User Experience Planning (UEP) for Online Courses

1
User Experience Planning (UEP) for Online Courses

• Laurie P. Dringus, Ph.D.
• Maxine S. Cohen, Ph.D.
• Graduate School of Computer Info Sciences
• Nova Southeastern University
• 3301 College Avenue
• Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 33314
• laurie_at_nsu.nova.edu cohenm_at_nsu.nova.edu

2
Abstract

• How usable are our online courses and the tools
  instructors use to support effective online
  learning and interaction? This presentation
  addresses effective usability in the design and
  use of online courses. The presenters will
  discuss user experience planning (UEP) with
  specific usability attributes and adaptable
  heuristics to evaluate the user experience in
  online courses.

3
Objectives/Outline of Our Talk

• What is good usability in online courses?
• Some fundamental usability concepts
• Common usability attributes and heuristics
  applied to online courses
• User Experience Planning (UEP) process
• UEP and adaptable heuristics to evaluate the user
  experience in an online course

4
What Makes An Interface Usable?
5
What is good usability in online courses?

• Consider first usability versus learning in an
  online course what does it mean to experience
  the usability of an online course? Why does this
  matter?
• The user experience of an online course from a
  human-computer interaction point-of-view is not a
  naturally occurring process it must be planned
  for.

6
What is good usability in online courses?

• How we define usability in the context of the
  online learning experience
• Good usability..
• Facilitates learning by having the mechanics of
  the learning environment transparent to the user
•  
•  

7
What is good usability in online courses?

• Easily engages the user in the instructional and
  communication process and provides easy
  communication with the instructor and other
  students
•  Supports flexibility for creative endeavors as
  part of the learning process
•  Promotes interactivity among students and
  between students and instructor

8
What is good usability in online courses?

• The user experience must be evaluated in several
  dimensions, including how the online environment
  as an entity promotes a sense of presence of
  school or learning or other appropriate
  metaphors.
• The online course is a learning space serving as
  an interface/mediator between participants and as
  an overall medium of instruction and interaction.

9
What is bad usability in online courses?

• Bad usability translates to
• Hindrances such as inconsistencies, unneeded
  complexities, and hard to find functionality
  (Shneiderman, 1998)
• Where did you put that?
• What does this icon represent?
• Why do I have to click here twice to download
  the file?
• I forgot to click on the submit button

10
What is bad usability in online courses?

• Bad usability translates to
• Functionality that requires an undesired decision
  or response drop box date controls such as
  assignment due dates and multiple submissions,
  extensions for individuals.
• The pervasive one size fits all philosophy of
  most CMSs extensive development/programming
  needed to run dynamic courses.

11
What is bad usability in online courses?

• Bad usability translates to
• Functionality that only works part of the time
  lost email, lost postings, ..
• Some to no flexibility forum postings cannot be
  edited.

12
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to these maxims
• Clear organization of course information
• Dynamic information provision versus info glut
• Clear structure for organizing activities that
  involve interactivity (online discussion forums,
  chat, other)
• Flexible mechanisms enabling learners to organize
  and manage their own course activities.

13
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to
• Easy navigation throughout the system
• "It was easy to find the instructor's note of the
  week."
• "I knew exactly where to go, each time I entered
  the course web page."
• "I hardly had to scroll."

14
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to
• Meaningful and useful icons
• "Most of the icons had clear meaning to me."
• "Every time I went to the course web page, the
  icons were clear to me to tell me what to do
  next. Did I have new mail? Were there new forum
  postings? Had my grades been posted by the
  instructor?"

15
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to
• Consistency within the system
• "Anything I learned to do in the mail part of the
  system had similar functions and tasks in other
  parts of the system, for example, the forum
  postings."

16
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to
• Minimize redundancy
• "Submitting that assignment was easy and
  straightforward."

17
What is good usability in online courses?

• Good usability translates to
• Good Feedback and Learning Support
• "The system offered me friendly reminders to help
  keep me on schedule. I liked the system
  reminders. It didn't make me feel the instructor
  was just picking on me."
• "I knew when my instructor posted my grade and I
  could easily go directly to those comments."

18
Fundamental Usability Concepts

• Characteristics of Usable Interfaces (Hackos
  Redish, 1998)
• Design goals
• Who is the Average User? Know Your Audience

19
Characteristics of Usable Interfaces(Hackos
Redish,1998)

• They reflect the workflows that are familiar or
  comfortable
• They support the users learning style
• They are compatible in the users work
  environment.
• They encompass a design concept (a metaphor or
  idiom) that is familiar to users.

20
Characteristics of Usable Interfaces(Hackos
Redish,1998)

• They have a consistency of presentation (layout,
  icons, interactions) that makes them appear
  reliable and easy to learn
• They use language and illustrations that are
  familiar to the users or easy to learn.

21
Design Goals

• More than user friendliness move to
  user-centered
• Know thy user
• Average user different from programmer

22
Who is the Average User?Know Your Audience

• Skill Level
• Physical characteristics
• Diversity/cross cultural differences
• Perception
• Cognitive memory, problem solving
• Motivations

23
Common usability attributes and heuristics
applied to online courses

• User control
• Navigability
• Usefulness
• Utility
• Ease of Use
• Ease of Learning
• Flexibility

• Consistency
• Readability
• Review-ability
• Visibility
• Predictability
• Memorability
• Accessibility

24
Visibility

• Awareness/perceptions of others in an online
  course
• Meaningful learning metaphors
• Visual representations of activities that match
  the learning tasks to be achieved

25
Functionality

• Actions or selections are minimized to complete
  several discrete main tasks.
• Sufficient shortcuts for navigating the activity,
  function or action.
• Easy and dynamic adaptation to the online course
  environment

26
Flexibility

• Personalization
• Comprehensive communication and productivity
  tools
• Functionality matches online practice
• Reuse

27
Usability Heuristics (Nielsen,1993)

• Provide simple and natural dialogue
• Speak the users language
• Be consistent
• Provide feedback
• Provide clearly marked exits
• Provide shortcuts

28
Usability Heuristics (Nielsen,1993)

• Provide good error messages
• Prevent errors
• Maintain user control of the system
• Minimize memory load

29
User Experience Planning (UEP)

• Planning ahead for good usability is essential to
  an online course
• A standard UEP process enables instructors to
  optimize presentation and functionality of the
  course interface.
• UEP is primarily a focus on heuristic usability
  evaluation in several specific categories of
  online course management

30
User Experience Planning (UEP)

• Instructors can apply the UEP with measurable
  usability attributes and adaptive heuristics to
  evaluate the user experience in an online course
• UEP can be useful to locate usability problems
  related to navigation, error recovery, locating
  information, and the selection of hyperlinks

31
User Experience Planning (UEP)

• We conducted a heuristic evaluation of WebCT from
  the user perspective, including a faculty and
  student perspective. However, our resulting
  usability checklist is mainly intended for use by
  instructors to help them evaluate the usability
  of their online courses. We recommend an
  iterative process where usability evaluation
  occurs throughout the lifecycle of the online
  course. Student input is valuable to the process
  and is highly recommended.

32
13 Heuristic Categories

• Visibility
• Functionality
• Aesthetics
• Feedback and Help
• Error Prevention
• Memorability

• 7. Course Management
• 8. Interactivity
• 9. User Flexibility
• 10. Consistency
• 11. Efficiency
• 12. Reducing Redundancy
• 13. Accessibility

33
Adaptable Usability Heuristic Checklist

• The checklist will be presented and distributed
  at the conference.

34
References

• Hackos, J.T. Redish, J.C. (1998). User and task
  analysis for interface design. New York John
  Wiley Publishers.
• Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability engineering. San
  Diego, CA Academic Press.
• Reeves, T.C., Benson, L., Elliott, D., Grant, M.,
  Holschuh, D., Kim, B., Kim, H., Lauber, E., Loh,
  S. (2002). Usability and instructional design
  heuristics for e-learning evaluation. World
  Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia
  and Telecommunications, 2002(1), 1615-1621.
• Shneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the user
  interface. Strategies for effective
  human-computer interaction. Third Edition.
  Reading, MA Addison-Wesley.
• Sullivan, T. (2004). A reader-friendliness
  checklist. Downloaded from All Things Web
  www.pantos.org/atw/35317.html