Accommodating Special Needs Users in the Evaluation of an m-Learning Application: A Case Study

Adult illiteracy rates are alarmingly high worldwide. The portability, affordability, and ease of use of mobile (or handheld) devices offer a realistic opportunity to provide novel, context-sensitive literacy resources to adults with limited literacy skills. To this end, we developed the concept of ALEX - a mobile Adult Literacy support application for Experiential learning (Lumsden et al., 2005). On the basis of a medium-fidelity prototype of this application, we conducted an evaluation of ALEX using participants from our intended user group. This evaluation had two goals: (a) to assess the usefulness of the ALEX concept and the usability of its current design; and (b) to reflect on the appropriateness of our evaluation process given the literacy-related needs of our participants. This paper outlines our approach to this evaluation as well as the results we obtained and our reflections on the process.
IADIS' International Conference Mobile Learning 2006, July 14-16, 2006, Dublin, Ireland