A comparative study of two usability evaluation methods using a web-based e-learning application

Abstract

Usability evaluation of e-learning applications is a maturing area, which addresses interfaces, usability and interaction from human-computer interaction (HCI) and pedagogy and learning from education. The selection of usability evaluation methods (UEMs) to determine usability problems is influenced by time, cost, efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of application. Heuristic evaluation (HE) involves evaluation by experts with expertise in the domain area and/or HCI. This comparative evaluation study investigates the extent to which HE identifies usability problems in a web-based learning application and compares the results with those of survey evaluations among end-users (learners). Severity rating was conducted on a consolidated set of usability problems and further comparison of findings was done on the major and minor problems. The results of HE correspond closely with those of the survey. However the four expert evaluators identified more problems than the 61 learners and identified 91% of the learners' problems, when major problems only were considered. HE by a competent and balanced set of experts showed itself to be an appropriate, efficient and effective UEM for e-learning applications.