Facilitating and automating usability testing of educational technologies

Abstract

Usability evaluation is a key element to ensure a positive user experience with any software and it is especially important in educational software tools where there are many different actors involved (lecturers, students, administrators, etc.). However, evaluating usability is not an easy task for nonexpert evaluators. To facilitate this evaluation task, this article presents a Methodology for Usability Testing (MUT) and a system (CALMUT) that assists nonexpert evaluators in the application of the methodology by automatizing the calculations and facilitating their interpretation. This can be very useful for learning and instructional designers but also to people involved in the decision of introducing or not a new educational software. To develop the proposal, a literature review of different usability metrics, methods, and systems was carried out first, followed by a selection and adaptation for novice usability evaluators. This article also presents a case study where lecturers tested the usability of an educational software following the proposal and shows that using MUT and CALMUT helps people without previous experience detect the main usability problems of educational systems before deciding whether to use them or not.