Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Students_working_on_computers_at_the_University_of_Monterrey.jpg
Online learning has come a long way from the old days of inserting curriculum and text into an LMS and calling it a course. Now, online instructors need to keep current with LMS technology and continually work to improve their courses. This translates to learning about authoring tools, audio and video production, and, in some cases, coding.
What often gets lost (in my opinion) is the incorporation of simple principles of usability. What I have found in my 16 years of teaching online is that students experience a good deal of stress, and that stress is magnified when they have to deal with a course that encompasses poor usability.
So, what is usabilty and how can we incorporate it into our courses?
Here is a definition from: http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html
"Usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals. It also refers to how satisfied users are with that process.
Usability measures the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system, including:
Websites
Software applications
Mobile technologies
Any user-operated device"
Also, from good ole Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability
"Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object."
So, why should we incorporate usability into our online courses?
Here's a quote from one of my favorite books on usability, Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think:"
“You know from your own experience as a Web User that paying attention to usability means less frustration and more satisfaction for your visitors (students), and a better chance you’ll see them again.” (p. 9)
Here is a student quote with regard to taking an online course:
"It took me a full 2 weeks to figure out what the first assignment was.”
The above statement poses a significant problem in course design. The problem, as I see it is that we (instructors) often focus on content while disregarding the usability of user experience (UX).
We can measure usability by using a simple standardized tool called the System's Usability Scale (SUS). Although this tool was developed for web pages, it still has some usefulness for online course design.
Is the SUS reliable?
Bangor, Kortum, and Miller (2008) described the results of 2,324 SUS surveys from 206 usability tests collected over a ten year period. In that study, it was found that the SUS was highly reliable (alpha = 0.91) and useful over a wide range of interface types.
Our case consisted of improving an online Anatomy and Physiology course by incorporating some usability principles. We focused on the following 8 guidelines:
1. Eliminate “Happy Talk” (redundant text).
2. Create intuitive interfaces by replacing text with icons.
3. Avoid Clutter
4. Design with the F-shaped gaze pattern in mind.
5. Optimize textual information for web reading.
6. Open external links in new pages.
7. Use embedded short videos to convey course mechanics or content.
8. Order course components according to frequency of use.
I will devote future blog posts to describe each of these in detail.
We then used "before" and "after" courses on a sample of 46 students whereby they accessed each course and were given simple tasks to complete. Students were randomly assigned to first access either course A or course B. The tasks consisted of locating the syllabus, determining what to do in the first module, and locating the first assignment. Students then completed the SUS immediately after accessing each course.
We realize this is just a small sample and could be considered a pilot for a much larger future study, but we think we gained some valuable insights into students' perspectives in navigating our online courses. Sometimes, a simple survey is all that is needed to glean the essence of a problem.
Here are some of the highlights.
Sample Demographic:
You can see the majority of students were in the 24-29 age range, however, there were some older students (non-digital natives) as well.
Results of positively worded items:
Course "A" was the old design while course "B" was the improved version. You can see by tracking the blue bars that course B scored much higher.
Results of negatively worded items:
You can see by tracking the green bars that course B scored better than course A.
The mean usability score for course A (old version) = 69.08, while the mean usability score for course B (new version) = 80.78
According to Sauro : http://www.measuringusability.com/sus.php
"The average usability score for websites in general is approximately 68." You can see that although the original course scored high in comparison to the average website, the newly designed course scored much higher.
According to usability rating guidelines, course B went from a “D” rating to an “A” rating (upper 10%).
There were also open ended questions in our survey. Here are some student comments:
"Course A was much too technical; there were too many things written at the beginning of each learning plan that can seem very intimidating before even beginning the learning plan activities. I think it was just way too cluttered."
"I feel like the information is cumbersome and clumped together whereas the course b online design is very well laid out."
"I think that course A should be more visual like course B."
"I feel like course B online design is more fit for this current day and age because being able to watch a YouTube video about what you will be doing. I felt would be a great benefit."
"I really like this design. I am a visual learner so the videos really would help me understand what is going on and how to use this tool."
All in all, we were happy with the results and hope to continue to improve our courses. We hope this will help to reduce student stress (via cognitive load) and reduce the number of student emails to instructors asking about where to find assignments, etc.
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