ABSTRACT
An evaluation study was first undertaken at the Institute of Educational Technology during 2001, centred on the Open University Masters level course, Applications of Information Technology in Open and Distance Education (Kukulska-Hulme 2002; Waycott and Kukulska-Hulme 2003; Waycott 2004). The study was funded by an OU Teaching Fellowship Award in recognition of the course team’s ‘innovation and excellence’ in global on-line course delivery. Students were supplied with Palm m105 PDAs and WordSmith, a commercially available document editor and viewer, enabling them to read some course materials on the PDA. Findings showed that while the portability of the device was welcomed by students, and the electronic format was advantageous, limitations such as the small screen size, navigation difficulties, and slow and error-prone methods for entering text, made it difficult to read and interact with documents. The PDA also changed the way students interacted with the study text: they were less likely to take notes and highlight text on the PDA, compared with the strategies they employed when reading print-based materials. However, students devised strategies to overcome limitations of the PDA, such as using abbreviated notes which they transferred to
their desktop computer, and they used the PDA in conjunction with print materials and paper. The study recommended that documents should have more salient contextual clues about the reader’s location within the document and more flexible navigational tools such as hyperlinks.
