Android Applications for e-learning

(A report, 1st Submission for CSC-521 ADAA)

Prepared By:
Muhammad Rizwan Pasha
MS (CS) 1st Semester
Bahria University
Islamabad Campus, Pakistan
razzi383@gmail.com
03 March, 2015

ABSTRACT
This report discusses popularity of Googles Android
platform, importance of Android platform for education and
useful/ popular e-learning Applications offered by the Android
Platform, available freely on Google Play, for a range of
educational subjects and courses. Mobile learning (mlearning) as a subset of e-learning is also elaborated. Finally,
the scope of future development for Android E-Learning
Applications in higher education is discussed.

provided support for Android API which includes set of

routines, protocols, and tools for building cross-platform
android applications.
The above discussion leads towards rational for the use of
Android platform in education because it is free, open source
and most importantly offers a wide range of absolutely free
software applications for education and cheapest hardware
solutions customized for learning.

Keywordse-learning using android; m-learning; d-learning;

android educational applications; Learning Management System
(LMS).

I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile computing has further advanced the educational
systems, technology, strategies, and instructional system
design in that these have completely changed the ways
education is delivered to students, learning material access and
dissemination, student-teacher interaction, and the list goes on.
E-learning introduced new methods of distance learning
(d-learning) using computer and network technologies and is a
subset of d-learning with a constraint of physical presence at a
predefined place. M-learning is a subset of e-learning with the
advantage of learning on the go i.e. learning/ teaching process
is possible without regard to permanent physical presence as
in the case of traditional e-learning environments. M-learning
works using mobile technologies (such as cell phones, smart
phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) and wireless and/or internet
technologies [1].
The emergence of Googles open-source Android Platform
pushed the borders of m-learning further and boosted the
openness, availability, and flexibility of android applications
with low development costs involved. Android platform also
provides a central marketplace i.e. Google Play for all of its
supported applications. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of
Android, Chrome and apps revealed at Google I/O, 2014 that
the number of active Android users reached 1 billion , up from
538 million in June 2013 [2]. BlackBerry from its OS 10 has

Figure 1 Android for Learning

Pakistan, being a developing country is a potential

marketplace for Android smartphones. The recent advent of
3G and 4G technologies has uplifted the number of
smartphone phone users significantly. In Pakistan, there are
77% of the smartphone users in the ages between 21 & 31
years while 12% fall under ages between 31 & 40 years. 68%
of total smartphone users own Android devices and only 24%
use iPhone. Among total cell phone users 72% of them use
smartphones and 28% use basic cell phones [3]. Then,
Android based Tablets have their own number game as well.
II. RECENT WORK
Useful/ Popular Android Applications for e-learning [4]:
These applications will help you to learn new skills,
improve your career and continue your education.
i.
MyOpenCourses by My Open Courses (last updated
on January 26, 2014):

This application offers more than 11,000 of program

hour videos particularly on disciplines of Engineering
and Management. To let students e-lean like a typical
class environment, the video tutorials are supported
by subject notes, assignments and reference material.
Users of both high and low speed internet and high
and low end Android devices can access the videos.
There is also a Q&A platform to enable students to
get answers to their questions on a particular subject.
The objective of the application is to provide
education to every student by the means of
technology.
ii.

Unlike other academic MOOC programs offered by

traditional educational institutes, Udemy offers a
platform to combine experts and students together.
Anyone can design his/her own course and offer it
free of cost or at some cost like tuition fee. Objective
of Udemy is to help anyone learn anything.
vi. Google Classroom by Google Inc. (last updated on
February 26, 2015).

edX by edX.org (last updated on February 3, 2015):

edX provides absolutely free online courses from top

universities and subject specialists across the world
like MIT, Rice University, McGill University,
California Institute of Technology, UC Berkley, and
many more. The course format includes videos (with
closed captions), assignments & coursework, and
discussions. Lecture videos are accessible using WiFi or cellular connection. edX is a non-profit
organization and objective is to offer Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs) to learners.
iii. Coursera by Coursera (last updated on February 23,
2015):

Much alike in functionality to edX, Coursera offers a

wide range of free e-learning courses from 115+ top
international universities including Stanford, Yale,
Princeton, Ohio State, Duke, Rochester, Edinburgh,
and Pittsburgh.
iv. Udacity - Learn Programming by Udacity (last
updated on February 8, 2015):

This application can only be accessed if someone has

a Google Apps for Education account, which is free
per user and for non-profit organizations. This app
helps in organizing class rooms and improving
student-teacher communication.
III. SCOPE OF ANDROID E-LEARNING APPS IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
As far we have established an understanding of how useful
Android platform is for e-learning due to open source nature
and free availability of a number of e-learning applications.
However, a lot of work needs to be done yet for the
development of e-learning applications for Android platform.
It might be possible that different universities would have
developed Android applications for their own use to fulfill a
variety of educational needs of their own students but it would
then be quite unfair to not place those applications on Google
Play for public use which are built using Open Source Free
Android Platform. Especially there is not much contribution
seen on Google Play for Android applications available for
higher education.
Scope of future development for Android applications for
Higher Education is listed below:
Digital Libraries
Research Portals
Student Information System
Learning Management System
Academic Social Networking
University Open Access Libraries
IV. CONCLUSION

Udacity is a for-profit organization providing

specialist courses for Programming and Big Data
using technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript,
Python, Java, etc. Courses are taught by industry
experts.
v.

Udemy by Udemy (last updated on February 3,

2015):

Usage and development of Android e-learning applications

is inevitable in todays ever growing ICT based educational
institutions especially in higher education while there are such
smart and free applications available online at a cost of FREE.
In the above lines we have shown very useful and popular
e-learning Android applications but still there is much room to
develop Android e-learning applications for higher education
which would help higher education students in their studies.

References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

ES Georgieva, AS Smrikarov and TS Georgiev, Evaluation of Mobile

Learning System Procedia Computer Science 2011 vol. 3.
http://goo.gl/TQx1nz (Robert Hof, 25 June, 2014)
http://goo.gl/lRXFqD (Gartjan Van Laar, 7 July, 2014)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/education