Evaluation of distance-learning environments: Impact of usability on student performance.

NIKOLAOS K. TSELIOS (1)

NIKOLAOS M. AVOURIS (1)

ANGELIQUE DIMITRACOPOULOU (2)

SOPHIA DASKALAKI (1)

Experimental results of usability evaluation of a distance learning system are presented in this article. An experiment is described that took place in the frame of a University course. The main goal of the experiment was to evaluate the usability of the Testing and Self-evaluation component of the system. A complementary research goal was to explore the eventual impact of system usability on student performance. For this purpose, two alternative software components were compared that shared similar functionality, implemented in different ways (IDLE, WebCT). The usability evaluation was based on user questionnaires. From this experiment correlation between the software usability and student performance has emerged, underlining the importance of usability evaluation of systems supporting distance learning.

Recent years have witnessed the development of new powerful enabling technologies related to distance and collaborative learning. Advances in networks' performance and the widespread use of the Internet made it possible for educational material of high quality to become available to large numbers of potential learners. Additionally, these technological advances have accelerated the development of educational material for distance learning, offered through the Web. Most Universities and other educational institutions engage the Web in their traditional everyday activities and offer educational material of various forms for distance learning to a wider extramural audience. Yet this new use of computer technology in the educational field raised once more skepticism on the effectiveness of the process (Fitzelle & Trocim, 1996).

The World Wide Web (WWW or Web) is the technological environment that enabled and supported this process. There are many reasons for which the Web can be considered a suitable educational medium: It is easily accessible by many groups of learners. It supports multiple representations of educational material and various ways of storing and structuring this information. It is powerful and easy to use as a publishing medium. Additionally, it has been widely accepted that the hyper-medial structure of the Web can support learning. Some researchers characterize the Web as an active learning environment that supports creativity (Becker & Dwyer, 1994). According to (Thuring, Mannemann, & Haake, 1995) the Web encourages exploration of knowledge and browsing, behaviors that are strongly related to learning. The associative organization of information in the Web is similar to that of human memory and the process of information retrieval from the Web presents similarities to human cognitive activities. However a hyperme dial space, such as the Web, cannot be considered only by these features, as an effective tutoring environment. It is rather more appropriate to think of the Web as a powerful tool that can support learning, if used in an appropriate way (Eklund, 1995; Alexander, 1995). This is because learning is a process that depends on other features, such as learner's motivation, previous experience, and learning strategies that the individual has been supported to develop, and so forth. Effectiveness of any educational environment cannot be considered independently of these aspects. It is widely accepted that effective learning is also related to educational environments and tools that provide the students with incentives for active participation in the learning process. So the characteristics of the tools used to support learning are factors affecting the process. One of the most important features of any software tool is its usability, that is the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction that it gives to the user i n a given context of use and task. So the usability of an educational environment is related to its pedagogical value (Kirkpatrick, 1994) and evaluation of its usability is part of the processes of establishing its quality. However, evaluation of usability of a distance-learning environment is not an easy task. The effectiveness of usability evaluation techniques varies, depending in great extend on the specific characteristics of the evaluated environment and the objectives of the evaluation study (Molich, Thomsen, Karyukina, Schmidt, Ede, van Oel, & Arcuri, 1999). Some of the most widely used techniques are heuristic evaluation (Nielsen, 1993; Levi, Conrad, & Frederick, 1996), field studies and observation (Togniazzini, 1992), questionnaires filling, interviews, logging of user performance in laboratory conditions, and so forth.