A multidisciplinary tool for the evaluation of usability, pedagogical usability, accessibility and informational quality of web-based courses

Web-based learning environments have been extensively developed, adopted and in consequence a large amount of data has been collected from various web-based teaching experiments. Often platforms, web-based courses and web-based training services have been evaluated from rather narrow points of view. Further development of evaluation should to be based on a multidisciplinary framework right from piloting to the establishment of the web-based learning practices. A multidisciplinary evaluation framework is needed to define the factors critical in the implementation of training services for a given group of learners, as well as teachers and researchers of web-based courses. Researchers and teachers should pay attention to how the usability, accessibility and pedagogical appropriateness are taken into account in user interfaces and in the planning, designing and implementation of information content. Because one evaluator (typically a teacher, designer or planner) can hardly be an expert in all the fields of science, a multidisciplinary evaluation framework has been created to help the evaluators to address the critical factors of quality of web-based learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe an evaluation tool based on the multidisciplinary evaluation framework of web-based learning. The evaluation tool was developed at the Hypermedia Laboratory of Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and the Virtual University of TUT in cooperation with the Finnish Virtual University. The framework and the tool systematically take into consideration the most important factors of usability, pedagogical usability, accessibility and informational qualities. The evaluation tool will help the evaluators to control the evaluation process, gather essential information and build course profiles. The evaluation framework and the prototype have been tested at TUT in the courses on Mathematical Modelling (a national network project coordinated by TUT). Later the evaluation tool will be integrated into the Education & Training Portal of the Finnish Virtual University.