ICELW 2016 June 15th-17th, New York, NY, USA

The Performance of Mobile Devices Running HTML5-designed Learning Objects A. Marengo1 and A. Pagano2 1 University of Bari/Department of Economics, Bari, Italy 2 Osel Srl/University spin off Company, Bari, Italy

Abstract— This paper presents a research study planned to students today makes available e-learning contents more verify the compatibility of Learning Objects, designed in reachable. HTML5. with the three major mobile operating systems: In general, mobile learning can be considered a form of Android, iOs and Windows Phone. The research project has training or study that occurs when a student interacts been structured in four steps: how to perform, chose people, through mobile devices [5]. assign devices and run, analysis of results. In this research project, students used mobile learning The beta testing activities involved a group of 20 users devices to enjoy "just in time, just for me" business game, divided into two main categories and the devices were 35 (20 in HTML5 standard, wherever they need it. smartphones and 15 tablets) on all mobile operating systems The Business game was named “Savana e Bistecche” currently on the market. (Savana and steaks) based on “change management” contents. The Game was developed by Osel Srl The Learning Object used on mobile devices is a Business (www.osel.it) an Italian e-learning company developing Game based on Change Management contents. business games for training in medium and big firms.

In the end, the goal was to verify the "HTML5 vs device" II. THE PROJECT adaptability and identify the device that returned the best The planning of the project has been structured in four results with regard to various parameters considered. steps: Index Terms — e-learning, mobile learning, e-learning a) first step, the group established how to perform usability, HTML5. the test on the mobile devices and, very important was the use the stock browser of the I. INTRODUCTION mobile operating systems, so as to obtain valid results on a large scale and cross platform. This research paper describes a two faces project: an Besides, the group identified the versions of the HTML5 Learning Object development project and a various OS mobile to use: Jelly Bean, Kitkat and mobile learning verifying project. Lollipop for Android; 8.0 and 8.1 for Windows As we all know, the HTML5 is a markup language for Phone; 7.0 and 8.0 for iOs; designing web pages, published as a W3C b) second step, the group chose people to be Recommendation of October 2014. involved in the activity of testing: twenty-five HTML5 development is started from the Web experts in the chosen field, within the staff of the Hypertext Application Technology Working Group main italian websites related to mobile devices; Working Group (WHATWG) (founded in 2004 by five non-experts in the filed, representing the developers belonging to Apple, the Mozilla Foundation prototype of common user can interface with and Opera Software) that is both an objective to design learning objects in HTLM 5. Subsequently, the specifications for the development of web applications, group identified the mobile devices to be used focusing of improvements and additions to HTML and during the test, that are fifteen smartphones and related technologies. fifteen tablets; The new features introduced by HTML5 compared to c) third step, the group assigned a mobile device to HTML4 are aimed mainly at improving the decoupling of each person, and everyone has performed a structure, defined by the markup, yield characteristics learning object through the browser of the mobile (font, color, etc.), defined by the style guidelines, and device attached. This part has had duration of content of a web page, as defined by real text. Besides the sixty days, with weekly the report; HTML5 provides support for local storage of large d) fourth step, the group combined the results from amounts of data downloaded from the web browser, to tests, which have certified the compatibility of enable the use of web-based applications (such as learning objects in HTLM 5 with browsers of mail boxes or other similar services) even in the absence Android, iOs and Windows Phone. of Internet connection [1]. “Mobile learning” (M-learning) is a blend derived from III. THE BUSINESS GAME mobile and learning, means learning using mobile devices In virtual games, developed over several decision- such as PDA, mobile phone, digital audio players, digital making levels, the learner is fully absorbed in an cameras, voice recorders, etc. environment created specifically to monitor and evaluate The rapid growth of communications technology and its decision-making performance. information technology makes it possible to develop new forms of education/training. The use of mobile devices by

The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2016, www.icelw.org ICELW 2016 June 15th-17th, New York, NY, USA The business game is the most effective method for important to underline that the test has shown one thing in transmitting content and at the same time monitor the common, that is independent from mobile operating results. systems considered: the small displays are struggling to The design, developed by Osel, includes the use of benefit satisfactory user experience, as it will always be elements borrowed from the games and game design necessary to "pan" in order to center the playing area. techniques in contexts and environments inspired by real Therefore, the tablets are the most suitable devices to use and immersive situations, where the user makes an the application via browser, even if the user experience is enjoyable experience and an interactive game. also excellent on so-called "", i.e. those smartphones that have a display diagonal between 5.5 and The “gamification approach” is the most effective 6.5 inches. method for transmitting content and at the same time entertain the users who will feel motivated in learning However, it seems appropriate to point out some facts through these innovative training content. The monitoring in relation to hardware issues: displays with higher than of results is one of the key points of the training through Full-HD resolution present a "flicker" during animations interactive games [4]. of the game; devices with stereo speakers have some difficulty in managing the sound of the same game, even The learning objects developed with this approach, if it is not important for the user experience. inserted in an e-learning platform that supports gamification, allow to obtain excellent results in terms of As for the software side, the that employee engagement in training and to plot in minute manages the game in a better way, is, undoubtedly, IOS, detail the user experience [3]. followed by Windows Phone. In fact, the hardware/software optimization of these two platforms “Savana e bistecche” (Savana and steaks) game is based means that even the less efficient devices (e.g. IPhone 4 or on a novel by Spencer Johnson entitled “Who moved my Lumia 625) are able, in a good way, to run the application. cheese”, published on September 8, 1998, is a Remember that the test has been successfully performed motivational tale written in the style of a parable or business fable. The text describes change in one's work even on iOs8 and Windows Phone 8.1, both not yet officially placed on the market. More complex is the and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by situation of the Android environment, where top range two mice and two "little people," during their hunt for devices offer performance even better than iOs and cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon Windows Phone, but the mid-range and the base devices release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for (such as the Xperia M1) turns out to be below the almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers sufficiency. In Android environment we can say that 2 GB Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list.[1] It has sold more RAM is a minimum requirement in order to play the game than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books [2]. correctly, with no lag or catching. Separate discussion is related to BlackBerry OS10, Osel team changed the subject and actors of the tale and operating system developed by Canada's RIM. It should introduced lions (Leopoldo and Leonardo) instead of be remembered that this OS was launched on the market “little people” and steaks instead of cheese, to let students for just one year, then it is obvious that has not yet been understand better the content, that was about change management tips for professionals working in a company. fully developed. Given this, we must say that the game runs the sufficiency through Blakcberry browser. The The game has been built considering the story as a red situation is acceptable on the BlackBerry Z30, whose 5- string connecting the learning path, the students were inch display is able to provide a user experience at least playing at the game considering the prologue featured at sufficient, while it is somewhat compromised on the the start of the learning object. Along the story, students BlackBerry Z10, Terminal that is not recommended for must solve some logical-mathematical tests. The path has the use of this game. a length, expressed in km, which goes from a minimum of We can conclude, therefore, that the e-learning service 7km to a maximum of 27km. measured and proposed by Osel is fully compatible with The wrong answer increases the path and the students iOS, Windows Phone and Android, and can run on about have to answer further questions to complete the course. 85% of mobile devices on the market. At the end, students will have their final score, Alongside the 15 advanced users, the test was measured in km. performed also by 5 "average user" (or person who knows interface for a basic use) and thus represents the user who IV. BETA TEST ACTIVITY most frequently may have to do with the e-learning The beta testing activities involved a group of 20 contents and business games. members divided into two main categories: 15 users Again, the test can be considered a cross-platform test, specialized in the use of mobile operating systems and 5 because the 5 users have used different devices: the newbies, which are the ideal prototypes of people who Xperia Z, the Galaxy S4, iPhone 5s, the Lumia may use the e-learning platform. 925 and the iPad Air involving Android, iOs and 35 devices involved (20 smartphones and 15 tablets), Windows Phone (given the problems we had with with all mobile operating systems currently on the market. Blackberry OS 10, the research group decided not to Each user, depending on the device used, filled out an include it in the user test "not experts", they would have evaluation module by assigning a rating scale of 10 for found difficult to overcome the difficulties for them). The each of the four parameters considered: touch screen users were specifically chosen because owners of top- speed, speed and fluidity scroll, pinch usability and range terminal, which objectively makes it much more overall user experience. enjoyable user experience relative to this game. There Leaving aside the results of each device, which are were no particular difficulties for them to complete the accessible through the tabs in the next section, it’s "Gaming" session, but all of them have been agreed concerning three main points:

The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2016, www.icelw.org ICELW 2016 June 15th-17th, New York, NY, USA

1. the display: 4 of them have had difficulty in TABLE 2 centering the play area. Inevitably they had to perform the EVALUATION OF IOS SMARTPHONES "pan" to be able to move forward, and therefore their main demand would be the possibility that the game in some Touch Speed and Overall Pinch way be able to identify the size and resolution of the screen fluidity user usability display, so as to adapt to it. Obviously the user who used speed scroll experience the Air iPad had no problems of this kind; iPhone 4 7 7 8 7 2. The browser: before test via mobile, the research iPhone 4S 7 7 8 7 group has invited users to try the game using the PC iPhone 5 7 7 9 8 browser, just to realize more completely what they were going to test. This has inevitably rise the comparison iPhone 5S 8 8 9 8 between the PC experience and the mobile experience, considering the lower performance through Google Versus BlackBerry OS (Table 3): BlackBerry Z10, Chrome, IE and Safari in mobile version. It 'clear that, in BlackBerry Z30. this case, it is due to a lower performance in web TABLE 3 browsing of smartphones and tablets than PCs, though, of EVALUATION OF BLACKBERRY OS SMARTPHONES course, this is something that "the average user" can not fully grasp; Speed Touch Overall 3. The low intuitive performance in some parts of the and Pinch screen user game: in this case the "problem" is clearly linked to a poor fluidity usability speed experience attitude of these users to play with games using HTML5 scroll browser. The game in question is an elementary game, BlackBerry 7 7 7 6 but, obviously, the interface was not so easy for the Z10 “average user." In some cases, they have struggled to find BlackBerry 8 7 6 7 the command screen to continue in the game, however, Z30 nothing particularly disabling for the overall experience. Our group can, therefore, safely say that the game is Versus Windows Phone (Table 4): Lumia 625, absolutely suitable to be used on a large scale, so even Nokia Lumia 925, Nokia Lumia 1020, Nokia Lumia 1520. outside the narrow circle of people who actually have a thorough knowledge of mobile operating systems. TABLE 4 EVALUATION OF WINDOWS OS SMARTPHONES Undoubtedly some aspects can be optimized in some way, in order to achieve almost perfect overall user Touch Speed and Overall experience. Pinch screen fluidity user usability speed scroll experience V. SMARTPHONES EVALUATION TESTS Nokia The evaluation started with Android OS (Table 1) and Lumia 8 7 7 7 was conducted for: , Samsung 625 Galaxy S5, M2, , LG Nokia G2, HTC One M8. Lumia 9 8 7 8 TABLE 1 925 EVALUATION OF ANDROID OS SMARTPHONES Nokia Lumia 9 8 8 6 Touch Speed and Overall 1020 Pinch screen fluidity user Nokia usability speed scroll experience Lumia 8 8 7 9 Samsung 1520 Galaxy 9 8 8 9 Note 3 Samsung VI. TABLETS EVALUATION TESTS Galaxy 7 7 6 6 The evaluation started with Android OS (Table 5) and S5 was conducted for: Phonepad 7, Asus , LG Sony Gpad 8.3, Samsung , Samsung Galaxy Note Pro Xperia 7 5 5 5 12.2, S, . M2 TABLE 5 Sony Xperia Z 9 8 8 9 EVALUATION OF ANDROID OS TABLETS Ultra Touch Speed and Overall LG G2 8 6 6 7 Pinch screen fluidity user HTC One usability 8 8 8 8 speed scroll experience M8 Asus Phonepad 8 8 9 8 Versus iOS (Table 2): iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, 7 iPhone 5S. Asus 9 8 8 9 Nexus 7 LG Gpad 9 8 9 9

The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2016, www.icelw.org ICELW 2016 June 15th-17th, New York, NY, USA 8.3 research group focused some problems, obviously linked Samsung to the stock of BlackBerry browser that does not support 9 5 6 6 Nexus 10 the HTML5 properly. The Z30, with its powerful Samsung hardware, manages the game in the best way, while on Galaxy Z10 enjoyment of the game is more problematic. In any 9 6 5 6 Note Pro case, the average rating of the user experience on 12.2 BlackBerry OS is 6.5 on 10. Sony 8 9 6 8 The average total grade user experience cross-platform Tablet S on smartphones is 7,31. Sony What about the tablets? Xperia 9 5 5 5 Tablet Z The evaluation report focuses that the game has been tested on 13 tablet and 3 operating systems, Android, iOS and Windows (in Pro and RT version). Versus iOS (Table 6): iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Mini In Android environment, the balance is represented by Retina Display, iPad Mini. the resolution and the dimension (the diagonal) of the TABLE 6 display: the devices with less than 9-inch screen, have no EVALUATION OF IOS TABLETS particular problems to play the game regardless of their resolution; the devices with screen diagonal of more than Touch Speed and Overall 9.5 inches (and full HD resolution or 2K) are better Pinch screen fluidity user usability reaching the play area, but they have difficulties in scrool speed scroll experience and pinch. In any case, the average evaluation of users iPad 4 9 8 8 9 experiences with Android tablet is 7.28. In iOs iPad Air 9 9 8 9 environment, the situation is fairly constant. The group iPad Mini tested four devices running the game in an excellent way, 9 9 7 8 retina just the first-generation iPad Mini is trudging in some situations due to the hardware not particularly powerful. iPad Mini 8 7 6 7 The game can also run on iOs8 Beta 1 supporting the innovative “Multi Windows” function. The total average Versus Windows OS (Table 7): Nokia Lumia 2520, rating of user experiences with iOs tablet is 8.25. In the Asus VivoTab Note 8. Windows environment, as expected, the game runs in the TABLE 7 good way. The Windows OS is a kind of derivation of the EVALUATION OF WINDOWS OS TABLETS desktop, so the only problems are given by the screen diagonals and by their resolution (of scrool and pinch Touch Speed and Overall problems that do not compromise in any case the end-user Pinch screen fluidity user experience). The average rating of user experiences with usability speed scroll experience Windows tablet is 8. The average total vote (which Nokia therefore includes the Android tablet, iOS and Windows) Lumia 8 8 7 9 is 7.69, which then highlights the fact that the game runs 2520 in an excellent way, cross platform, on tablets. Asus REFERENCES VivoTab 8 8 5 7 Note 8 [1] Devedzic, V. (2006). Semantic web and education. New York: Springer-Verlag. [2] Wikipedia (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 31, 2016, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 VII. CONCLUSIONS [3] A. Marengo - A. Pagano. The OSEL 2.0 Project: A framework for The game has been tested on 16 smartphones and on 4 an Open Source, Flexible and Integrated Learning Environment operating systems, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and on Web 2.0. ISBN: 978-84-612-9801-3. EDULEARN 2009 - BlackBerry OS. In Android environment, the research International Conference on Education and New Learning group achieved results that could be called erratic. There Technologies - Barcelona 7-9 July 2009 are high-end devices (such as the Z Ultra and HTC M8) [4] S Deterding, D Dixon, R Khaled, L Nacke. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. MindTrek '11 that return an excellent user experience, while other high- Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek end devices, such as the S5 and G2, have some GUI Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments. Pages 9- issues. In any case, the user experience on Android is 15. ACM New York, NY, USA ©2011 absolutely satisfactory, and the average rating on this OS [5] Lorna Uden. Activity theory for designing mobile learning. for the user experience is of 7.3 on 10. Windows Phone International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation. turns well on high-end devices than on low-end, thanks to Volume 1, Issue 1. DOI: 10.1504/IJMLO.2007.011190 's policy to standardize the performance on different hardware. The average rating user experience on AUTHORS Windows Phone stood at 7.5 on 10. In iOs environment the situation is practically identical to that of Windows A. Marengo Assistant Professor at Faculty of Phone. The game runs very well on all types of devices, Economics at University of Bari. His research activity and is absolutely performing even on iOS 8 Beta 1. Small takes place primarily on didactic methodologies problems occur in the use of the game on the iPhone 4 and implemented by the use of ICT tools, particularly the 4S because of the very small diagonal display, but they are development of e-learning web-based platforms that absolutely negligible. The average rating of the user experience on iOS is 7.5 on 10. On BlackBerry OS10 the

The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2016, www.icelw.org ICELW 2016 June 15th-17th, New York, NY, USA compete to introduce the technologies of distance learning (e-mail [email protected]). in traditional institutional campus courses and activities. (e-mail: [email protected]). A. Pagano is a junior researcher in Computer Science at University of Bari. His research topic is about Open Manuscript received April 11, 2016. Source impact on Enterprise Software Development. He This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of was a researcher for the “research 60%” focused on Commerce under Grant BS123456 (sponsor and financial support “planning methods and implementation of didactic models acknowledgment goes here). and artifacts, focused on learner and focused on knowledge construction communities. He is ICT and development Manager at Osel srl –University Spin Off Published as submitted by the author(s). Company. He is a LUGBari member (Linux User Group). He is an Open Source philosophy supporter.

The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace 2016, www.icelw.org