Usability Heuristics Evaluation for Child E-learning Applications

Abstract

<p class="Abstract" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">Selecting usability evaluation methods (UEMs) to expose usability problems in e-learning programs is influenced by time, cost, ease of application, and efficiency. </span>Heuristic evaluation has become a widely accepted method of usability evaluation in software development. This paper introduces Heuristic Evaluation for Child E-learning applications (HECE), a comprehensive set of heuristics for child e-learning along with a detailed explanation for the usability experts on how to apply them. These sets of heuristics are based on Nielsen’s original ten heuristics developed for software. Nielsen heuristics are basically generic, and might not encompass usability attributes specific to children or e-learning. The new HECE set would overcome these shortcomings. The validity and effectiveness of these heuristics were evaluated against two developed e-learning programs designed by ReDSOFT </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Times New Roman;">for KG-2 and special need students. The results indicated that HECE identified qualitative similarities and differences with user testing, and that HECE is best suited for evaluating general and child usability. Combined with user testing, HECE offers a new track that can assist in guiding the child e-learning industry to design applications that are both educational and pleasurable for children.</span></p

Heuristic Evaluation of an Institutional E-learning System: A Nigerian Case

“…In addition, [32] compared two sets of heuristics, Nielsen's heuristics and the cognitive principles of Gerhardt-Powals and discovered that there were no significant differences between them in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and inter-evaluator reliability. In [33] three sets of heuristics were used, namely the Nielsen's original ten heuristics [16], e-learning heuristics, and child-learning heuristics to evaluate two children e-Learning software. The study concluded that Nielsen heuristics are generic, and does not include usability attributes that are specific to children e-learning.…”

From England to Uganda: Children Designing and Evaluating Serious Games

“…The two constructs fun and learning were used as lenses to consider the children's drawings. To investigate the extent to which the children were able to design a game that was fun and to incorporate learning elements into the game two sets of heuristics were used: Malone's fun heuristics (Malone, 1982) and Alsumait's e-learning heuristics (Alsumait & Al-Osaimi, 2010). Each heuristic set provided a set of criteria that were used to identify desirable characteristics within the drawings (see Figure 1).…”

Learners’ Evaluation of the Usability and Design Features of Chinese as a Foreign Language E-Learning Websites

“…In stating the essence of pedagogical usability relating to e-learning websites, [16] remark that "pedagogical usability encompassing pedagogical aspects such as learning process, purpose of learning, content, user's needs and learning experience, is often mediated by technical usability, thus, both usabilities, are intertwined with each other and determine the effectiveness of the sites and the learning outcomes." Hence, the evaluation of the usability of e-learning websites must concurrently consider its pedagogic effectiveness as well as its interface usability [16], [18] as the ease of use of a website may be just as crucial as the effectiveness of the learnability [19].…”