the research projects on ubiquitous learning offer an advantage in association with the real world objects.
On the other hand, the former system called SCROLL (Ogata et al., 2011), which stands for System for Capturing and Reminding of Learning Log, was designed originally to acquire ubiquitous learning logs and to access and to share the learning logs for retrieving the learners' learning experiences with photos, videos and sensor data. Each recorded object in SCROLL is called ubiquitous learning log object (ULLO). The target learners of SCROLL are overseas students who studies Japanese language in Japan. A main goal of SCROLL is to help learners, who are learning second language, to recall and to remember effectively what they have learned. A quiz function is mainly designed to play these roles (Li, Ogata, Hou, Uosaki, & Yano, 2011). Moreover the quiz function, which makes use of the context data of learning log such as place, time, text, and picture, helps learners to recall and to remember the knowledge. Three types of quizzes can be generated automatically by the system: including yes/no quiz, text-based multiple-choice quiz and image-added multiple-choice quiz. These quizzes are interesting and attractive method for learning. For example, “quiz with image” is designed to ask learners to choose a word in order to describe images given by the system. The system immediately checks whether the answer provided by the learner is correct or not (Ogata et al., 2011).
However, when a learner works on the quiz by using the quiz function, the original SCROLL system randomly chooses a learning log from numerous learning logs and sends the choices. Thus, for learners, it’s impossible to know on which learning logs s/he answered incorrectly. Moreover, learners often forget words even if they worked on them before. For example, when learners are studying Japanese language, they occasionally can't remember the pronunciation, usage or meaning of the Japanese kanji letter or character.