Nowadays, many universities have taken advantage of elearning in the form of a website in the lecturing. Both students and faculties who want to access the e-learning should find for a computer or laptop. However the physical size of a computer, laptop, or something like that is such a large and not convenience to carry out. Considering the condition today, mobile devices have become a way of life for many people. Computers are now replaced by smartphones that can be inserted into a pocket and can be taken anywhere. However, the problem that arise is on a device with a small screen, users need to zoom and scroll to get the comfortable viewing. According the rapid development of technology, the operating systems for mobile devices are also getting popular such as iOS, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Symbian, and others. Various operating systems raise the new problem in developing the mobile e-learning (called mobile learning), because of differences in the programming language and the differences in how the operation of each mobile device. Currently, there is hybrid application technology that can overcome the problem of many different operating systems on mobile phone. This new technology can be used in developing the e-learning mobile phone application. Furthermore, the mobile phone application can be uploaded to the application store, so it can be downloaded by another users. In this research, will be developed a mobile learning application which is a further development of the existing web based applications.
MOBILE LEARNING The term mobile learning (m-learning) refers to the use of mobile and handheld IT devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile telephones, smartphones and tablet PC technologies, in teaching and learning. [5] As computers and the internet become essential educational tools, the technologies become more portable, affordable, effective and easy to use. This provides many opportunities for widening participation and access to ICT, and in particular the internet. Mobile devices such as phones and PDAs are much more reasonably priced than desktop computers, and therefore represent a less expensive method of accessing the internet. The introduction of tablet PCs now allows mobile internet access with equal, if not more, functionality than desktop computers. Mobile learning now currently be most useful as a supplement to ICT, web learning and more traditional learning methods, and can do much to enrich the learning experience. In the future mobile learning could be a huge factor in getting unsatisfied people in learning, where more traditional methods have failed. As mobile phones combine PDA functions with cameras, video and MP3 players, and as tablets combine the portability of PDAs with the functionality of desktops, the world of learning becomes more mobile, more flexible and more exciting.
HYBRID MOBILE APPLICATION TECHNOLOGY Hybrid is derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or unsuitable kinds. A hybrid application is one that is written with the same technology used for websites and mobile web implementations, and that is hosted or runs inside a native container on a mobile device. It is the integration of web technology and native execution. PhoneGap is an example of the most popular container for creating hybrid mobile application[3] [4]. Hybrid application use a web view control (UIWebView on iOS, WebView on Android and others) to present the HTML and JavaScript files in a full-screen format, using the native browser rendering engine. WebKit is the browser rendering engine that is used on iOS, Android, Blackberry and others. That means that the HTML and JavaScript used to construct a hybrid application is rendered/processed by the WebKit rendering engine (for you Windows 8 folks, this is what the IE10 engine does for Metro style applications that use WinJS) and displayed to the user in a full-screen web view control, not in a browser. No longer are you constrained to using HTML and JavaScript for only in-browser implementations on mobile devices.