Recovery from Disconnection in Synchronous Mobile Learning System

Abstract

Due to its high mobility, a mobile client often gets disconnected from the server. When the client gets reconnected to the server and starts receiving updates from the server, the client could be put in an inconsistent state. Thus, we present synchronous mobile learning system that supports the recovery from disconnection. The proposed system enables students to watch video of an instructor and slide with annotation on their mobile device in real time. The student can interact with an instructor and discuss with other students with text. When the client gets reconnected to the server, the proposed recovery model puts the client back into the up-to-date consistent state. The prototypes of the client and the server are currently being implemented in Objective-C with iOS SDK and Visual C++ respectively. We hope the proposed system will help researchers to develop mobile learning system that can effectively deal with the disconnection problem due to its mobility.