Accessibility and usability study of electronic learning systems

Abstract

As educational institutions throughout the world increasingly offer courses via the Internet, a global lifelong learning economy is emerging in which institutions must compete for students worldwide. This competition is especially noticeable in the offering of postgraduate courses aimed at satisfying the continuing professional development needs of practitioners in a wide range of disciplines. E-Learning is fast growing concept of learning, where students as well as instructors can complete their educational goals online through courseware, online reference materials, online assessment and online support provided to facilitate learning. This research examines the nature of change of accessibility in higher education with respect to the introduction and usability of E-Learning. Accessibility is the ability of the learning environment to adjust to the needs of all learners. Accessibility is thus determined by the flexibility of the E-Learning system or learning resource to meet the needs and preferences of all users. To achieve the desired goals in the research, postgraduate students are selected to conduct a survey among them which will further lead to determine the students needs, preferences and usage of E-Learning. The link between accessibility and usability is then analysed, and can be concluded that the lower the level of accessibility of the ELearning system for the students the less usable it will be for them. A prototype of the E-learning system was designed and implemented to incorporate additional features of accessibility and has been evaluated. All the essential contributions of this research were highlighted including future direction of this research.