Save on time, money and effort! Application of discount usability engineering to the design of internet-based learning environments

Abstract

People in education are more and more interested in using the technologies of information and communication for providing educational content. In particular, the internet infrastructure can facilitate that task in many ways, such as distance learning or web-based learning. All such software artefacts, which we call internet-based learning environments, have as a common goal to offer "good" and "easy" products for learning. We think that discount usability engineering, a usability engineering approach, can provide some guidance for building such environments. In this paper, we describe the concepts and methods of usability engineering and in particular its discounted version. Then we promote the exploitation of discount usability engineering by presenting arguments to apply it to the construction and assessment of internet-based learning environments, with respect to educational goals, budget constraints, time schedule, and tight human resources availability. Finally, we close with an example where usability engineering is applied in an educational context.