Types, Features And Challenges Of Student Personal Digital Assistants

Introduction

An assistant is simply one who assists. To assist means to give support or help, to make it easier for someone to do something or for something to happen. For something to be personal, it means it belongs or relates to a particular person. In the modern day, one cannot always get a personal assistant. Students today have more things to learn and deal with than any past generation. Students are bombarded daily with distractions and alternatives, without proper planning and adequate help a student can stray away. Students need not bother about some tasks, which can be handled by a digital assistant. Remembering when to submit assignments or keeping track of a project can be done better with the help of a digital assistant. Those tasks may sound simple but they clog the mind and inhibit productive thinking. If a digital assistant can make a student more productive, the question of whether it should be used should not even be asked because the answer obvious.

History of personal digital assistants

Before the term personal digital assistant came to be, there were personal planners, which were in paper format already existing. As people were more engaged and nations grew, things needed to be organised. Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) gradually became popular, but were not as powerful as what we have today. Actually, the term PDA referred to a device, which was sold to assist people and help them organize and plan their schedule. Today PDA’s are not just devices but can also be software, which run on different devices. Today the PDA’s are intelligent and can make use of the available hardware power in today’s computer.

Personal digital assistants today

Today personal digital assistants go from the simple to the complex where artificial intelligence is involved. We all use personal assistant everywhere without knowing, and soon it will become a part of life such that everybody will have one in his or her home. Today, each new Microsoft Windows system comes with a popular system known as Cortana. Cortana is an intelligent personal assistant that uses voice commands to execute tasks on Windows operating system. There are also the less intelligent versions, which can be on a smart phone as an application. Assistant, which is also an intelligent personal assistant, is a mobile application unlike Cortana, which has a desktop version. It does tasks like telling you the nearest location to get a drink or buy some clothes.

There are other personal assistant such as My Study Life, which do not make use of artificial intelligence. Not every PDA needs artificial intelligence; in fact, some PDAs are better off without the complexities of implementing artificial intelligence. The aim of all these is not just to make life more fun, but to assist in daily tasks giving us more time to pay attention to things that cannot be delegated to a computer. The importance of this for students cannot be overemphasized. There are hardworking students who have their days planned, weeks planned and even months planned but they use the old-fashioned ways of using books and documenting that is less productive. No doubt, using a pen and paper is good, but software goes the extra mile, there are somethings that just cannot be accomplished with paper. A paper cannot alert you when to execute a task neither can you change your mind and cancel a task to be done without messing up the paper. In addition, papers and books wear out or get lost a lot more than digital devices.

Review of existing systems

There are existing personal digital assistants available on Google’s play store. Google’s play store is an online application store where developers can upload their applications and user can download any application of their choice. Some are free while others involve some kind of payment before or after download.

My Effectiveness

On Google’s play store this is one of the best personal digital assistants, the developer have carefully designed the application with excellent features. In a review, students were asked to choose between five alternatives, it turned out that if they choose My Effectiveness as one of the best applications. Some features of the application they say help increase productivity are:

• You can define your principles which is your mission
• Document your influences and concerns
• Set your priorities, which is helpful when there is a choice between two alternatives
• Put down your life roles
• Identify and put down your goals
• Create a comprehensive Action plan
• You can put the tasks into Projects/Actions/Checklists
• You can use unique Weekly Plan view.

Accomplish

Accomplish is another great application on Google’s play store. You can easily recognize it with its authentic reddish logo. It helps you graphically plan your time, which is a lot easier and actually, more fun that using a pen and paper. It uses a simple and conventional to-do list. Accomplish is made up of two parts:

The Accomplish To-do list

This is that part of the application where you save all your tasks you are to do. The list is placed in a list that has features of a navigation panel. The list slides out from the right side of the application.

The Accomplish Day-view

This is the wider view of all tasks in a calendar like form. Editing tasks here is actually easier than it is in most calendars. Seeing tasks in calendar view enables the user of the application see everything in a wider view, which is better for those who want to plan ahead but want to see their appointments to avoid any clahes.

Accomplish’s features:

• The day view spoken about synchronizes with Google calendar
• The user interface is smooth and fast with gesture based controls
• The colourful nature of the tasks and themes are beautiful
• It has powerful custom popup reminders
• It has a clean modern design.

MSL

MSL or My study Life is another successful digital assistant play store with success in the likes of My Effectiveness. My study life has 1, 000, 000 to 5, 000, 000 downloads on play store with over 23, 000 5-star ratings.

One great feature about MSL application is the face that it was designed for students, teachers and lecturers. It is to make ones study life easier to manage. It has functionalities to store assignments and exams, which use the cloud to make it available on any device. It even has features to show home works due for submission, classes that conflict with exams and even that ability to add a revision task for a specific exam. Some features of My Study Life include:

• Track – Have real time information about your homework, assignment and your revision.
• Store your exams – Instead of writing down exam times and pasting on the wardrobe, one can keep all exams alongside classes and get notified if there are clashes.
• Manage classes – Manage classes, view timetables and revisions.
• Get notified – Get reminded of due assignments, clashing classes and much more, this one feature that the traditional method of putting information on paper cannot accomplish.
• Share time tables - My Study Life actually allows teachers to create their timetables and if they wish, share it with students in the same school.

Roubit

Like the others, Roubit is another good digital assistant, though not with as many features as the others offer. It is an application that specializes in routine work that someone does every day. In a review Roubit was also one of the most loved application when compare with alternatives it has 100, 000 to 500, 000 downloads on play store and 922 5-star ratings. Roubit has a simple but well-designed interface. Roubit has an authentic blue colour, which is the default theme of the application. It has days of the week from Monday to Sunday and you can add tasks on those days using the floating button. The floating button is the button at the right bottom of the screen with a plus sign on it. It is also equipped with reminders so that you get notified when the time for a task has reached. The application makes use of material design animation such as circular reveal animation and custom check boxes.

Features of a student personal digital assistant

There are some common features of mobile-based student personal digital assistants, these features should be present in all others, and they are discussed below. These features may not be available in every single student PDA but they are feature of a modern standard PDA for students.

Android Creative Vision

The Android creative vision and design principles were created to keep user’s best interest in mind. Most modern applications are designed using android creative vision. Google even says they will soon only allow applications that use material design to feature on Play Store. Apps that work in expected ways are instantly familiar to Android users, gain their trust, and ensure they engage with the app’s consent, functionality, and features.

Ease of Use

The users of these applications are students so therefore, the user interface should not be complex and as much as possible the learning curve should not be steep. Addition of task and deletion should not take time or involve a long process and the app should contain short cuts of operations to enable students easily accomplish what they want with a few clicks.

Notification

With the old method of using papers, there was no notification, but with digital power, there is a lot that can be done, one of which is notification. A notification can be a simple pop up and beep that notifies the user of when a task is due, this helps the user remember because he is prone to even forgetting what he has planned. A notification runs on a service that is available even when the student is not using the application.

Planning and Scheduling

With digital assistants, students can make plans and not just for the day but for future days, they can look at their schedule for the day and make changes where necessary. With the old method of documenting on paper, planning was possible but not as convenient as planning with a digital assistant because you can edit with a digital assistant and delete peradventure the user’s schedule changes. When using digital assistants you can see a whole month at a glance an see what and when you have appointments. Some PDAs even have the functionality of informing you when you have clashing tasks, which is priceless information.

Information

If a student was to plan his year with the traditional method of writing it down, he may not be able to give account how many goals he has per month, how many are due, how many he has accomplished. He may have little information about all this, but why go through the stress when a digital assistant can give real time information about all things that pertains the students life, his assignments, projects and to-do list. A PDA can give the student a summarized view of all he has documented down so that he can use that information to plan further.

Issues with student personal digital assistants

As with most technologies there are some shortcomings, student personal digital assistants are no exception.

Lack of Features

A common reason for low star rating of applications on play store is lack of features, the issue is that an application may not be able to have all the feature desired by a particular student. A good application should be one that each student feels the application was specially designed for him or her. Some students want all in one package, while some other students love simplicity; they want the application to include just what the need and not every possible functionality. This does not make it easy for developers because they have to include the right amount to functionality to satisfy the majority of users.

Privacy and Security

Personal information is stored such as personal tasks or goals. Unauthorized persons could have access to those personal information and cause havoc. Personal things should remain personal and when designing applications that keep personal information, they should be designed to be reliable and dependable.

Learning Curve

The learning curve of some applications are actually steep though they may be great applications, and example is My Effectiveness. Learning curve indicates how hard it is to learn a software or in other words how fast a user can understand and get used to a software. A steep learning curve is one that is not so easy to understand and can get complex quite quickly. My Effectiveness is a great application, one of the great names but it is complex, it has everything and some students may not like the complexity, but there are simple apps such as Roubit or the most successful of the listed, which is My Study Life, has a very simple self-explanatory interface.

Internet Access

There are parts of the world where internet access is not readily available, and there are student digital assistants that work with the internet. A lot of the great PDAs synchronize and this involves the use of internet connection. Google advices developers not to develop applications that are data intensive or need constant connection. This is so that users in developing countries can use all the functionalities of these applications; updates should be less frequent also.