Context-aware Cloud-based Mobile Application for Assessment and Training of Visual Cognitive Abilities

Abstract

Context-aware mobile applications can adapt to different mobile, user and application contexts. Mobile cloud computing has been integrated with those applications to benefit from the cloud resources and make up for the limited mobile resources. This paper proposes such an application for the assessment and training of student visual cognitive abilities and skills that constitute an integral part of student intelligence such as the visualization ability of recognizing rotated objects. The need to ubiquitously and continuously deliver exercises relevant to a specific visual cognitive ability or skill according to the student proficiency and context has stimulated proposing the context-aware cloud-based MObile application for assessment and training of visual Cognitive Abilities (MOCA) presented in this paper. Integrating cloud computing with MOCA allows creating an extendible repository on the cloud and saving the relatively limited mobile resources that would be consumed by visual material. MOCA can be used in applications that are based on such cognitive abilities such as teaching visual science concepts and the visual classification and diagnosis of medical images. Two prototype mobile applications have been developed based on MOCA for visualization ability and for visual classification of science concepts. Empirical evaluation has shown the effectiveness of MOCA in training the students and the satisfaction of the students and teachers with its capabilities. MOCA is also a framework for building systems for other types of cognitive abilities.