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Messenger (AIM), Google Talk, Jabber, Mabber,
MSN Instant Messenger (Windows Live Mes-
senger), and Yahoo Instant Messenger. Social
utilities with instant messaging capabilities and
chat functions such as Facebook and Myspace
include other options that keep users connected
to social networks. Staying connected to peers in
a m-learning environment is an important factor
of the social aspect of learning. Mobile compli-
ant versions of these popular social utilities are
available.
important factor with researchers noticing a high
positive correlation between increased levels of
learning and achievement and increased levels of
human engagement (Klem & Connell, 2004). It
is believed that such discoveries in educational
systems research are applicable to m-learning
environments. The qualitative aspect of human
engagement may facilitate undue bias during
analysis; quantification would help mitigate this
bias.
Modern methodological frameworks concern-
ing human engagement are being developed that
include quantified physiological response mea-
sures of arousal. These include the observation
of cardiopulmonary, ocular, cardiac, and brain
activities. Besides physiological response arousal
measurements, approaches are being developed
that combine qualitative psychological data and
quantitative physiological data into a common
framework (Butler, 2009).
Mobile Web Browsers
The functionality of mobile web browsers is
similar to that of full-fledged web browsers for
desktop systems. Mobile web browsers however,
are highly specialized for handheld devices and are
limited to core navigation and display functional-
ity. The more popular mobile web browsers include
Android (Google), Internet Explore for Mobile
(Microsoft), Minimo (Mozilla), Opera Mini, Safari
(Apple), Skyfire, and Thunderhawk (Bitstream).
Ensuring fast and error-free downloads are two
future hurdles developers are addressing. Increas-
ing relevant mobile web browsing functionality
while providing user-friendly and clear navigation
on small screens is also a concern.
Measuring Human Engagement
Psychological survey and questionnaire instruments
with Likert Scaling methods are the most common
approach to identifying human emotional, behav-
ioral, and attitudinal states. Topics such as motivation,
cognition, and perception may also be identified by
intentional user response. The distinction of the psy-
chological and social aspects of m-learning suggests
that learning can be both an individual experience
and a group experience. What is learned and what the
learned content means is also significantly shaped by
social norms. The future of psychological research,
specifically cognition, will include attempts to in-
tegrate concepts such as motivation and perception
collectively in cognitive frameworks.
Physiological response and arousal is a quantita-
tive approach to measuring the degree of psycho-
logical response without the conscious intention
of the student. One advantage to this approach is
that bias, such as human error, may be mitigated.
Table 1 shows common examples of physiological
response measures.
Human Engagement as a
measurement of usability
Defining Human Engagement
Traditional human engagement definitions are
qualitative and subjective in nature. Measure-
ment of human engagement was more commonly
relegated to psychometric scaling techniques
such as Likert Scaling. Other types of qualitative
assessments of engagement, specifically engage-
ment in learning, include works by the National
Center for School Engagement (NCSE) and the
Institute for Research and Reform in Education
(IRRE). Human engagement is perceived as an
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