6.3.2 Usability of Advanced Courseware
[Refer to Technical Characteristics, Usability column in Table 6.1.]
Some courseware projects in this study arrived at the issue of usability for
practical reasons, while others arrived at it for educational reasons,
but they all ended up appreciating the importance of this characteristic
for educational software from both the learner's and author's perspective.
Usability of courseware was influenced by a variety of factors in the contexts
of projects. Some projects started with providing for learner construction
among their educational goals, and included "ease of use" for the learner
among their initial design criteria. The need for authors to have efficient
use of particular types of software functions was another major source of
concern about usability. This concern sometimes emerged late in projects
due to the large amount of effort authors had invested to create easy to use
software for learners with hard to use authoring interfaces. The consistency
which was required within the structure of courseware for portability also
appeared to be a positive attribute which contributed to usability. Finally,
there were situations in which administrative decisions and advice contributed
to provisions for usability.
In the future, factors influencing usability should be considered before a
project begins, rather than after it is under construction. Future projects
should begin by considering the ability of software to support learner
construction because then they are more likely to select software which
easily supports the construction of materials by faculty. Projects which
set out to provide courseware for students, without learner construction
as a major goal, will be more likely to select packages which require more
effort to use. Taking this ironic situation into account is a luxury
educators of the future will have which original pioneers did not.
No matter what type of functions are sought in software, the easier
those functions are to use for learners to construct their own instruction,
the easier it will be for authors who wish to construct courseware for students.
Projects should also investigate what characteristics support usability for
the main types of software functions they wish to use.
Design decisions that contribute to consistency in the courseware structure
will contribute to usability and adaptabilityof courseware.