Usability Evaluation of a Hypermedia System in Higher Education

Abstract: An effective hypermedia educational system should be easy to use and understand. Different hypermedia educational systems have been evaluated for this purpose by researchers but there is no such study of student wiki system. To evaluate usability of a student wiki system i.e. FUKTwiki in the context of higher education, the authors adopt a multi-phased research approach. They conduct usability test of the system where graduate students are taken as subjects. The system is evaluated on the basis of results of usability test and a questionnaire specifically designed to know the subject‟s opinion. Further, to validate the findings a number of individual subjects participated in usability test and questionnaire are interviewed. The authors find that for higher education, student wiki systems could prove effective in student‟s learning but not with current set of tools and interfaces. Moreover it is important that a system should have sufficient amount of relevant and useful educational contents. There is need to improve student wiki systems in terms of interfaces, contents, and set of tools for creating and editing pages.