A usability engineering approach to e-learning

Speaker
Dieter Wallach
Professor, University of Applied Sciences in Kaiserslautern

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

Web-based e-learning is one of the most important applications to arrive on the higher-education scene in recent years, with impressive growth rates of the market in the US and Europe. Studies have shown that unusable e-learning systems will result in millions in lost revenues since learners will not be able to use the respective applications. In this talk I will discuss how usability engineering techniques were deployed in the development of an e-learning system currently in use by several institutions in Germany and Switzerland.

After reporting on the experiences encountered in the different stages of system development, I will present results on the effectiveness of two variants of the Cognitive Walkthrough technique that were applied to system design. In the final part of the talk, central requirements for the successful deployment of e-learning are critically discussed.

Speaker's Bio

Dieter Wallach studied Psychology, Computer Science and Information Science at the Saarland University/Germany. After completing his Ph.D. thesis in Cognitive Science in 1996, he spent a year as a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1998 to 2000, he held the position of senior researcher at the Psychology Department in Basel/Switzerland. He is currently a professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Kaiserslautern. Dieter Wallach is a co-founder of ergosign GmbH, a consulting company in the field of Human-Computer Interaction.

Host
Christian Lebiere