FAQs - Frequently asked questions:
Questions: Problems:
How do I create a mobile learning content (MLO) with questions?
You must be a teacher in order to do this. Go to your course where the MLO should be. Click on "Turn editing on" (upper right). Now click on "add activity" where the MLO should be and choose Mobile Learning Object (MLO). Choose a name and a description. Click on save. Now click on "Edit MLO" and than on "Start MLE Editor". Now a Java Program should start (if not you do not have Java installed, go to http://java.sun.com and install Java).
With the editor you can create now learning content. Most of the learning-features (like the interactive questions) are hidden behind the "Expert"-button.
If you have created interactive questions in your MLO, don't forget to add the "submit results"-button which can be found on the expert-panel on the right-bottom. If the user clicks this button the results will be sent to your Moodle-server and you as the teacher can view the results.

If you are finished you must click on "save" in order to save your changes.
Note: If the editor does not respond there is useually another editor-panel or window open which must be closed first.

How do I create a flashcard trainer?
As a teacher go to your course and click on "Turn editing on" (upper right). Now click on "add activity" where the trainer should be and choose Flashcard-Trainer. Choose a name and a description. Than choose a title for the fornt and the back-side of this flashcard-trainer (eg: "German" - "English" for a German/English vocabulary trainer). Than you should choose an access limit for the boxes. A flashcard-trainer exists out of 5 boxes which contains all the cards you have known at least one time. In order to go through theses boxes again, you need to have a minimum number of cards in this box. So if the limit of the first box is 12, the user needs at least 12 cards in this box (which means, he has known at least 12 cards one time) in order to go through these cards again.
These limits should rise to each box, so the user needs more time, before he sees the card again.
Now click on "Save" and than on "Edit content of the Flashcard-Trainer" (upper right). Now you can insert new cards or even import a list of cards out of a CSV file (you can store a Microsoft Excel table as a CSV file), where two columns represent the two sides of a card.
You can add pictures or audio files to a card too (after the card has been created).

How do I use the mobile repository?
The mobile repository allows you to create a central storage repository for mobile learning content, that can be reused in multiple courses. Let's say you are a teacher with multiple classes and have a learning object, that you want to use in 5 courses. So with the mobile repository you create the learning object once and than link to this object from your 5 courses. If you change the content of this central learning object it will be changed in all of the 5 courses too.

So first of all, log-in as the admin and go to Modules - Blocks - Manage blocks. Make sure that the "Repository for mobile Learning" is activated and visible (the eye-icon must be open). Afterwards go to Modules - Blocks - Repository for mobile Learning. Here you must define which role a user must have (anywhere in Moodle), in order to be able to see and use the repository. Usually this would be a teacher or a course-creator. Click on save.
Now go to the front-page and turn editing on. Add the "Repository for mobile Learning"-block. Click on "Create new" to create a new MLO and fill it with contents. Afterwards go back to the front-page and the repository-block. Now your new MLO should be listed there. Right next to the name of the MLO is an icon (). If you click on this icon, you can grant permission to other users to use or manage this content. With the permission "Read and use" a teacher can use this MLO in a course (so you do not need to add each student, you only need to add the teachers, who want to create a reference to this content). With the other options you can allow other teachers to edit this content too. If you are the only teacher that will use this object, you do not need to change the permissions at all.

Now you can go to a course and create a new MLO. In the bottom of this form, there is a new dropdown-box, where you can choose every MLO out of your repository. Choose your newly created MLO from the repository and click on save (don't forget to enter a name and a description too, this name and description will be used in the course instead of the real name in the repository). Now you have a reference to your MLO from the repository in your course. You can repeat this step multiple times for multiple courses.

Besides MLOs you can do the same thing with flashcard-trainers.

If you view MLE-Moodle with your mobile phone, you will see now a new course under "my courses". This course contains all of your objects out of your repository (and all of the objects where you have the permissions to see them). So a normal student won't see this course, it is only for you for testing purpose.

How do I update the MLE-WYSIWYG-Editor?
You need to download the following files: Upload these files to your web-server to the following directory: moodle-root/mod/mlo/editor/ (moodle-root is the root folder of moodle). Overwrite the files that are located there.

What is the difference between the mobile browser access and the mobile phone client?
You can choose to use both ways or just one. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions:

Mobile browser access:
Advantages:
  • Nothing to install on the phone, works right away
  • Customize the look-and-feel, add your own logo and title
  • Works on the iphone too
  • There are no Java limitations. Some features won't work with the mobile application because the Java Version on the phone has bugs or doesn't meet the requirements.
Disadvantages:
  • Everything is online, no way to store content on the phone
  • Because you are always online, the amount of data you transfer during learning is bigger than with the mobile client
  • You need a network connection in order to learn
  • Each phone has it's own browser software and the way the content is displayed on the screen looks sometimes very different
  • Getting to to MLE-Moodle start-page is sometimes hard-work with some mobile browsers
Mobile phone application:
Advantages:
  • Offline learning: Store the learning content on your phone and learn without network connection
  • Compressed data traffic
  • Looks the same on every mobile phone
  • Easy to start: just click on the MLE-icon in the phone menu
  • All in one application
Disadvantages:
  • Not all learning content can be stored on the phone. Eg: quizzes or lessons can not be stored on the phone.
  • The need to install a big (>600KB) application on the phone.
  • The problem with the different Java versions on the mobile phones. Not all features work on all phones and sometimes the multimedia-features (like recording) don't work reliable on the phones because of the Java implementation.

What is the Gateway or Messaging Server? Do I need it?
The Gateway Server is a simply Proxy server for the MLE phone client to access the Internet (so basically your MLE-Moodle server). It is used for some special extra features (like the eBook-Mode for MLOs) and optimizes the data-transfer to the phone. It is not necessary to use the Gateway Server but a few devices have problems with larger form-uploads without the Gateway Server in which case it is necessary to use it. On the other hand there has been a report that a network-provider was blocking the connection to the gateway server, in which case the gateway server had to be deactivated in order to get a working connection. So try it out and see what works best for you.

The Messaging Server is used for the Moodle Messaging System. It is only necessary if you want to be informed immedeatly about new messages (for example while you are learning offline in a MLO). Otherwise you are informed about new messages, the next time you make a request to your MLE-Moodle server. Please consider that the Messaging Server doesn't inform you, if the MLE client is not running on the phone!

There is a public Gateway and Messaging Server but if you do not want to rely on a third party server (our Gateway and Messaging Server can be offline, we do not garantee anything at all, but it is free!) we recommend to run your own Gateway and Messaging Server. To do that, you need a server where you can run a custom Java Server (this is useally called "root-server").

Please check out this Wiki guide for more information about this topic.


What is the eBook mode for MLOs?
Right now the eBook mode for MLOs makes only sense if you use the MLE-phone client. The eBook mode is used if you import a text or HTML file (you can convert a Word document or even a PDF to HTML, search on the internet for conversion tools) in a MLO (you can do this at the beginning when you create a new MLO or at any time over the expert-panel in the MLE-editor). This useually results in a MLO with hundred of pages.
If you try to parse (download and store) such a MLO with hundred of pages, on most phones this will take 10 to 30 minutes. If the eBook mode is turned on, and you are using the Gateway-Server, this parsing process is done on the Gateway Server. So on the phone you only need to store the data on the disk, which needs only a few seconds or at best a few minutes.
But you should use the eBook mode only for MLOs which contain nothing else than text and images. Questions or other interactive elements won't be parsed on the Gateway-Server and therefor won't be visible on the mobile phone.

So to some up what you need:
  • The MLE phone client (on the web-browser you can not store content)
  • The Gateway Server must be used, otherwise nothing will be parsed by the server
  • The eBook mode must be turned on (you can do set in the MLE-Editor as well, under expert-panel and the object properties)

How do I create a theme for the browser access of MLE-Moodle?
Please take a look at this WIKI page.

I am having problems with the download-server (downloading the mobile application)?
If you are getting error messages like this "Invalid URL: http://...", you should turn of the internal download-server. As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Client: Installation" and deactive the internal download server.

If you can't access the public download server, you should of course activate the internal download server. If both options do not work for you, you need to run the internal- download server and host the installation-files on your own server too.

Please check out the Step-To-Step tutorial and the Wiki guide for the download-server for more details about this topic.

With the MLE phone client I can't connect to my MLE-Moodle server
  • Make sure you can connect to the Internet with your phone. Open the web-browser on your phone and see if you can connect to a web-page like http://google.com
  • If you can connect with your phone browser but not with the MLE, you need to make sure that the MLE is using the correct Network-Profile. On most phones you are asked the first time you want to connect to your MLE-Moodle server which Network-Profile should be used. Make sure to use the exact same profile as you are using with your mobile web-browser. On some phones you must set the Network-Profile through some kind of application manager. Look in your phone manual on how to change the Network- Profile for Java-Applications (note: most Java Applications are actually games).
  • In the MLE phone client go to Settings - Moodle server. Try the following: If the Gateway-Server is turned on, try to turn it off or otherwise turn it on. Don't forget to click on "Save" at the bottom of the page. Try to access your MLE-Moodle server by going to "MyCourses".
  • If that doesn't help go back to the Moodle server settings page and check the values in these 4 textboxes. They must be the same as written on the MLE-Info page (as an administrator log-in to your MLE-Moodle server go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE-Info"). Please be sure that you do not use "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" as the server-adress, this will defenitly NOT work. Enter the IP-Adress or Domain-Name of your server (or use a service like http://www.dyndns.com to get a domain-name for a dynamic IP) instead of localhost or 127.0.0.1.

With the MLE phone client I can't login to my MLE-Moodle server
  • In the MLE phone client go to Settings - Moodle server. Try the following: If the Gateway-Server is turned on, try to turn it off or otherwise turn it on. Don't forget to click on "Save" at the bottom of the page. Try to access your MLE-Moodle server by going to "MyCourses".
  • If that doesn't help go back to the Moodle server settings page and check the values in these 4 textboxes. They must be the same as written on the MLE-Info page (as an administrator log-in to your MLE-Moodle server go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE-Info"). Please be sure that you do not use "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" as the server-adress, this will defenitly NOT work. Enter the IP-Adress or Domain-Name of your server (or use a service like http://www.dyndns.com to get a domain-name for a dynamic IP) instead of localhost or 127.0.0.1.
  • Try to login on the MLE-Moodle browser view, than download the mobile client (preconfigured for the current user)

How do I translate the MLE and MLE-Moodle to other languages?
Please use this tutorial and post the package in the forum:
Translation guide