Turning mobile devices into a mobile quiz platform to challenge players knowledge

Vincent Tam, S W Cheung, K S Lui, Wilton Fok, Jade Wong and Beta Yip
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

In the past few years, many new mobile technologies, including 3G, WiFi and mobile TV, have created unprecedented learning opportunities on mobile devices. Furthermore, such technologies continually fuel the rapid growth of new fields of research such as edutainment for educational entertainment. In a recent project awarded by the Hong Kong Wireless Development Centre, our team developed a mobile quiz game system on 3G mobile phone networks in mainland China, Hong Kong and other countries. The mobile quiz system developed is so generic that it can be readily extended to any wireless network, including our campus-wide WiFi-enabled network, to challenge players' knowledge at any time and place. More important, it can be used in both conventional classroom settings and distance learning programmes to enhance the learners' interest and help them to grasp some difficult concepts, or simply to revise after class while sitting in an Internet café. It can also provide more frequent and informal evaluations of individual student performance, in addition to the formal and summative evaluations carried out on the whole class, thus giving a more complete and clear picture of each individual student's progress. In this paper, we discuss the design and possible uses of our quiz system and also share the relevant experience in system development, with careful examination of the evaluation strategies Overall, our work has shed light on many interesting directions for future exploration.