DQAMLearn: Device and QoE-Aware Adaptive Multimedia Mobile Learning Framework

Abstract

With the proliferation of mobile devices and online video services, mobile learning has grown both in popularity and complexity. New challenges include the multitude of mobile devices with different characteristics and limitations, as well as the exponential growth in educational multimedia content. Streaming multimedia content to mobile devices is a resource intensive task that requires significant resources such as network bandwidth, with demand expected to increase beyond future networks capacity as users adopt new technologies such as UHD, AR, VR, 3D and 360-degree video. While a number of adaptive m-learning systems have been previously proposed, none of these have thoroughly addressed the adaptation of educational multimedia content. This article proposes the novel DQAMLearn framework that aims to support mobile learner’s seamless access to educational multimedia content from a variety of mobile devices with different characteristics. Moreover, as mobile users are increasingly becoming quality-aware, the framework integrates novel mechanisms for decreasing the video quality in a controlled way, with the aim to support a good learner quality of experience (QoE) even in resource constrained situations. A comprehensive subjective study was conducted to evaluate the proposed framework. The results showed that the framework enables both high learning achievement from educational multimedia clips, with 12% and 83% correct response rates for pre and post-test questionnaires, respectively, and high learner QoE with a mean video quality rating of 79.19 on a 0–100 acceptability scale.