The Use Of The World Wide Web

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Overview

The use of the World Wide Web (WWW) as an information and communication technology has been popularly used as an educational medium. Web based e-leaning applications are in high demand in educational institutions and in corporations that use them to train their employee (Tselios, Dimitracopoulou & Daskalaki, 2001:355). This is because the Web permits the display of information in any medium on any subject, in any order, at any time (Crossman, 1997:19).

Despite popular use of web based e-learning applications, very little has been done to critically examine their usability (Zaharias, 2006). "Usability features are frequently not considered in their development, mainly because many instructors and courseware developers are not trained to do so or lack required technological skills" (Jones, Scanlon, Tosunoglu, Morris, Ross, Butcher & Greenberg, 1999:499) For example, many education institutions in Thailand have developed web base e-learning applications without concerning about usability because website usability evaluation is difficult, time consuming and expensive as well.

The goal of an educational application is to support learning. The application should provide good learning resources and also providing good usability so the learner’s interactions with the application will be effective.

The design of web based learning application will be effective when learner is able to focus on learning content rather than focusing on how to access it. It can be said that the usability of learning application can affect the learning methods.

The international organisation of standardisation (ISO: 1998) defines Usability as "the extent to which the product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of used".

There are many methods of website usability evaluation, such as Nielsen’s heuristic evaluation, experimental evaluations, analytical, observational and survey by questionnaires (Nielsen, 1995) By the way; many instructors and developer are not familiar with those usability evaluation methods, It is necessary that easy and efficient methods to be chosen to evaluate the usability of web based e-learning applications and to measure usability problems.

This MSc project describes the evaluation of the website by two different methods and finding whether heuristic and survey evaluations are sufficient for usability evaluation of web based e-leaning applications. A web based tutoring system for mathematics is designed and developed and focusing on numbering systems (decimal, binary, octal, hexadecimal) and conversion between numbering systems. The main goal of the project is to investigate and compare the results of the two evaluation methods.

There are two main areas in this report (usability evaluations and e-learning application). Previous literature and models are reviewed for understanding the website usability concepts and e-learning applications as well.

A literature review is done by using journals articles, books, and Internet articles and reviewed in the following areas.

Theory of learning and eLearning models

The area of usability evaluations

Research Questions

The research question for this project is:

Which is the appropriate usability evaluation method for web-based e-learning applications Survey evaluation (questionnaire) or Heuristic Evaluation?

Methodology

The aim of this project is to determine whether the survey evaluation, heuristic evaluation, is good for identifying usability problems when used with web-based e-learning applications.

From previous literature, the appropriate methods of usability evaluation of web based e-learning applications are set up. First method is questionnaire among the leaners so the problems will be identified by real end users. Second method is heuristic evaluation by experts who are familiar with heuristic evaluation.

Gray and Salzman (1998) have done a review of experiments that compare usability methods. Gray and Salzman state about their review that "the outcomes of these experiments have been used to justify ad vice to practitioners regarding their choice of UEMs. Making such choices based on misleading or erroneous claims can be detrimental compromising the quality and integrity of the evaluation, incurring unnecessary costs, or undermining the practitioner’s credibility within the design team".

Outline of the Report

The final report is created within five chapters including the chapter one.

Chapter two

Chapter 2: E-Learning: Web-Based Learning

2.1 Overview

This chapter introduces and discusses about design and development of e-learning. This chapter starts by giving overview of e-learning since a good understanding of e-leaning will help to understand the usability problems that it may happen in application development.

Govindasamy (2002) states that E-learning is a form of teaching and learning which includes resource delivered vid all electronic media including the Internet, CD-ROM, video audio tape, satellite broadcasts and interactive television. One of the e-learning also includes educational software such as computer-aided instruction (CAI) and multimedia, as well as the use of the Web and Internet to support and manage leaning. It is used both in education and organization employees training. Govindasamy (2002) also says about the value of e-learning, " in the context of e-training, does not lie in its ability to train just anyone anytime, anywhere, but training the right people to gain the right skills or knowledge, at the right time." According to Govindasamy (2002), e-learning is powerful medium of resources delivering. It offers increased accession to education and training opportunities with cost saving, self-paced courses, consistent and accurate delivery, condensed instruction and opportunities for collaboration.

From all the e-learning delivery media, Alessi & Trollip (2001) point out that the World Wide Web technology is the most common medium for delivering for learning and instruction.

In Section 2.2, the design of e-learning is dicussed. Development of Web based leaning is discussed in detail in Sections 2.3.

2.2 Design of Web-Based Learning

Why web based learning is important?

As Crossman (1997) said, the World Wide Web is one of the most important and prevalent current technologies. It has been using as a mediums and method of delivering resources for learning is likely to have a increased influence on learning than all developments in instructional technology (Alessi & Trollip,2001).

"The World Wide Web is an instructional technology that permits the display of information in any medium, on any subject, in any order, at any time," (Crossman 1997:19) In the traditional teaching, it is impossible where students and teachers come at a particular time, to a particular place, for a particular class and on a particular topic. That means Internet have help the way in how people relate to time and space (Crossman, 1997:21). The World Wide Web also improves the traditional face to face teaching by supporting distance teaching and learning by allowing students and teachers communicate synchronously and asynchronously.

In the term of synchronous communication, assumes that the users are logging on to network system continuously and making a live conversation via audio, text, or video. For example, live chat room uses this type of communication. On the other hand, for asynchronous communication, happens when a student post a message for another student to respond to his/her message. That means the particular receiver of the message no need to log in the system at the time the message sent. The examples are electronic mails (email) and online discussion forums, which are necessary for e-learning applications.

Since the e-learning application supports the use of colours, full motion video, graphic, and high quality audio, so traditional teaching sources could be converted into multimedia learning experiences for students (Crossman, 1997). Jolliffe, Ritter and Stevens (2001) have listed the following resources as part of web-based learning that can improve web based learning application:

Text

Graphics and photographs

Presentation programs

Audio and video

Animations

Links to other websites

Email

Discussion forum

Tutorial

In summary, the popular use of the Internet, it can be used for both synchronous and asynchronous communication, and it supports rich media (audio, video) that can change student’s experience made web based learning an attractive method for learning and teaching. Designers of web based learning should be aware against using too many rich media to avoid distraction of the learning resources and delivery the content. They should focus on the features of interactivity to support learning. The next section gives an overview of web based learning development.

2.3 Development of Web-based Learning

2.4 Benefits of web-based learning

Many benefits of web based learning have been stated in previous section. There are many summarises of the benefits of web based learning by various authors.

As Starr (1997) states the benefits of the web based learning in the following:

Hypertext: This provides a simple form of interaction that enables user control of information. By clicking on a hypertext link, learners can go to other pages. That means students can gain more information on related fields.

Delivery of multimedia: A Web browser allows a student to access text, graphics, video and animation on the e-learning application, these could be deriver to many students with once-off production cost, without losing quality compared when repeated use compare to paper.

True interactivity: Interactive web pages allow users to interact or exchange information between server.

Cross platform: When web based application developed, it can be used by any platform such as Macintosh, Linux, Dos or Windows

Seamless integration: Part of the lessons can be integrated in a seamless way so the different parts of the same lesson could be accessed from different sources. For example, in a Geography lesson, Part One may be about Bangkok in Thailand and part two about London in UK.

Ease of updating and expansion. Updated information can be easily uploaded, at any time. That can be said that information seems to be more current than the content of the textbooks.

For Further benefits in the following have been stated by Alessi & Trollip(2001)

Learner’s activities can be easily coordinated. For example, it is easier to upload an assignment on the web based application for all students than to pint and hand on the assignment or post it to distance learner.

Learner can easily access learning material at their convenience while at an educational institution, at home or work. It can access across the world.

It is easy for teachers to distribute their learning resource with World Wide wen technology.

Oppotuniites for learning are created. For example, English learning can be learnt from Thailand via the web based learning application.

It facilities communication between students and teachers. Students can communicate with teachers anywhere and anytime.

2.5 Challenges to web based learning

Starr(1997) states the problems that may happen to web base learning application

Different browsers and platforms may display the pages differently

The students may override some of the designer’s display features, such as background colour.

The status line of the browser shows the path and filename of the link page. This can lead to a user tampering with file contents and to other data security risks.

Once a given links has been followed. It changes colour on the user’s screen. This means that others using this computer will not know what was done by previous users.

Transmission times of information, particularly graphics sound or video, over the Internet or local area network(LAN) can be very slow. This can make user distract them from learning.

The user may download certain copyrighted text or image file without permission.

The next chapter describe usability of application and usability methods are also described and compared.

Chapter 3: Usability Evaluation

3.1 Overview

E-learning applications are software system. The usability of any software system will affect the way the system being used. Preece, Rogers& Sharp (2002) describe about Human Computer Interaction (HCI) that "HCI is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computer systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them. Usability is key point in HCI; however, usability can refer to quality of a user interface. Developing any software system, developer should evaluate the usability of the system to meet the user’s requirements. The first section in this chapter describes how usability is important to web based learning application.

3.2 Usability

Squire and Preece (1996) state that researchers have not considered the implication of usability features of an educational application in order to achieve educational goals. The authors also state that "there is a need to help evaluators consider the way in which usability and learning interact".

Before defining usability, it is necessary to understand the following framework. Shackle (1991) created a usability framework, Figure 3.1,

Figure 3.1: The four principal components in a human-machine system (Shackel, 1991)

The components are the user, task, tool and environment. In HCI the tool refers to the computer system (hardware and software) and the task refer to the process that a user can perform with the computer system. Everything has to be done it environment. (Shackel, 1991)

The additional factors should be considered to support this framework (Preece, 1993:108)

The experience level of users

The type of task being taken

The type of system being used

The environment in which the study take place

Shcackel (1991) defines usability as "the capacity in human functional terms to be used easily and effectively by the specified range of users, given specified training and user support, to fulfil the specified range of tasks, within the specified range of environment scenarios."

Holzinger (2005:72) list some usability characteristic of a system should be:

Easy to learn: the users should work easily with the system

Efficient to use

Easy to remember

Not conductive to errors: the users should not easily make many errors when using the system

Pleasant to use: the users should enjoy using the system

Usability is important in the development of e-learning applications if the web based e-learning application is not easily usable, the students will spend too much time to understand the system function not to understand the teaching content.

3.3 Usability Evaluation

Preec(1993) state that the goal of usability evaluation is to measure the effective of an interface of the system to provide the suggestions to improve it. Additionally, the main goals of usability evaluation are (Dix et al, 2004)

To assess the extent of the system functionality

To assess the effect of the interface on the user

To identify the specific problems with the system

However, there are many usability evaluation methods to be used to ensure the system meet the user’s requirements. "A usability evaluation method is a systematic procedure for recording data relating to end user interaction with a software product or system" (Fitzpatrick, 1999). After the results of evaluation have been stored, it can be analysed and evaluated to determine the level of usability of the system.

Chapter 4: Evaluation of Application: Survey and Heuristic Evaluation

4.1 Survey Evaluation among Users

4.1.1 Questionnaire design

4.1.2 Survey Results

4.2 Heuristic Evaluations by Experts

4.2.1 Identifying and defining the heuristic to be used

4.2.2 Heuristic evaluation results

4.3 Comparison of Survey and Heuristic Evaluation Results

4.3.1 Overall comparison

Chapter 5: Conclusion

5.1 Overview

5.2 What has been achieved

5.3 Answers to the Research Questions

5.4 Future work

5.5 Conclusion

Crossman, D.M. (1997). "The Evolution of the World Wide Web as an Emerging Instruction Tecnology Tool", Web-Based Instruction, New Jersey, Educational Technology Publications