Exploring Mobile UX/UI for an OER Repository Search Engine Integrated to an LMS

Abstract

In the information age it's natural for students to search Open Educational Resources (OER) for their own learning process from several sources, this searching must give the results with simplicity, speed and relevance, to make the information understandable in an environment free of data overload. However, although some universities make great efforts to create their own learning materials to provide the student with the resources they need, often the user's experience in repositories of OER is not suitable for the students, triggering disuse and unawareness of the generated resources. This study was conducted at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, which aims to help students to find reliable OER, in a simple, fast and relevant way, by means of a search engine proposal integrated to the LMS platform. To achieve this, quantitative studies were conducted with student samples, first, an email survey about the characteristics of a search engine, second, a usability test of an existing repository and then a search engine's GUI integrated with an LMS was designed and validated with users so the main result was that students may have a better UX when looking for OER than with the existing one developed with the open-source software DSpace.