Usability of E-learning tools

ABSTRACT

The new challenge for designers and HCI researchers is to develop software tools for effective e-learning. Learner-Centered Design (LCD) provides guidelines to make new learning domains accessible in an educationally productive manner. A number of new issues have been raised because of the new "vehicle" for education. Effective e-learning systems should include sophisticated and advanced functions, yet their interface should hide their complexity, providing an easy and flexible interaction suited to catch students' interest. In particular, personalization and integration of learning paths and communication media should be provided.It is first necessary to dwell upon the difference between attributes for platforms (containers) and for educational modules provided by a platform (contents). In both cases, it is hard to go deeply into pedagogical issues of the provided knowledge content. This work is a first step towards identifying specific usability attributes for e-learning systems, capturing the peculiar features of this kind of applications. We report about a preliminary users study involving a group of e-students, observed during their interaction with an e-learning system in a real situation. We then propose to adapt to the e-learning domain the so called SUE (Systematic Usability Evaluation) inspection, providing evaluation patterns able to drive inspectors' activities in the evaluation of an e-learning tool.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kevin Baker , Saul Greenberg , Carl Gutwin, Empirical development of a heuristic evaluation methodology for shared workspace groupware, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587093]
• 2: Costabile, M. F. Usability in the Software Life Cycle. In S. K. Chang (Ed.), Handbook of software engineering and knowledge engineering, 1, World Scientific Publ. Company, 2001, 179--192.
• 3: Ann Doubleday , Michele Ryan , Mark Springett , Alistair Sutcliffe, A comparison of usability techniques for evaluating design, Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, p.101-110, August 18-20, 1997, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/263552.263583]
• 4: ISO 9241: Ergonomics Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display Terminal (VDT), 1998.
• 5: Kruse, K. Effective User Interface Design. 2003. http://www.learningcircuits.org/may2000/may2000_webrules
• 6: Matera, M., Costabile, M. F., Garzotto, F., and Paolini, P. SUE Inspection: an Effective Method for Systematic Usability Evaluation of Hypermedia". IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybvernetics- Part A, 32, 1, 2002, 93--103.
• 7: Jennifer Mankoff , Anind K. Dey , Gary Hsieh , Julie Kientz , Scott Lederer , Morgan Ames, Heuristic evaluation of ambient displays, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642642]
• 8: Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1993
• 9: Jakob Nielsen , Robert L. Mack, Usability inspection methods, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1994
• 10: Norman, D. Le cose che ci fanno intelligenti, Feltrinelli.
• 11: Quintana, C., Carra, A., Krajcik, J., and Elliot, S. Learner-Centred Design: Reflections and new Directions. Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium. In Carroll (Ed.) ACM Press, New York: Addison-Wesley, 2001, 605--626.
• 12: Elliot Soloway , Shari L. Jackson , Jonathan Klein , Chris Quintana , James Reed , Jeff Spitulnik , Steven J. Stratford , Scott Studer , Jim Eng , Nancy Scala, Learning theory in practice: case studies of learner-centered design, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.189-196, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/238386.238476]
• 13: Somervell, J., Wahid, S. and McCrickard, D. S. Usability Heuristics for Large Screen Information Exhibits. In Proc. of Human-Computer Interaction (Interact '03) (Zurigo, Svizzera, Sep. 2003), 2003, 904--907.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization

Keywords:
e-learning, learner centered design, usability evaluation