Aug 28 - Definition of Usability & Mobile Learning

Definition of Usability

Evaluation of the technical and pedagogical mobile usability.
Antti Syvänen. antti.syvänen@uta.fi Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, FIN-33014 Tampereen yliopisto, Finland.
Petri Nokelainen. petri.nokelainen@uta.fi Research Centre for Vocational Education, University of Tampere, FIN–13101 Hämeenlinna, Finland.
Attewell & Cavill-Smith (editor). Mobile Learning Anytime Everywhere. A book of papers from MLearn 2004. pg 191-185

The following components of the technical usability criteria were specified (Nokelainen 2004):
1 accessibility
2 ‘learnability’ and memorability
3 user control
4 help
5 graphical layout
6 reliability
7 consistency
8 efficiency
9 memory load
10 errors.

In addition, the following pedagogical usability components were specified (Nokelainen 2004):
1 learner control
2 learner activity
3 cooperative learning
4 goal orientation
5 applicability
6 effectiveness
7 motivation
8 valuation of previous knowledge
9 flexibility10 feedback.

Usability Guidelines for Designing Mobile Learning Portals.
Daniel Su Kuen Seong. The University of Nottingham, Malaysia. Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. +603-89248138 daniel.su@nottingham.edu.my
Mobility 06, Oct. 25–27, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
The 3rd International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems — Mobility 2006.

The term usability is defined as by The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) ISO 9241-11 [16] as ‘the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.’
According to Nielsen [17], usability means the measure of the quality the users’ experience when interacting interface....usability is not a surface gloss which applied at the last minutes or before the releases of the system or product; but it is deeply affected by every stage of the analysis, design, and development [18].
Usable systems are easy to learn (learnability), efficient to use (efficiency), easy to remember (memorability), not error-prone (errors), and satisfactory in use (subjective satisfaction) [17].
The ultimate goal of usability is meeting the needs of to users’ satisfaction [17]
...advantages of usability encompass increased productivity, enhanced quality of work, improved user satisfaction, and reductions in support and training costs [19]. The reduction in costs has attracted many project managers and interface designers to employ the theory of usability when designing the interfaces as reported in [20, 21].

Cat 1: User Analysis
U1: The user/learner

Cat 2: Interaction
U2: Human-mobile interaction
U3: Map between mobile learning portals and the real world
U4: Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors
U5: Visibility of the status
U6: Minimise human cognitive load

Cat 3: Mobile Learning Interface Design
U7: The small screen display
U8: Do not overuse
U9: Navigation
U10: Consistency.

Katja Karevaara, Media Education Centre, University of Helsinki.From educational usability to context-specific teachability: Development and use of the network-based teaching material contents in higher engineering education.

Pedagogical usability is often focusing on the aspects whether the interface, tools, content, and the tasks of the e-learning environments support learning in various contexts according to certain pedagogical objectives (Silius et al. 2003, Tervakari et al. 2002).

Research in pedagogical usability has been active recently. For example Kukulska-Hulme et al. (2004) conducted a project during 2001-2003 in Open University (UK). During the project it was recognised that "to get to the heart of pedagogical usability, we have to understand more about the impact of requirements in relation to communities, contexts and disciplines." The research group found therefore several layers of usability: contextspecific, academic, general and technical. In detail:
• Context specific usability relates to the requirements of particular disciplines and courses.
• Academic usability deals with educational issues, such as pedagogical strategy.
• General usability issues are common to most websites and include aspects such as clear navigation and accessibility for users with special needs.
• Technical usability addresses issues such as broken links and server reliability.


Definition of Mobile Learning

Usability Guidelines for Designing Mobile Learning Portals.
Daniel Su Kuen Seong. The University of Nottingham, Malaysia. Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. +603-89248138 daniel.su@nottingham.edu.my
Mobility 06, Oct. 25–27, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
The 3rd International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems — Mobility 2006.

One distinct feature of mobile learning over e-Learning is mobility [6].
Hence, researchers and scholars are becoming enthusiastically in coining the term ‘mobile learning or m-learning’, such as ‘mobile learning as the point at which mobile computing and e-Learning intersect to produce an anytime, anywhere learning experience [7].
According to Nyiri [8], m-learning is fundamentally e-Learning delivered through mobile computational devices such as Palms, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), Pocket PCs, smart phone, digital cell phones, and any other handheld devices. The use of mobile devices with the wireless network technology flourishes mobile learners to get convenience, expediency and immediacy of mobile learning in appropriate time and accessing the appropriate learning contents [7].
Additionally, mobile learning is the next generation of e-Learning and important instrument for lifelong learning [49].

MOBILE LEARNING FRAMEWORK.
Ali Mostakhdemin-Hosseini. Helsinki University of Technology, konemiehentie 2, Espoo Finland.Jarno Tuimala. Innoforss Research &/ Development Center, Wanherinkatu 11 3 krs., 30100 Forssa, Finland.

Mobile learning is not learning through mobiles phones or learning over a wireless connection even though the capabilities of running multimedia features has increased in recent years. But mobile learning is the evolution of elearning, which completes the missing component of an e-learning solution. Mobile learning most suits for those mobile parties in education institutes. So, utilizing mobile devices in education is mainly considered as enhanced tools.

Aug 25 - Karevaara, From educational usability to context-specific teachability...

Katja Karevaara, Media Education Centre, University of Helsinki.
From educational usability to context-specific teachability: Development and use of the network-based teaching material contents in higher engineering education.

Central concept and target for the research is "teachability". Also "content teachability"
will be used as a synonym. The reason why the concept "teachability" is chosen for this research is that often the term "pedagogical usability" (e.g. Melis et al. 2003) is still rather connected to the term "usability".

Pedagogical usability is often focusing on the aspects whether the interface, tools, content, and the tasks of the e-learning environments support learning in various contexts according to certain pedagogical objectives (Silius et al. 2003, Tervakari et al. 2002).

"Studiability" of the materials is close to the pedagogical usability.

The term "usability" has a stable status in engineering sciences in analysing the use of the technical interface of a software application (e.g. Nielsen 2000), which viewpoint is not central in this research.
In this research teachability is a sub-concept for "adaptability" introduced by Ruokamo et al. (2005). According to them, adaptability can be seen as a general approach for improving the usability of network-based teaching materials. Adaptability could be called as pedagogical usability. However, their approach for the usability is deeper connected to the pedagogical issues as they argue that it is not confined to the enhancement of user interfaces but rather is a means of facilitating the teaching-studying-learning –process. (Ruokamo et al. 2005) Figure 1. will present the relationships of pedagogical usability in this study. In the figure the viewpoints for adaptability are based on the arguments by Tella et al. (2004) and Ruokamo et al. (2005).
Teachability in this reserach means the efficiency of the subject matters. It can be also described as teachers' creative and relevant use of the network-based teaching material contents. Concept is related to the flexi-mode approach where the use of the contents is analysed in the didactical framework of the whole course. However, eventually teachers will internally validitate the concept teachability.

Research in pedagogical usability has been active recently. For example Kukulska-Hulme et al. (2004) conducted a project during 2001-2003 in Open University (UK). During the project it was recognised that "to get to the heart of pedagogical usability, we have to understand more about the impact of reguirements in relation to communities, contexts and disciplines." The research group found therefore several layers of usability: contextspecific, academic, general and technical. In detail:
• Context specific usability relates to the requirements of particular disciplines and courses.
• Academic usability deals with educational issues, such as pedagogical strategy.
• General usability issues are common to most websites and include aspects such as clear navigation and accessibility for users with special needs.
• Technical usability addresses issues such as broken links and server reliability.

My comments: He was a PhD student at the time of writing as he talked about his Doctoral dissertation.

References that I may want to read further in future:

Kukulska-Hulme, A. & Shields, L. (2004). The keys to usability in e-learning websites. Networked learning conference. Lancaster.

Melis, E., Weber, M. & Andrès, E. (2003). Lessons for (Pedagogic) Usability of eLearning Systems. World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher education. 2003(1), 281-284.

Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing web usability: the practice of simplicity. Indianapolis: New riders publishing.