Learning analytics tool for usability assessment in Moodle environments

Fenu, Gianni and Marras, Mirko and Meles, Massimiliano Salvatore (2017) Learning analytics tool for usability assessment in Moodle environments. JE-LKS. JOURNAL OF E-LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY, 13 (3). pp. 23-34.

Abstract

Evaluating user experience is a challenging task, particularly in e-learning. Existing e-learning systems are limited in their ability of being evaluated based on the user interfaces because current evaluation approaches are usually expensive in time and organization and require active users’ participation. Moreover, a usability assessment is needed whenever a new version of the “user interface tailored for a given type of device (e.g. laptop, tablet, smartphone) is developed”. In this paper, we get around the problem leveraging on the increasing adoption of analytics tools in e-learning and on logs transparently tracked by e-learning platforms. We introduce an automated analytics approach aiming at assessing the usability of both desktop and mobile user interfaces of a Learning Management System through specific native indicators (e.g. efficiency and satisfaction). They are defined as comparable scores and calculated automatically based on the tracked log files. In order to put the proposed approach into practice, we implemented it on the Moodle LMS. Our contribution promises to reduce both time and cost for usability assessment of user interfaces in e-learning, while ensuring adaptability to different devices and systems.

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