Mobile virtual blackboard

Abstract

Distance Education System (DES) is commonly used to increase effectiveness of educational process. Mobile devices imply additional changes in the way students interact as a society. Mobile learning (mLearning) offers solutions that address the shortcomings of the traditional classroom. The mobile virtual blackboard is elaborated in this paper. It is a mobile communication service integrated within our existing DES. It serves for consultations purposes and it is especially suitable for acquiring small and exact pieces of knowledge that can be immediately used. In that way, it creates an ideal environment for collaborative learning. The feasibility of using mobile virtual blackboard within educational process was performed with the survey done with the students at the last year of undergraduate studies. We found that functions of the mobile virtual blackboard were effective in cooperative learning. The feedback from the students proved that the virtual blackboard system was viable for use within any project based curriculum.