Personal Inquiry Manager

About

The weSPOT consortium has build a Personal Inquiry Manager available on main mobile platforms (iOS, Android) as free apps supporting learner’s in a self-directed approach for creating personal inquiry projects on mobiles as also managing there existing on-going inquiry projects. The personal inquiry manager will also be the central Hub for personal badges and mobile profile access and networking. The PIM supports IBL when the students in context. So the PIM support phase 1 and 3 of the weSPOT model, as they can happen everywhere. Phase 1 focuses on generating new questions from the student’s curiosity. Phase 3 enables the collection of data samples. Figure 1 shows the interaction design between the screens. The PIM allows students to login with their social accounts like Facebook, Linkedin or with their weSPOT OAuth based account.

Architecture

The PIM is based on the Mobile Data Collection System (MDCS). The MDCS have been developed as an extension of the ARLearn software architecture (Ternier, 2012) but it is also relies on the Inquiry Workflow Engine, the Mobile Notification Framework and the weSPOT account provider. The MDCS manages both Data Collection Tasks and Responses as they are returned from ARLearn services. The Response represents the sample collected by the students. The Data Collection Task stands for the containers that group data samples together. Both Data Collection Tasks and Responses are bound to an Inquiry, that is managed by the Inquiry Workflow Engine. As a result of a data collection sample taken, the system generates a notification via the Mobile Notification Framework. All the students registered with the weSPOT account system and participating in the inquiry will get a notification. The messaging system that enables communication channel is part of the Mobile Notification Framework. The Messages and the Threads are at the core of the component. The Messages contains all the information and context details sent by the students in the chat. The Thread wrap a group of messages enabling the group chats. Again, the students must be registered in the weSPOT account system to send and receive messages.

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