The The initial process of creating a guide to evaluate the usability in Virtual Learning Environments

Abstract

The usability evaluation includes a method set to analyze the system use quality in different development life cycle stages, for which there are a wide variety of evaluation methods (EM), each method uses certain ways and techniques to measure different aspects. Its choice does not only depend on which answer you are looking for but on multiple factors, the problem arises when looking for which of the existing EM are appropriate to assess the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) usability, considering that there aren´t a combination methods or specific evaluation methods for this type of software to obtained a complete, consistent evaluation and considering factors such as effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, reasonable times, among others, this is why the following question arises: Which existing usability EMs are appropriate to apply on VLEs? This paper focuses on showing the initial process before the construction of the guide obtained from the EM combination that allows the usability evaluation in VLE. Process that was carried out, initially, with a bibliographic analysis about the usability EM of interactive systems existing and a comparison among them, where the first combination version was obtained, with this version, a metrics set was defined that will be applied to the VLE object of study and will allow selecting the useful methods to assess usability in this context. The result of the application of these metrics will be the combination of usability EM to form the VLE evaluation guide in upcoming research.