Abstract
Recently, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have emerged as the most common tools for lecturing activities in higher education institutions. The fact that these platforms were not originally developed for educational purposes resulted in a significant reduction in learning effectiveness, especially in STEM subjects that require a lot of practical knowledge. Despite the enhancements and updates made to these platforms, they have failed to meet the learning effectiveness criteria. A major hindering to learning effectiveness on such systems can be traced not only to the absence of learning-related features but also to their usability. In this research, we propose a framework for evaluating the usability of online lecturing platforms. The proposed framework introduces a new set of heuristics that are specifically designed for lecturing activities and considers VAK learning styles. Since students with different learning styles learn differently, we developed the first cognitive style-based usability heuristics that can reliably assess the usability of online learning environments for various types of learners. We present a case study that uses the suggested evaluation framework to assess the usability of Zoom and Teams in higher education lecturing activities. The findings of this study, however, can be applied to almost any online lecture platform.
Highlights
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has caused schools and colleges around the globe to shift suddenly into online learning
This paper is organized as follows: first, we introduce a brief literature review related to the usability of online learning environments and cognitive styles, we explain in detail the components of the prosed usability evaluation framework and we end this paper by presenting a comprehensive analysis and discussion of results
We suggest that adding a new set of usability heuristics that integrate learning styles would increase the quality of e-learning usability evaluation
Summary
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has caused schools and colleges around the globe to shift suddenly into online learning. Many schools and higher educational institutes relied on Zoom [3], and Microsoft Teams [4], video conferencing tools, to continue offering their lessons and lectures online without major interruption of study. These platforms have made it possible to take lectures online, but they have made it possible to share learning content, record lectures, engage with students through chat or conversation, and use whiteboards for an explanation. Despite the many advantages to using blended learning and e-learning in the engineering context [5], [6], Zoom and Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, were not initially designed for online learning. This study proposes a usability evaluation framework aiming to improve and inform the design of these lecturing platforms supporting the higher efficacy of online engineering education through similar platforms
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