Editorial

Usability and Educational Software Design:Special Issue of Interacting with Computers

David Squires

King’s College London, Cornwall House, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8WA, UK

The focus of this issue is the design of usable educational learning environments whichare based on the use of modern information and communications technologies. Whilethere are now established traditions of research and development in educational computingand in human–computer interaction (HCI), workers in these areas rarely speak to eachother or take note of each others’ work: the educational computing literature is litteredwith naive and simplistic interpretations of interface design issues, and many writers in theHCI literature appear to be unaware of the significant developments that have been madein theories of learning. The premise of a one-day meeting of the British Computer SocietyHCI Special Interest Group held at King’s College London in December 1996, was thatthese two communities have much to learn from each other, and that a dialogue betweenthem should be fostered. Three papers in this issue are based on presentations given at thismeeting. It is hoped that they will provide an impetus for debate about the relationshipbetween usability as interpreted by the HCI community, and learning with information andcommunication technologies as perceived by the educational computing community.

As information and communications technologies become more and more pervasive,expectations for educational computing are becoming greater and greater. There is anexpectation that these technologies will make education available to a much wider audi-ence of learners with diverse backgrounds and ages. For example, the University forIndustry, now running as a pilot scheme, will “connect those who want to learn withways of doing so. It will act as the hub of a brand new learning network, using moderncommunication technologies to link businesses and individuals to cost effective, accessi-ble and flexible education and training” [1]. In addition, the educational use of computinghas always been predicated on an expectation that the nature of learning environments willchange through the use of software, with new paradigms emerging for ‘interactive learn-ing’ based on novel features of emerging technologies. Taken together an increase in thediversity of learners and radical changes in learning tasks present significant challenges forthe design of ‘usable’ educational software. In fact they pose the question: What isusability in the context of modern educational software design?

Contemporary theories of learning are usually expressed in terms of the umbrellaconcept of ‘constructivism’ (see [2] for an overview of the salient features of

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constructivism). These theories stress that learning is a personal idiosyncraticprocess, characterised by individuals developing knowledge and understanding byforming and refining concepts [3]. This leads to the view that learners should beassisted in some way to construct and refine concepts in personally meaningfulways. Learning environments should be provided for the learner to explore thebehaviour of systems, environments or artefacts [4,5]. The expectation is that work-ing in these environments will enable learners to express personal ideas andopinions. There should be opportunities to experiment with ideas and try out differentsolutions to problems. In this sense learners should be able to adopt multiple perspectives.This can be achieved by providing multiple knowledge representations, experiences ofvaried cases and contexts, and encouraging varied purposes for knowledge [6]. From aconstructivist perspective learners need to be encouraged to take responsibility for theirlearning, with learners having a sense of ownership of learning experiences. As Honebeinet al. [7] emphasise, these features lead to learners being presented with complex envir-onments which are representative of interesting and motivating tasks, rather than contrivedsterile problems.

Constructivist approaches have recently been significantly extended by social perspec-tives on the learning process, especially ‘situated learning’ (e.g., [8–10]). A situated viewof learning implies that effects on learning of using information and communicationtechnology will depend on the context in which it is used, with all the components of alearning environment (people and artefacts) interacting and contributing to the learningprocess. As a consequence, it is maintained that learning is best supported when technol-ogy augments learning rather than attempting to supplant it [6], and that collaborativelearning in which peer group discussion and work is prominent is effective in helpingstudents to learn (e.g., [11,12]). Taken together, an amalgam of the principles of construc-tivism and situated learning is often referred to as ‘socio-constructivism’.

A socio-constructivist view of learning poses a challenge for conventional views ofusability. In its most basic form usability is conceived in terms of interface design whichfacilitates efficient and effective completion of well-defined relatively limited tasks.However, socio-constructivism implies that learning environments should be context-sensitive complex environments in which users are expected to make and rectify mistakesas part of the learning process. This need for contextual sensitivity is echoed in moresophisticated HCI approaches; e.g., the pleas by Whiteside et al. [13] and Monk et al. [14]for context-sensitive approaches to the design and evaluation of software. However, themismatch between perceptions of complexity inherent in socio-constructivism and thoseimplicit in basic HCI approaches makes these basic approaches to usability largely inap-propriate in a learning context. Mayes and Fowler highlight this problem when they note intheir paper that the relationship between usability and the design of some educationalapplications presents “an interesting paradox where a seamless fluency of use is notnecessarily conducive to deep learning” (this issue). They capture the essence of thisparadox as follows:

Learning cannot be approached as a conventional task, as though it were just anotherkind of work, with a number of problems to be solved, and various outputs produced.This is because learning is a by-product of something else (this issue).

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The problem seems to reduce to how usability issues can be contextualised in terms ofthe complex tasks involved in learning. Put another way: How can usability features beintegratedwith principled educational design? The papers in this issue address integrationin different ways: Mayes and Fowler focus on the design significance of the nature of theeducational task, Squires and Preece re-cast a well known HCI evaluation paradigm interms of socio-constructivism, and Jones et al. propose a comprehensive framework forevaluating educational software which is focused on contextual significance.

Mayes and Fowler argue that educational software design requires the design of effec-tive tasks, rather than interfaces. This argument resonates with the plea by Grudin [15] fora more task-focused approach to HCI design: an approach in which adherence to low-leveldemands for consistency is subjugated to the need to make design consistent with thetask(s) in hand. Adopting such a task focus has led Mayes and Fowler to propose anemerging paradigm for novel educational software. They label this as tertiary software,as opposed to primary software which is mostly concerned with the delivery of content,and secondary software which is focused on sponsoring learning environments through theuse of ‘mind-tools’ such as modelling systems and programming environments. Tertiarysoftware is focused on the re-use of material which has been produced by previous learnersin the course of discussing or assessing their learning tasks. It is argued that the advent ofinformation and communication technologies makes this possible through the develop-ment of learning communities based on technology-mediated dialogues between tutorsand students and between students and students. The use of tertiary software emphasises araft of usability issues. For example, the situation in which tertiary software is used iscritical. As Mayes and Fowler point out: “Contextualising the dialogues so that an opti-mum match can be found on the underlying conceptual difficulty shared by a previous anda new learner represents one kind of design difficulty” (this issue).

Squires and Preece address this integration by taking a well known HCI evaluationparadigm and re-interpreting it in terms of contemporary theories of learning which arestrongly advocated by the educational community. They criticise established educationalsoftware evaluation approaches, notably the use of checklists, as failing to take account ofthe integration of usability and learning. Instead they propose that the well knownapproach of expert evaluation heuristics developed by Nielsen [16] should be re-cast interms of socio-constructivist views of learning, leading to the proposition of a set of‘learning with software heuristics’. Their claim is that this approach leads to a set ofevaluation guidelines which “provide a principled ‘first cut’ at developing a predictiveevaluation tool that takes account of both usability and learning issues” (this issue). Morespecifically, by addressing a socio-constructivist vision of learning they claim that theheuristics cope with the integration of usability and learning.

The authors of all three papers stress the importance of context in designing andevaluating educational software. Jones et al. emphasise this importance to the extentthat it forms the an essential aspect of their proposed model for evaluation. Context isseen as one of the three defining parameters of the ‘Context, Interactions, and Attitudesand Outcomes’ (CIAO!) model. The model has been formulated to reflect the complex anddiverse nature of learning experiences, and its implementation typically involves thecollection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources.A fundamental assertion of the model is that the observations of users, in this case teachers

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and students, should form part of the evaluation process. In reports of their case studiesthey illustrate how some usability issues are only identified when the actual use in contextof the software is observed.

Taken together these papers provide a range of approaches to tackling the notion ofintegrating usability with learning. Mayes and Fowler highlight how technological devel-opments are changing common perceptions of the learning task, making the need foreffective design and evaluation approaches even greater. Squires and Preece provide anin-depth analysis of the significance of constructivism for the usability in learning as abasis for re-casting long-standing ideas in HCI. Jones et al. illustrate the importance ofcontext on usability and learning. These papers show that there is scope for identifyingsynergies between HCI and educational computing. However, it is early days. Much needsto be done to deliberately seek out overlaps between the two fields, leading to theoreticaldevelopment which will form the basis of a programme of empirical work.

References

[1] Department for Education and Employment, The learning age: a renaissance for a new Britain (GovernmentGreen Paper), Stationary Office, London, 1998 (http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/greenpaper/index.htm).

[2] C.T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives and Practice, Teachers College Press, New York,1996.

[3] J. Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, International University Press, New York, 1952.[4] S. Papert, Computer-based microworlds as incubators for powerful ideas, in: R.P. Taylor (Ed.), The

Computer in the School: Tutor, Tool, Tutee, Teachers College Press, New York, 1980.[5] S. Papert, The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer, Basic Books Inc., New

York, 1993.[6] M.J. Hannafin, S.M. Land, The foundations and assumptions of technology-enhanced student centred

learning environments, Instructional Science 25 (1997) 167–202.[7] P.C. Honebein, T.M. Duffy, B.J. Fishman, Constructivism and the design of authentic learning environ-

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[8] W.J. Clancey, Situated cognition: how representations are created and given meaning, in: R. Lewis, P.Mendelsohn (Eds.), Lessons From Learning, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1994, pp. 231–242.

[9] R. Pea, Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education, in: G. Salomon (Ed.), DistributedCognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993,pp. 47–87.

[10] J.S. Brown, A. Collins, P. Duguid, Situated cognition and the culture of learning, Educational Researcher 18(1989) 32–42.

[11] D. Watson, D.A. Moore, V. Rhodes, Case studies in: D. Watson (Ed.), The impact report, King’s CollegeLondon, London, 1993, pp. 61–99.

[12] C. Hoyles, L. Healy, S. Pozzi, Groupwork with computers: an overview of findings , Journal of ComputerAssisted Learning 10 (4) (1994) 202–215.

[13] J. Whiteside, J. Bennett, K. Holtzblatt, Usability engineering: our experience and evolution, in: M. Helander(Ed.), Handbook of Human–Computer Interaction, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 791–817.

[14] A. Monk, B. Nardie, N. Gilbert, M. Manteir, J. Macarthy, Mixing oil and water? Ethnography versusexperimental psychology in the study of computer mediated communication, in: S. Aslund, K. Mullet,A. Henderson, E. Hollnagel, T. White (Eds.), Bridges Between Worlds (Proceedings), Addison-Wesley,Reading, MA, 1993.

[15] J. Grudin, The case against user interface consistency, Communications of the ACM 32 (1989) 1164–1173.[16] J. Nielsen, Usability inspection methods, in: J. Nielsen, R.L. Mack (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods,

Wiley, New York, 1994, p. 30.

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