A Critical Analysis of Mobile Applications for Learning. Study Case: Virtual Campus App

Abstract

During the last years, the worldwide education has been challenged and innovated by the online and blended learning approaches, and the openness towards Social Media (SM), Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

University Politehnica of Timisoara, Romania is one of the pioneering higher education institution in the country, adopting an open education strategy with an important impact on the quality of education. The changing engine is represented by the Center of eLearning, which implemented the Virtual Campus for supporting the academic programs, and also the Unicampus MOOC platform.

The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly, to present and evaluate the Virtual Campus mobile application comparing it with mobile applications accompanying MOOC platforms. Then, to produce the requirements for an enhanced version of this application and the principles for the development of a mobile application for Unicampus.

We hope that the paper conclusions regarding quality applications for mobile learning will be useful for teachers and developers designing open and mobile learning environments and applications.