Adaptation Technologies in Mobile Learning

The explosive growth of Internet services and the widespread diffusion of mobile devices are offering ubiquitous and time-independent access to a huge amount of online resources. In particular, educational experiences on non-conventional contexts have been made possible and the use of mobile terminals has created a new form of e-learning, called mobile learning (or “m-learning”). The availability of open technologies has participated in the diffusion of such a trend. Needless to say that standards, metadata and adaptation mechanisms have to be applied to the m-learning environment and content, in order to meet learner’s needs and preferences, as well as device characteristics. This chapter will introduce issues and standards for adaptation mechanisms for mobile learning resources and it will describe some notable existing projects and software tools. Finally, it will present some case studies and open trends about m-learning.