Lost in Navigation : An Evaluation of Usability on the Learning Management System Canvas Regarding Information Finding Tasks

Abstract: Learning Management Systems have become increasingly used in all levels of education since more people have access to computers and the internet. An important feature of the LMS is to provide students with information about their courses. This information, however, is not always easy to find. Especially when the system does not follow usability guidelines about how to provide your users with information. In this study four different course pages on the KTH LMS Canvas have been evaluated with a moderated usability test to asses how well users find information on the LMS. The results show that some improvements could be made by adhering more to usability guidelines and that the courses that did were easier for testers to navigate. Some conclusions that can be made are that users find things easier when there is a high similarity between link names and the information they are looking for and that users scan web pages rather than read them. This is in line with previous research. The conclusions lead to four recommendations to KTH that can improve the usability of all Canvas course pages.