Usability Working Group

Introduction

The proposal for this group comes from User:Leutha/Guidance for the Perplexed

Proposal

Since the Council is too busy to address these issues I propose that interested parties use this page to express interest and to draw up a schedule for how to proceed.

Usability reviews

Main Page

The main page is very text heavy with far too much information. I suggest we need a stripped down version to ease usability and navigation. I have aquired Wikiedukator.org (WikiEdukator which is currently pointing towards the Main Page, but my proposal is to repoint this to a stripped down version of the main page. My reasoning is that this page can provide a more user friendly index page as well as look at how Pijin / pidgin English can be used in WE, something that has so far not been done. Pijin in itself is I believe a more usable form of English and therefore fits the remit of this working groups agenda.

Learning4Content

I encouraged User:Muraniuk to start using WE and also to enrol on a L4C course. However he found the process unhelpful in that he ended up getting a stream of e-mails which he found of little relevance. Is there a way L$C can be made user friendly?Leutha 19:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you identify which L4C course Muranik took? Then, if you could take a look at it, and give some specific feedback around it....we have several courses running, and several versions. Also, if you could ask him to specify where the emails came from.... was it in the context of the email Google Group, or the emails from WikiAdmin. --Randy Fisher 00:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I did eL4C10 -10th Online Workshop and would like to add here that the medium of an email forum/list seems a strange way to learn about Wiki - why not keep the discussions on the wiki itself? That way we'd be developing understanding of how the wiki works and avoiding adding on another interface. I also found that the tutorials are very text heavy with relatively little value added (outcomes) from the course as a whole. It may aid usability to strip these down into a list of short specific tasks. Kakamora 06:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I checked the date of the [Learning4Content/Workshops/Online_schedule/eL4C10|eL4C 10]]and saw that it was September 1-12. In response to specifically the problems that you are mentioning - thanks for being more specific! - Leigh Blackall and I designed a [/Learning4Content/Workshops/Messages|5-day version of the wiki skills course]] beginning on July 30, 2008. We ran a pilot in late August, and most recently, I have further updated the workshop content, so that it is more geared towards Community Media / Radio Practitioners. Anyone who takes an L4C workshop is welcome to join another session, if they like. Regarding the email, yes, we moved alot of the emailing to later in the course, to focus on the development of the OER resource. In the beginning of the course, folks introduce themselves to each other and browse their User Pages (the User Page is a central part of the course). I don't know the entire history behind using Google Groups, but I do believe that it has something to do with the funky functionality of Liquid Threads, and their lack of reliability. Also, Newbies registering do not yet have wiki skills, so they might find it hard to post messages. I must say in the Community Media workshop, I was rather surprised to find that people had so much trouble actually registering an account, and in the Community Media workshop, you will see that I have posted instructions for Newbies to actually send me their User Name and Password so I can set up their accounts and preferences. Once that happened, learning went very smoothly. One other thing, I think it's important to recognize that as much as we may be familiar with the wiki technology, for many others, it's just not the same way. I've just read an interesting article in Educause Quarterly, about Resistance to Technology, about make sure that we check our assumptions, to make sure that we are on the same page with our learners....So, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Here's the reference: Haymes, Tom (2008). The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change, in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 4 (October–December 2008) - http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/TheThreeEStrategyforOverc/47686 --Randy Fisher 11:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Members

I have started this page to field interest in this working group. Kakamora 17:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

More

Read more on the Pedagogy-Technology-Usability triad

Wikieducator tutorial/Navigation templates/Improving usability