A usability study of pharmacists’ perceptions toward an online course for respiratory infections and antibiotic use

Digital tools in healthcare have been rapidly emerging over the past decade, with these tools consisting of clinical decision support systems, diagnostic tools or educational materials, such as e-learning courses. eHealthResp comprises an online course, primarily aiming to support physicians and pharmacists on the management of upper respiratory tract infections. In order to assure the quality of the online course, not only in terms of scientific content, but also in terms of user-friendliness, it shall be evaluated by a group of pilot users prior to its implementation. This article focuses on the usability assessment of the eHealthResp online course by community pharmacists, in order to efficiently determine and maximize its educational impact and overall user-friendliness. A questionnaire, based on the System Usability Scale, was distributed among pharmacists, giving them the opportunity to fully explore the website. Overall, pharmacist’s evaluation/experience on the usability of the eHealthResp online course was rated excellent (mean score of 83,75 points), with individual scores ranging from 55 to 100 points on a 1-100 scale, together with positive overall assessments regarding ease of use, complexity, functionalities integration and consistency.publishe

APP FOR ONLINE

The Pew Research Center reports that 10% of Americans rely heavily on smartphones for high-speed internet access at home. This trend is particularly strong among low-income households (Smith, 2015). A digital divide manifested by varying broadband access may exist among online students. For this reason, online course materials should be easily accessible on mobile devices. The author developed a mobile app for her online management information systems (MIS) course, BUSA 345. This study looked into four factors in the usability of the “BUSA 345 app”: design, navigation, ease of use, and perceived usefulness. Two rounds of the study were conducted. Seven students with an average age of 26.7 years participated. The participants used their smartphones to perform tasks based on the app. A pre-test survey revealed that participants had 66 apps on average installed on their smartphones, and they scored high in tech efficacy. However, they had only three apps for school on average. The post-test results indicated that the students rated the ease of use and usefulness of the “BUSA 345 app” highly on both iOS and Android platforms. All participants strongly agreed that the app was useful for learning and they would use the app if it were available. This usability study shows that the “BUSA 345 app” was embraced by the student participants, who looked forward to being able to access course materials on the go

Designing and Evaluating Accessible E-Learning for Students with Visual Impairments in K-12 Computing Education

This dissertation explores the pathways for making K-12 computing education more accessible for blind or visually impaired (BVI) learners. As computer science (CS) expands into K-12 education, more concerted efforts are required to ensure all students have equitable access to opportunities to pursue a career in computing. To determine their viability with BVI learners, I conducted three studies to assess current accessibility in CS curricula, materials, and learning environments. Study one was interviews with visually impaired developers; study two was interviews with K-12 teachers of visually impaired students; study three was a remote observation within a computer science course. My exploration revealed that most of CS education lacks the necessary accommodations for BVI students to learn at an equitable pace with sighted students. However, electronic learning (e-learning) was a theme that showed to provide the most accessible learning experience for BVI students, although even there, usability and accessibility challenges were present in online learning platforms. My dissertation engaged in a human-centered approach across three studies towards designing, developing, and evaluating an online learning management system (LMS) with the critical design elements to improve navigation and interaction with BVI users. Study one was a survey exploring the perception of readiness for taking online courses between sighted and visually impaired students. The findings from the survey fueled study two, which employed participatory design with storytelling with K-12 teachers and BVI students to learn more about their experiences using LMSs and how they imagine such systems to be more accessible. The findings led to developing the accessible learning content management system (ALCMS), a web-based platform for managing courses, course content, and course roster, evaluated in study three with high school students, both sighted and visually impaired, to determine its usability and accessibility. This research contributes with recommendations for including features and design elements to improve accessibility in existing LMSs and building new ones

Security and Online learning: to protect or prohibit

The rapid development of online learning is opening up many new learning opportunities. Yet, with this increased potential come a myriad of risks. Usable security systems are essential as poor usability in security can result in excluding intended users while allowing sensitive data to be released to unacceptable recipients. This chapter presents findings concerned with usability for two security issues: authentication mechanisms and privacy. Usability issues such as memorability, feedback, guidance, context of use and concepts of information ownership are reviewed within various environments. This chapter also reviews the roots of these usability difficulties in the culture clash between the non-user-oriented perspective of security and the information exchange culture of the education domain. Finally an account is provided of how future systems can be developed which maintain security and yet are still usable

Mobile Usability in Educational Contexts: What have we learnt?

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in approaches to usability and on recent developments, with particular reference to usability findings reported in studies of mobile learning. The requirements of education are considered as well as the needs of students participating in distance education; discipline-specific perspectives and accessibility issues are also addressed. Usability findings from empirical studies of mobile learning published in the literature are drawn together in the paper, along with an account of issues that emerged in two mobile learning projects based at The Open University, UK, in 2001 and 2005. The main conclusions are: that usability issues are often reported in cases where PDAs have been used; that the future is in scenario-based design which should also take into account the evolution of uses over time and the unpredictability of how devices might be used; and that usability issues should be tracked over a longer period, from initial use through to a state of relative experience with the technology

Mobilizing The Open University: case studies in strategic mobile development

This paper presents an overview of many activities undertaken in the Mobile Learner Support project area in The Open University (OU). Please note that while many of the project strands involve strategic development that is embedded in the OU’s institution-wide teaching and learning systems, some of the data and findings we hope will be of use to others undertaking work in related areas. In addition to the core work in implementing a Mobile VLE and associated resources, an overview of related mobile audio eAssessment and eBook format development project strands are given, leading to development of a blend of web application software and native or client applications. The OU delivers significant proportions of online content and collaboration as part of its supported open learning distance education model to over 200,000 part-time students at any given time. In particular, over the past 4 years, adapting open source technologies for around 600 course websites has delivered the requirement to support course activities for up to 4,700 students per course cohort with a corresponding 250 variations of a single course to provide online tutorial spaces. The OU has also throughout its history adapted to increasingly flexible and personalised modes of delivering and interacting with multimedia and audiovisual content as part of a blended approach, most recently aiming to disaggregate content and allow remixing through its open educational resources initiative. For updates on the Mobile Learner Support project, please visit http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/mLear

Using evaluation to inform the development of a user-focused assessment engine

This paper reports on the evaluation of a new assessment system, Technologies for Online Interoperability (TOIA). TOIA was built from a user-focussed specification of an assessment system. The formative evaluation of the project complemented this initial specification by ensuring that user feedback on the development and use of the system was iteratively fed back into the development process. The paper begins by summarising some of the key barriers and enablers to the use of assessment systems and the uptake of Computer-Assisted Assessment (CAA). It goes on to provide a critique of the impact of technology on assessment and considers whether innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT) might result in new e-pedagogies and practices in assessment. The paper then reports on the findings of the TOIA evaluation and discusses how these were used to inform the development of the system

Building communities for the exchange of learning objects: theoretical foundations and requirements

In order to reduce overall costs of developing high-quality digital courses (including both the content, and the learning and teaching activities), the exchange of learning objects has been recognized as a promising solution. This article makes an inventory of the issues involved in the exchange of learning objects within a community. It explores some basic theories, models and specifications and provides a theoretical framework containing the functional and non-functional requirements to establish an exchange system in the educational field. Three levels of requirements are discussed. First, the non-functional requirements that deal with the technical conditions to make learning objects interoperable. Second, some basic use cases (activities) are identified that must be facilitated to enable the technical exchange of learning objects, e.g. searching and adapting the objects. Third, some basic use cases are identified that are required to establish the exchange of learning objects in a community, e.g. policy management, information and training. The implications of this framework are then discussed, including recommendations concerning the identification of reward systems, role changes and evaluation instruments

Evaluating complex digital resources

Squires (1999) discussed the gap between HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and the educational computing communities in their very different approaches to evaluating educational software. This paper revisits that issue in the context of evaluating digital resources, focusing on two approaches to evaluation: an HCI and an educational perspective. Squires and Preece's HCI evaluation model is a predictive model ‐ it helps teachers decide whether or not to use educational software ‐ whilst our own concern is in evaluating the use of learning technologies. It is suggested that in part the different approaches of the two communities relate to the different focus that each takes: in HCI the focus is typically on development and hence usability, whilst in education the concern is with the learner and teacher use

An investigation into the perspectives of providers and learners on MOOC accessibility

An effective open eLearning environment should consider the target learner’s abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and which specific device(s) the learner uses. MOOC platforms struggle to take these factors into account and typically are not accessible, inhibiting access to environments that are intended to be open to all. A series of research initiatives are described that are intended to benefit MOOC providers in achieving greater accessibility and disabled learners to improve their lifelong learning and re-skilling. In this paper, we first outline the rationale, the research questions, and the methodology. The research approach includes interviews, online surveys and a MOOC accessibility audit; we also include factors such the risk management of the research programme and ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable learners. Preliminary results are presented from interviews with providers and experts and from analysis of surveys of learners. Finally, we outline the future research opportunities. This paper is framed within the context of the Doctoral Consortium organised at the TEEM'17 conference