m-Portal

Is a learning community portal system designed to cater for potential users who have literacy and numeracy skills needs but who are outside of formal learning and who will exhibit different learning styles and preferences.

It allows people to create their own microportal and visit the microportals of peers, tutors and mentors within the online community. They can access a range of other resources such as links to useful websites and also m-learning modules, linked to a learning management system and a virtual tutor agent. The range of tools at their disposal includes authoring templates and tools for creating chats, discussions and messages, thereby enabling them to engage in debate on their own terms, and affording opportunities for scaffolding each other's learning.

This is a conversational model for learning and teaching: at a 'lower' level the young adult is goal-oriented, focussed on mastering the learning content, with the teacher or mentor providing the experiential environment; at the same time, at a 'higher' level, learner and teacher can talk and reflect online about what each is doing, negotiating views of the subject and modifying their perceptions in the light of the discussion.

We anticipate that in such ways the portal can promote an interest in lifelong learning, enabling the young adults to be actively involved in planning, initiating and evaluating their learning.

The m-Portal system uses SnugFit, a web-based community toolkit written in Java. This is an ongoing project written and maintained by Kris Popat of Ultralab. To find out more about SnugFit visit marvin.ultralab.net