What if you could use your mobile telephone to learn, and even have a tutor to help you? This paper discusses how an authoring tool can be used to create intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), to provide courses and intelligent help for students using mobile technology.

The “Mobile Author” authoring tool “can be used by human instructors either from a computer or a mobile phone to create their own ITSs, and to distribute them to their students. The tutoring systems can assess the students’ performance, inform the databases that record the students’ progress and provide advice adapted to the needs of individual students.”

The authors make several observations regarding the limitations of the technology, for example, the problem of limited bandwidth. However, they do not discuss human limitations, such as limited screen capabilities. Also, the authors do not adequately explain the core of their ITS. On page 57, they state, “The Educational Application Reasoner can perform student modeling and render the interaction with the students more individualized to their needs.” But how does this work, and on which theoretical model(s) is it based?

This paper offers an intriguing glimpse into the future. Clearly, there is potential for using mobile technology to provide education in an anytime, anywhere environment. The authors provide an optimistic portrayal of how this future might take shape. Hopefully, further studies will address other technical, as well as human, limitations for using this technology in education.