Authoring System of Mobile Tutorial Modules Based on Auditory Multimedia

Abstract

In this study, we consider technologies of auditory multimedia as a mode of communication between a mobile device and blind students regarding instructional material. We propose an authoring system designed to create mobile tutorial modules (MTMs) for use by blind students. The system includes two major phases. In the first phase, the instructor submits the contents of a tutorial module in natural language into a server. The server saves the contents of tutorial modules in a database. The server then creates a website based on PHP with MYSQL. Thus, the system creates a website with all the material entered by the instructor. The second phase considers an Android environment with XML for the graphical user interface (GUI) and Java source coding for activities). An API library in the server manages the tutorial content into typical tutorial module. Because the application is designed for totally blind students, all the contents of the GUI are converted into corresponding text-to-speech data (Audio files) using Android. Finally, the blind student receives the MTMs as sound output from the device. We invited several instructors to experimentally evaluate some sample MTMs. The results show that the proposed approach was considered successful in this application. Additionally, an algorithm was applied to reduce the time required for multiple users to interact with the application. We also implemented text-to-speech on Android as well. The proposed approach was received positively by the participants and users.