Others

Usability 

I'm in an optional course where we should focus on usability. Usability of teaching material to be precise. One of our tasks is to explore one course from the Archive of the Digital Learning Material called "Opintojakso: Johdatus käytettävyyteen" (Introduction to Usability in English). 

One of the main points is that usability can be adapted to almost everything. I think the usability as a word came from the world of computers. I've heard it a lot when talked about operating systems and other computer software. 

Usability in general means how well and how easily something can be used for its purpose. The term ‘usability’ can easily be linked to teaching materials. How usability is defined depends on who is defining it. For example the following concepts can be used when defining usability of learning materials:

Efficiency - How easily and effectively students can understand and learn the intended learning outcomes

Faultlessness – How clearly the main points are presented and likely the students learn the intended learning outcomes and not the unintended or false truths.

Usefulness – Is the teaching material appropriate for its purpose. Is it useful compared to the intended learning outcomes?

Attractiveness – Are students willing to focus into those teaching materials or is that material impossible to read even at first glance. Is the material inspiring?

User experience – What was the overall feeling left from those materials?

When usability is in excellent level students are willing to learn and focus on teaching materials, learning is easier and more effective, learning takes less time and there are no false beliefs.

Next task for usability course...

Our next task is to explore one the other online courses of Digma and reflect how I could use that course in my own work as a teacher.

My own field of expertise is beauty and cosmetics and there really wasn’t anything about that in Digma. I riffled through the courses and saw one could be useful for my students and me. The course is called “Googlen käyttö”.

It’s a guide to more effective use of Google. We all search information daily and that course makes those searches more effective. Effective use of Google is very important especially for students. Some students already now how to use Google but others don’t.

How I could use this course in my own work as a teacher?

I think I have a few possibilities. I think the best way to use this course would be to give it as a task for students. Get to know this course and answer to these questions: What did you learn? How are you going to use this new information for your studies?

After that the students are more likely to find appropriate information for different information search purposes.

I also could use this course during contact teaching. We could do the exercises described in that course during class and make sure everyone can use Google. This would be most effective to do at the beginning of studies. At my work place we tend to have orientation week as the first week when students begin their education. During orientation everyone is tested that they can manage with the basic office programs they have to use during studies. After everyone is passed that test we could go trough Google search as well. Students would be ready for studies now.

Usability +

There is limited amount of information in one page. You do not have to scroll down that often. All the information is in its place.

Text is very easy to follow. No difficult or unexplained concepts. Text is divided into appropriate sections.

Structure of the course is very simple: list of headlines on the left and only one sub page in every section.

Usability –

There are too many headlines there. It’s hard to navigate and to choose the right headline.

Pedagogical +

Information is presented in a linear and constructive way. The amount of text is good, no over explaining.

Lots of simple examples.

There are good tasks to do and test your knowledge after every theme.

Easy to follow.

Lots of tips where you can look for additional information.

Pedagogical –

No interactivity

No summaries

Hard to skim through because you have to choose each headline separately.

Text looks a bit boring