Decided to see what iPhone is able to do with ANGEL. My main interest was quizzes, since this little device could be a good tool for "dishonest behavior."
I was able to access ANGEL with no problems. Selecting a course from the list was a little difficult because they are so close together, and finding a place to tap to enlarge it without hitting a link is tricky. Once in the course, I was able to get into folders and to the quizzes without a problem.
I first tried a ten-point fill-in-the-blank quiz. If I was really taking the quiz for credit, I would have been worried, because typing in each answer was time-consuming - and this was a timed quiz. For each response, the keyboard appeared, and I was able to enter in my response like I do for any web site. Once I was done, I hit the "submit" button and my screen went blank - we're talking total white screen. It almost seemed to freeze. Took me some time to regain back the screen, but I was tossed back out to the profile page. Not good.
Next, I tried a quiz that consisted of both multiple choice and drop-down-menu-style true and false questions. The multiple choice questions were tough - It took a lot of pressure to make the radio button show as selected - and sometimes it would stay selected when I moved on to the next question and sometimes it would not. The true/false questions were even tougher. When I selected the downward arrow for the menu, this box popped up showing me the True and False options. The box covered half the screen. It had a next and a done option, but it caused me to get lost in the quiz questions for some reason (it caused the screen to scroll). Finally after giving up on answering the true and false, and growing frustrated with the radio buttons sometimes working and sometimes not, I hit the "submit" button to see what happened. For a brief second, my responses with corrective feedback showed, but then the screen went white. I moved all around trying to find it again, but there was nothing - just white screen.
Next, I decided to check out the discussion forums. I was able to get into the forums and click on "Post" button. When I did, the keyboard popped up. Entering the title was easy, but when I tried to enter something in the body, the keyboard covered it. I could type, but I couldn't see what I was typing. Once I was done, I hit submit and my posting showed with the others in the thread. When I clicked on it, however, nothing happened. I clicked on the other students' postings, and nothing happened either. Their posting titles would highlight and there was even a flicker, but nothing opened up.
Based on this little test, iPhone does not appear to be a good tool to use with ANGEL - part of the problem may be due to the Safari browser.
Comments (1)
I think a lot of this is due to the iPhone's interface and the Safari browser.
Safari is not a recommended browser for ANGEL (on desktops and mobile devices by implication) as ANGEL Learning does not support it nor perform any testing on it. There are many ANGEL tools that do not work in Safari; see http://angelkb.ais.psu.edu/article.asp?article=1478&p=2 . In general, it is likely the cause of the items that didn't work and the various interface issues that you noted were due to Safari's design. I use ANGEL frequently with Opera 8.65b on my Windows Mobile phone without these issues. When you performed your testing, were you viewing ANGEL in normal mode or using the PDA mode? If not using PDA mode, I highly recommend it. The ANGEL interface is simplified on most (but not all) pages and is much easier to navigate.
From your description, it sounds like the multi-touch interface makes it very difficult to select items. That's a shame, and one of the things that is keeping me away from the iPhone (for example, you can't select text--likely because the movements to do so would are so fine that they're not detectable by a finger).
Posted by Jennifer Mullen | July 17, 2007 11:40 AM
Posted on July 17, 2007 11:40