Establishing the Link Between Usability and Student Satisfaction in Adaptive Online Learning

Online courses present a new element to learners in college courses. Interfaces (web pages) take the place of an instructor as the primary information delivery system. In other words, a student’s learning experience is now tied to the quality of a course’s human- computer interaction. One emerging method of online course delivery is an adaptive course that tailors to individual students needs, abilities, or preferences. There has been much work done on the algorithms that allow the course to adapt to individual students, but there seems to be a lack of research into the usability of these interfaces and how their quality affects student performance and satisfaction. This paper presents some of the data that was collected in a larger, grant-supported project and establishes relationships between usability metrics (ease of use and perceived usefulness) and student satisfaction and outcome measures in adaptive-online courses.

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