An intelligent e-learning software for learning to write correct Chinese characters on mobile devices

Purpose - Learning Chinese is unquestionably very important and popular worldwide with the fast economic growth of China. To most foreigners and also local students, one of the major challenges in learning Chinese is to write Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences that are considered as significant in the Chinese culture. However, due to the potentially complicated structures of Chinese characters together with their stroke sequences, there are very few character recognition techniques that can effectively tackle the involved training task in an efficient and flexible manner. The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent and flexible e-learning software based on learning objects to facilitate the learning of writing Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences. Design/methodology/approach - The paper adopts an incremental approach in designing the overall system architecture to emphasize on extendibility of the system. The basic features of the system including the evolution and pronunciation of each Chinese character can be embedded as a part of the learning object metadata to enhance students' understanding of Chinese characters. To demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, a prototype of the proposed e-learning software was built on smartphones such that students can learn anytime and anywhere. Findings - From the empirical evaluation of the e-learning prototype for learning to write correct Chinese characters on mobile devices, it was found that foreign students can learn and practise the writing more effectively anytime and anywhere on their mobile devices after classes. Some initial positive feedback was collected. Furthermore, a more careful and thorough evaluation is planned to be conducted in relevant courses for foreign students in the upcoming Fall semester. Originality/value - This proposal represents the first attempt to reduce the complexity while increasing the extendibility of the e-learning software to learn Chinese through learning objects running on smartphones or mobile devices in general. More importantly, it opens up numerous opportunities for further investigations including possible integrations with other existing Chinese e-learning systems.