Abstract:
The advancement in Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) has brought opportunities for the development of Smart Cities. The
Smart City uses ICT to enhance performance and wellbeing, to reduce costs
and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its
citizens. In particular, the education sector is adopting new ways of learning in
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through e-learning systems. While these
opportunities exist, e-learning content delivery and accessibility in third world
countries like Tanzania is still a challenge due to resource and network
constrained environments. The challenges include: high cost of bandwidth
connection and usage; high dependency on the Internet; limited mobility and
portability features; inaccessibility during the offline period and shortage of
ICT facilities. In this paper, we investigate the use of mobile technology to
sustainably support education and skills development particularly in developing
countries. Specifically, we propose a Cost-effective Mobile Based Learning
Content Delivery system for resource and network constrained environments.
This system can be applied to cost-effectively broaden and support education in
many cities around the world, which are approaching the 'Smart City' concept
in their own way, even with less available technology infrastructure. Therefore,
the proposed solution has the potential to reduce the cost of the bandwidth
usage, and cut down the server workload and the Internet usage overhead by
synchronizing learning contents from some remote server to a local database in
the user’s device for offline use. It will also improve the quality of experience
and participation of learners as well as facilitate mobility and portability in
learning activities, which also supports the all-compassing learning experience
in a Smart City.
