ABSTRACT
Usability evaluation of e-learning applications is a maturing
area, which addresses interfaces, usability and interaction from
human-computer interaction (HCI) and pedagogy and learning
from education. The selection of usability evaluation methods
(UEMs) to determine usability problems is influenced by time,
cost, efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of application. Heuristic
evaluation (HE) involves evaluation by experts with expertise in
the domain area and/or HCI. This comparative evaluation study
investigates the extent to which HE identifies usability problems
in a web-based learning application and compares the results
with those of survey evaluations among end-users (learners).
Severity rating was conducted on a consolidated set of usability
problems and further comparison of findings was done on the
major and minor problems. The results of HE correspond
closely with those of the survey. However the four expert
evaluators identified more problems than the 61 learners and
identified 91% of the learners’ problems, when major problems
only were considered. HE by a competent and balanced set of
experts showed itself to be an appropriate, efficient and
effective UEM for e-learning applications.