What we’ve been up to?
This could be of those blog posts that explains why there has been a long absence of blog posts, then goes on to explain explain why there will be more in the future and is shortly followed by a lack of blog posts again.
I’ll try to make sure it is not!
So what have we been up to?
We have been increasing the number of users of uHavePassed and currently have just over 3,000 people who have used it to pass their UK driving theory test. We have worked a lot on compatibility of uHavePassed with various handsets and also the communications that are used from the handset to our synchronisation server. We are really pleased how this is helping people and each bit of feedback has been great to receive - both positive and negative, as the product has developed.
The memory training and flashcard concepts in getawayphrases are in the process of being incorporated into uHavePassed allowing users to train their memory in addition to doing formative assessment.
We are looking for content partners and institutions to be able to increase the scope of content on uHavePassed.com beyond the UK driving theory test - so please get in contact if you are interested. We are already working with Leeds University and the Open University on this. More news soon…
With uHavePassed we are also in the process of launching a service so that organisations can use it to provide any assessment content to their users via web and mobile phone. More news soon….
We have also continued to work with the Open University on a couple of ad-hoc projects. These projects have been done at a very low cost and the aim is to push forward ideas and techniques in reasearch of the applications of mobile phones in higer education. Again more to follow….
I (Al) am now going to commit more time also to this blog and try to start up more of a conversation about how mobile phones can (and are) being used in education.
So on with the conversation…
Tags: Driving theory test, education, getawayphrases, languages, luzia research, m-learning, memory, mLearning, mobile development, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, uHavePassed
14.Jul.08 
Driving theory test, education, getawayphrases, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, uHavePassed 
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Why mobile phone revision can be more effective than alternatives
We’ve just put up a page on uHavePassed.com that looks at some of the reasons that students find engaging with mobile phones more effect than other resources.
uhavepassed.com » Why mobile phone practice is more effective than alternatives
From the Article :
“To start revising on a computer or other resource generally involves moving to where the computer is located, once moved to the correct location it takes time to start up and begin revision. This change of location creates a barrier that stops students from revising.”
We believe there are 5 key reasons, of course this only works with suitable content and audiences and the type of revision activities must work on a phone.
Tags: Driving theory test, luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
03.Oct.07 Driving theory test, education, m-learning, mLearning, uHavePassed Comments (0)
uHavePassed.com - Driving Theory Test Revision
We are proud to announce the launch of our new service - uHavePassed.com - a unique way to practice your driving theory test both on-line and on your mobile phone.
We have been developing this service over the last few months and just completed our beta testing which has given us great feedback.
Although we have many more plans for the service - we are proud to finally open up access to the service to the general public.
We believe we have created a new and engaging way to get students to interact with the core content of the driving theory test - and we are keen to help as many students as we can to pass the new Theory test that has been introduced this September.
Please visit the website for more information about practice the driving theory test
Tags: luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
18.Sep.07 Driving theory test, education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development, uHavePassed Comments (0)
Open University explores the potential of m-learning
We’ve are working with The Open University, well-known for its commitment to educational technology, on a couple of projects looking into how mobile phones could be used by students to improve their learning experience.
One project we have teamed up to create is a mobile phone-based study support tool that helps people get to grips with key mathematical concepts like averages and statistics.
The interactive programme allows students to collect data on their phone, and then use a variety of tools and graphs to learn about interpreting that data.
The Open University have a similar approach to mobile phone support tools as we do. They recognise that tools aimed at busy OU students, will provide greater flexibility and easy access to study support and learning materials, by being optional support and not core activites.
Tags: luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, open university
08.Aug.07 education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, mobile development Comments (0)
UK Driving theory test - both on-line and on your phone
Well after a lot of hard work we have just started beta testing uHavePassed - which is our new driving theory test practice for mobile phones service.
It has taken a long time to develop as we have been developing a platform that will allow us to synchronise data between the website and the mobile phone. This may sound simple but can become quite complex quite quickly.
With our service you can practice mock driving theory tests both on-line at your computer and “offline” on your phone. We have spent a long time researching how people prepare for the UK drving theory test and this has shown us several things.
- Practice for this test really does make perfect. The official question bank is published by the Driving Standards Agency and if you practice all of those questions you can then guarantee that you will be seeing a question you know on the day. The question bank contains 1000+ questions though.
- Students take a range of different approaches to revising for the test - from the extreme of no preparation to the other end of the spectrum - reading the highway code and another book and practising all questions.
- Going through 1000+ questions can become quite tedious and boring. In the “real” test you get 50 minutes but most students will only take half of that time.
- If you only practice the tests it is quite hard to understand how you can improve your performance - and it is hard to track your progress and find your weak areas.
As a result of this we designed a service that allows you to take long tests in front of a computer to practice mock tests when that suits you - and to do shorter 2-10 minute tests on your phone. The complex part of designing this service has been making sure that the results of the on-line computer tests and the “off-line” phone based tests are combined.
We wanted to ensure that as students had reason to take both on-line and “off-line” tests - that they wouldn’t face duplicate questions on each platform. Also analysis of the results seemed to be key to providing a good service for students and we realised this analysis must cover all of the results.
There was also some technical reasons for developing our synchronisation platform, because phones are limited on their resources - we could not install all of the questions on the phone - 1000+ questions and 400+ images would exceed the storage on the phone.
As a final way of engaging the students we are creatign simple games to re-inforce various concepts that are important for the driving theory test.
We think that we have developed not only an interesting and engaging way for students to practice and prepare for the driving theory test, but also a great platform to build other mobile based assesents.
We are looking for students to sign up for our beta test - so if you are aware of anyone taking the driving theory test in the near future who would appreciate free access to the entire question bank in return for testing our software - please send them to http://uHavePassed.com/beta.
Tags: Driving theory test, luzia research, mLearning, mobile-learning, uHavePassed
30.Jul.07 Driving theory test, education, luzia research, m-learning, mLearning, uHavePassed Comment (1)
Genetically I can’t learn Mandarin*
There was an interesting article in last weeks Economist that states that native speaker of tonal languages have a genetic differences to those speakers of non-tonal languages.
I’m not sure what use the research is yet - apart from providing a good excuse for me to explain why picking up Mandarin* was so hard - but it is certainly interesting.
I would be interested to see if there are common differences in the language processing areas of the brains also - otherwise I am confused as to what the genetic difference means.
Anyway it is interesting research and I thought I’d make sure any current Mandarin* students could add it their list of reasons why it is so hard to learn, listen and talk tonal languages.
Linguistics | Words in code | Economist.com
*Other tonal languages exist
Tags: education, getawayphrases, languages, luzia research
09.Jun.07 languages, off-topic Comments (0)