The Importance of Usability Criteria on Learning Management Systems: Lessons Learned

Abstract

This paper points to the importance of guaranteeing usability in Learning Management Systems (LMS) in order to achieve success in performing learning tasks in this kind of environment. The paper presents the results from a case study in which learners had to perform several learning tasks on the TIDIA-Ae LMS. It is presented usability problems observed during the performance of the case study learning tasks, as well as the difficulties that learners faced with in some tasks due to those problems and the actions taken in order to make viable the execution of the learning activity tasks. By this paper, it is intended (i) to call LMS developers' attention to the importance of usability in the development of tools to support the learning process; (ii) to point to interactive problems which should be avoided in LMS systems and (iii) to show some problems which can appear during a learning activity execution supported by computer and possible ways to deal with them.