2014 11th International Conference on Electronics, Computer and Computation (ICECCO) - Microlearning based mobile application for preparation to CCNA examination

1. Microlearning based mobile application for
preparation to CCNA examination
Sagandykova Aigerim
Information System Department
Suleyman Demirel University
Kaskelen, Kazakhstan
aigerim.sagandykova@sdu.edu.kz
In the modern society, education is increasingly changing
standards according to people needs, forcing young people to know
more. We have many methodologies of teaching, but the most effective
is using instruments, that well known to audience. Therefore, it will be
productive to use technologies in learning and education processes to
increase interest of students towards the different subjects.
This paper presents a newly designed application for interactive
evaluation of students based on Android mobile platform that can
help teacher and students themselves to control learning process and
keep in track students' improvements. Application allows the user
implement and answer quizzes, and extract and publish statistics.
Index Terms- programming, education, microlearning
I. INTRODUCTION
Education is the timeless period of life. What we do is what we
know and have learned, either through instructions or through
adoption and observation. In the modern society, education is
increasingly changing standards according to people needs,
forcing young people to know more. Young students are used to
employing new technologies in their everyday life and social
relations. Researcher in a study on university students showed
that the students are the most users of mobile phones [1]. Taking
into account all advantages of new technologies, more people
become users of mobile devices and Internet connections that
allow an easy and fast access to all kind of contents anytime,
anywhere. According to researchers, in 2006, 90.9% of people in
the developed countries and 32.4% of people in the developing
countries used mobile phones [2]. Many mobile phones' users
and those who own devices, such as digital camera, personal
digital assistants and laptops are enabled to make use of internet
[3]. Therefore, it will be productive to use technologies in
learning and education processes to increase
Zhamanov Azamat
Information System Department
Suleyman Demirel University
Kaskelen, Kazakhstan
zhamanov.azamat@sdu.edu.kz
interest of students towards the different subjects. In order to
that, Higher Education must take advantages of these
technologies to improve methodologies of teaching.
This paper presents a newly designed application for
interactive evaluation of students based on Android mobile
platform that can help teacher and students themselves to control
learning process and keep in track students' improvements.
Application allows the user implement and answer quizzes, and
extract and publish statistics.
II.RELATED WORK
Many systems exists that are used for preparation to CCNA
exam [4]. Some systems involve different activities, such as,
labs simulator, drag and drop, mUltiple choice test, many of tests
enable to user see results and done mistakes. Types of activities
in these applications depend on level of knowledge, for example
for ICDN2 part of test developers offer lab simulator or
troubleshooting activity [5]. But all these application is designed
just for self-studying. Our application represents systems main
objective is join student and teacher for collaboration. It has
proper advantages. Firstly, teacher's control allows to select
individual program for each student in class in accordance with
student's progress.
III.MAIN REQUIREMENTS
We build system to help students who are preparing to
CCNA examination. In this scenario, the development of this
kind of application designed for students must take into account
some requirements, such as:
978-1-4799-4106-3/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE

2. • Usability/accessibility, designing easy-to-use application,
ensuring that users can interact with them and
understanding both the tasks to be accomplished, and
also the response of the system.
• Flexibility/adaptability, allowing educators to customize
and adapt application contents according to both user
and educational contexts. The customization options
should not have been chosen at random, but must be the
result of an in-depth analysis of the student's results
• Mobility, mobile devices have become a very useful
support in developing learning applications because
they provide freedom everywhere within classroom and
outside. Students can always take out the application to
be used when they need it.
Based on this requirements we have devised a platform to
design educational activities to juice up learning process and
help teachers to monitor students' progress. The objective is to
create activities which can be personalized at content level and
will be simple in use not only for students but also teachers.
IV. ARCHITECTURE
System consists of two main parts: server side and
client side. Course materials, student's information, marks are
located on server side. Server side is designed on cloud
technology called "Parse". Parse is the cloud application
platform for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Windows 8, Windows
Phone 8 and OS X. Parse allows to add a scalable and powerful
backend and launch a full featured application in record time
without ever worrying about server management. We use
Android API, which has ready methods to manage needed
information and connect application with databases, stored on
"Parse cloud" (Figure 2).
Fig I. Structure of program
Client side is application developed on Android mobile
platform. Application consists of menus and functions, which
are different dependent on type of user. There are 3 types of
users in application:
• Teacher controls most of processes in system. He can
create group, create course, add students, give access to
course materials and monitor students' progress (Figure
2).
• Student is the main figure in system, who learn course and
take quiz. Students are divided by level of knowledge
(easy, medium, and hard). By default new student has
"easy" level, which he can increase by taking high
points on quizzes. Student has opportunity to check
himself and see progress (Figure 3).
• Administrator controls new users in system.
Teacher choose quizzes materials himself. Materials are
organized as test questions with one or more right questions.
Course materials are standard questions from CCNA (Cisco
Certified Network Assistant) exam [6]. Questions are marked by
levels and require different levels of knowledge from student. In
the process of student education teacher can choose materials
needed for current level of student.
Fig 2. Teacher Use Case diagram
Each student has login and password to enter the
system. After course revision student is training by taking quiz.
Quiz gives opportunity not only to introduce to CCNA questions
but also working with mistakes. At the end of each quiz system
gives points and questions with right answers and explanations.
Fig 3. Student Use Case diagram
Main advantage of system is student's progress
displaying. All points are represented as graph, which can
exactly show progress or regress, weak points and passed course.
Application has friendly interface with menus and
forms (Figure 4).

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New Group
New Instructor
New Course
New Qu,z
Groups
Matenals
Fig 4. Teacher's menu page
Developing on Android platfonn has many advantages,
because of many libraries, which give many opportunities. We
used one of them XYPlot library for more comfortable view of
graph (Figure 5).
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PERSONAL
INFORMATION
Student's subject progress
OBSERVE RESULTS
Fig 5. Graph view of student's results
We tried to do application interface more simple and
understandable by using menus and tabs.
V. FUTURE WORK
Our application is only a small part of educational system,
but we tried to implement maximum and application will be
developed in future.
Following features may be added:
• Video lessons and tutorials as additional course material.
• Different types of tasks (open questions)
• Version on iOS
VI. CONCLUSION
The use of mobile technologies and multimedia increases
the interest of students, helping them to learn while they
entertained. With the objective of facilitating the use of the
technologies in class, we have designed application runs on
mobile devices and which is fIrstly used by educators to create
and modify exercises as they see fIt, and then, by students to
learn. The mobility functionality of the devices means that
exercises can be done anytime and anywhere. Our application is
understandable and available almost for everyone.
Application advantages:
• Implemented for mobile platform
• Use interactive methods of teaching
• Has friendly interface
In future application planned to expand. Currently
application is tested.
VII. REFERENCES
[1]. O.Peters and S. Allouch. "Always connected: a longitudinal field
study of mobile connection" Telecommunications Policy, 2002, 22,239-
256
[2]. ITU. "International Telecommunications Indicators". 2006
[3]. lE. Katz, "Mobile phones in educational settings, In K. Nyiri (Ed.)
A sense of place " The global and local in mobile communication:
2005, pp. 305-317. Vienna: Passagen Verlag
[4], [5]. https:!!itunes.apple.com!us!app!ccna-exam­
preplid327037133?mt=8
[6]. https:!!www.netacad.com!