A Study of Usability Evaluation on JoinnNet Synchronous Learning Interaction System

摘要

With the increasing of the bandwidth and the busy human life style, there are more than eight hundred thousand learners choosing on-line learning as a learning access every year in Taiwan. It includes asynchronous learning, synchronous learning and blended learning. The synchronous learning without the limitation of distance can let the instructor provide feedback to learners instantly. Learners will interact and participate better. Therefore, in addition to synchronous distance learning in the college, many e-learning industries have been paid attention to synchronous learning. The instructor interacts with the learners through an interaction system under a synchronous learning environment. The interaction system combines various techniques and transmits the voice and image of the instructor to the classrooms far away. This study focuses on how to evaluate the usability of the interaction system, JoinNet, which is the most popular interaction system in the Taiwan market. The system interface is the first part which the users interact with. It will effect learners' willingness, learning interest, and learning outcomes. Most important of all, it can help learners to move into the steady learning stage more quickly. Moreover, the inappropriate web-based learning environment will confuse the learners' learning process, therefore, the usability of interface becomes very important. To evaluate the usability of the interaction system, JoinNet, the first suggestion is to find the usability problems of JoinNet in learnability, efficiency, memorability and errors via user's hands-on test. Second, the heuristic evaluation can be used to find the usability problems which could not be found in the user's hands-on test. Finally, a questionnaire can be applied to understand the satisfaction of JoinNet users.