International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT > Vol. 17, No. 3 (2021)

Usability Evaluation of Web Portals in Fostering Social Learning

festus O Oliha, none

Abstract
In this paper, a social-academic platform has been evaluated as one of the vital services that foster collaborative learning and increase the usage of academic web portals. However, the absence of the social and academic aspects in the context of the platforms available to the institutions in the study has resulted in usability concerns and reduced usage for interactions between their vital stakeholders - tutors and students. The importance of an institution’s web portal for alternative learning outside physical classrooms or lecture halls has been signalled by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In this study a platform has been evaluated via a standard post-task usability assessment scaling metric – System Usability Scale (SUS), to examine the portals’ usability and to validate the construct of perceived social learning and sharing of knowledge by random evaluators via the post-system usability assessment tool. The outcome of the post-system evaluation noted empirically that, the system perceived learnability was 70.9% and the usability scale score was 83.9% with excellent usability at the 90th-95th percentile range. Consequently, the study outcome suggests that the social academic web portal platform in the era of the pandemic is adaptable, usable, and can be used to foster social academic interactions between lecturers and students in learning institutions, and therefore increase the web portal’s usage

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