Technical Quality of a Mobile SPOC

Naima Belarbi,Abdelwahed Namir,Mohammed Talbi,Nadia Chafiq

doi:10.3991/ijim.v12i5.9093

Abstract

<p class="0papertitle">Computer based Learning Environments are mainly shaped by emerging environments such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), SPOCS (Small Private Online Courses) and Mobile learning. This variety challenges the quality of the content delivered in these various environments. In Moroccan higher education, SPOCS is a trending topic widely used in its context of blended learning. The present work focuses on an SPOC delivered as a hybrid mobile app and on factors that define its technical quality. The objective is to propose a set of technical quality factors which are defined following a study of literature, focusing on frameworks, labels, practices that are used to assess the quality of e-learning environments, MOOCs, SPOCs and mobile applications. ISO standards for the quality software and the guidelines for the most dominant Mobile Operating Systems (Android/IOS/Windows phone) are also considered when defining these criteria. The proposed criteria can be twofold used: 1) to assess the technical quality of an existing mobile SPOC; 2) constitutes guidelines to increase the technical quality of a new mobile SPOC</p>

Highlights

Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) are a trending phenomenon in online learning thanks mainly to the fact that they aim at offering a tailor-made course intended for a small group of learners
Valuable studies and sophisticated approaches are available to deal with global guidelines, benchmarks and quality standard models for: mobile learning [3; 4], online education, e-learning [5, 6] and open education including MOOCs and Open Educative Resources (OERs) [7, 8 and 9]
The authors proposed to plot the diagram corresponding to the variant ABC of the Pareto law to highlight the most important criteria that affect the quality of a mobile application

Summary

Introduction

Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) are a trending phenomenon in online learning thanks mainly to the fact that they aim at offering a tailor-made course intended for a small group of learners. SPOCs like MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) have revolutionized universities by supporting blended learning and flipped classroom learning. In the era of mobile technologies, developing mobile accessibility to SPOCs represents a real challenge to fulfilling the learning needs of mobile learners. Mobile technologies can enrich educational opportunities for learners and offer the possibility of extending the scope and the value of SPOCs by improving access to learning materials due mainly to some features such as flexibility to learn anywhere and anytime, interactivity, portability, popularization and personalization [1] and allow promoting collaborative learning and informal learning by maximizing learner interactions and dialogues [2]. As the authors are interested in SPOCs delivered as a mobile app, a few works on developing a common framework for evaluating the quality of SPOCs or mobile apps exists

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Discussion

Conclusion