Author Description

The study reported in this paper is an ongoing effort. We reported a preliminary analysis of the data in the paper. The current experiments varied the subjects to c- duct online group learning activities by the communication media such as email and threaded discussion. Although, we could have easily learned the impact of mobile devices in learning if we divided the subjects to use different hardware such as p- sonal computers, personal digital assistant, or mobile phones, we believe our findings will still be able to provide useful insights on the difficulties that the mobile learners will face in solving problems as a group. Our analysis result will also provide ba- line information on whether the traits of the successful or failed online groups are applicable to the mobile learners. For example, we expect the SMS will be a better medium to overcome the major problem of instant communication or the rapid propagation of the information as the mobile phones have built-in mechanism to remind the users of the incoming new messages and also the mobile phone users are expected to be interrupted for the incoming messages. However, we need further investigation of other problems, which hinder the optimum online group work. For example, ‘accuracy of the transferred information’ was identified as one of the pr- lems of using emails as the communication medium. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or SMS are more apt to deliver shorter messages than the typical emails.