Cost-Oriented Selection and Delivery of e-Content over Various Wireless Networks

As wireless technologies are competing with wired solutions in delivering information, there is a clear shift of e-learning towards mobile learning (m-learning). M-learning, which involves both wireless communications and mobile computing, provides learning opportunities to people without wire-based Internet infrastructure or that are continually on the move. At the same time, a large number of educational e-content providers produce and distribute materials that cover a wide range of topics (very often different providers may cover the same topic), differ in quality or presentation format and have different cost. In this context this paper presents a COST-efficient PERsonalised Wireless based E-LEARNing Service (Cost/We-Learn) that provides support for the selection and distribution of personalised educational rich media content (e.g. multimedia, pictures, graphics and text) that best suits user goals, device and cost constraints. Assuming that the user has simultaneous access to multiple wireless networks, Cost/We-Learn enables the selection of that access network over which the selected personalised content will be delivered such as the overall cost matches user budget constraints. This overall cost includes both the price paid for the selected educational material and the delivery cost