University of Florida Usability Indicators of Mobile Educational Applications Paper

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Computer Science

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I have Searche for a topic the usability of mobile learning apps targeted children. i had made a literature review and still the methodology and discussion also abstract. I want the method is quantitative with a survey or questionnaire. use APA style. don't forget the references. I need 5 pages.

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Developing and evaluating usability metric for mobile learning applications targeted toward children. Introduction. With the increase in the use of modern devices, the number of applications including educational applications has increased. Those devices are become something important for very young children, this is because it provides easy interactive methods and does not require high skill in movement or experience. Educational applications contribute to facilitating learning in a positive way. Mobile Educational application is very useful in enriching the mobile learning experience of children. The quality, success of the applications as well as the output of the applications may depend on the usability of the applications. Usability is a method of evaluating web or app’s readiness for release by testing it with real users who are part of the target audience. The goal in usability is to understand how real users interact with the web or apps and make changes based on the results. Mobile applications have caused a revolution in the interaction between users and their mobile devices. The major part of success achieved by mobile applications is partly because of the usability offered by smartphones and tablets. Currently, users are more familiar with gestures of touch including children and the elderly, can easily handle different devices. Some of educational mobile apps that have a complicated user interface, it has a negative impact on the learning process. It is impossible to learn effectively and efficiently unless usability is taken into account completely during the design and development process of any educational application. One of the most important characteristics of a learning app is its ease of use. When designing a user interface for mobile learning games or applications, the needs of the users must be taken into account (Shafiq & Khan, 2018). The mobile education applications that have good usability encourage children to carry a larger amount of training. The interaction of children and learning through technology can increase their ability to map their minds. A user-friendly interface design that is enhanced it creates a stress-free environment. The text's design and layout can help to eliminate frustrations and confusion while also making information resources more accessible(Mkpojiogu et al., 2018). Preschoolers and elementary school age children are expected to use mobile devices flawlessly at home and in the classroom as a natural part of growing up in the digital age. Schools, students, educators, and parents all have a high demand for apps that take advantage of the latest mobile and touchscreen technology(Tahir & Arif, 2014). Schools, students, educators, and parents all have a high demand for apps that take advantage of the latest mobile and touchscreen technology (Papadakis et al., 2020). The evaluation usability for mobile learning applications targeted toward children gives developers and designers of mobile applications the ability to enhance the quality of their learning applications. Which is make the learner will find it easier to solve difficult problems and this of course helps the child and stimulate his knowledge skills. There were no research identifying usability metric requirements for mobile learning applications aimed at children in the literature review, or some of them had limitations. As a result, certain requirements must be established, as well as the degree to which they influence usability. The purpose of this study is to find the usability indicators of mobile educational applications targeted toward children. Literature review. Usability Model. Metrics for Usability Standards in Computing (USC), which includes performance measures, Software Usability Measurement (SUM) Inventory, which provides measures of global satisfaction in five specific usability areas, and McCall's model, which is divided into three criteria: training, operability, and effectiveness. Utilization of Quality Use Integrated Measurement (QUIM) is a consolidated model for measuring actual software usage and identifying issues. The Goal Question Metric Model (GQM) is also used to create measurement models for a variety of applications, including mobile apps. These models, like many others, have their own set of limitations. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has also created a number of usability models, but no single model can account for all aspects of usability. ISO 9241-11, which is the most widely used model for mobile usability, is one of the three main ISO standards. Performance, effectiveness, and satisfaction are all highlighted as important characteristics. Usability is a software quality attribute decomposed into five factors: understandability, learnability, operability, attractiveness, and Usability compliance, according to ISO/IEC 9126-1. The definition of quality in use is specified in ISO/IEC 9126-4, and ISO/IEC 14598-1 is for measuring quality in use from the perspective of internal software quality attributes. Usability of mobile application. Parsons & Ryu (2006) did investigate a conceptual framework for M-learning design that spans the gap between product quality metrics and softer quality concerns. Usability comprises the sub-characteristics of understandability, learnability, operability, attractiveness, and usability compliance, according to ISO/IEC-9126-1. Usability is a qualitative characteristic that defines how convenient it is to use a user interface. It assesses the consistency of a user's contact with the system. Using Extending ISO/IEC 9162, that would complement the ‘contexts of use’ dimensions of the ‘quality in use’ metrics, effectively extending the reach of these metrics that acknowledge further quality aspects of the learning experience. They developed a framework for M-learning based on a combination of design problems, dimensions of learning context, structural factors and their instantiation, and goals. User roles and profiles, learning on the go, various media types, interface design, and collaboration support are identified as five design problems that are crucial in M-learning. They conducted experimental research to confirm the proposed conceptual framework. They used the Ambient Wood Project. This was designed to enable mobile learners to link their learning experiences on a field trip with the classroom context, with the support of mobile devices and visualization tools. The Ambient Wood project also demonstrated that mobile learning allowed novel ways of collaborative problem solving, such as two additional design problems, user position and collaboration support, which are critical to the quality of the mobile learning experience but are rarely addressed in traditional metrics. A mobile learner was able to combine knowledge gathered from the mobile device with their own impressions of the physical world and interact with other mobile learners, as illustrated by the Ambient Wood Project. According to their findings, some extensions to ISO/IEC 9162 would be beneficial in complementing the ‘contexts of use' dimensions of the ‘quality in use' metrics. They suggest using these five design problems in conjunction with current software quality metrics to reevaluate each of them for the mobile learning environment. Metaphors, interactivity, and learning content are three additional metrics they propose. The application of this conceptual framework to the project that was used is lacking, as there was no sample interviewed to see how useful this framework was for them, or a questionnaire was conducted for users' satisfaction. Shareef & Khan (2019) mention that The purpose of this research is to look at the different usability dimensions and problems that must be considered when designing and assessing mobile apps. They assess various usability dimensions as well as the testing parameters that must be followed in order to ensure that mobile apps are of higher quality and user-friendly. The conceptual model was created to test the usability of Smartphone applications. Six steps make up the theory model as selection of usability attribute, usability evaluation based criteria, fetch threshold values for usability attributes, select the application for usability testing, design test case generation on the basis of usability criteria, Test execution and check the criteria meet for validation. The first step in the process of making a mobile app usable is to choose usability attributes. The second point is that The user chooses the usability dimensions based on his or her needs or the nature of his or her job. The requirements for usability assessment are chosen to determine which specifications or models are to be used for further processing. The following is a list of usability testing requirements that can be used as guidelines and models (ISO 9241-11 and ISO 9126-1). After that, to meet or compare mature performance, threshold values must be established. The threshold values may be numerical or mathematical in nature. It is essential to implement on an application after setting the usability dimension and testing parameters. The application is chosen based on the testing's intent. This step will determine which platform and operating system will be used for testing. When the program, platform, and operating system are chosen in the fourth stage, a prototype must be created for testing. Prototypes are commonly used to estimate a new design in order to enhance accuracy through system testing and user input. A prototype may be in the form of a questioner, a lab, a field experiment, or a controlled environment. The planned prototype is executed by the users after they have chosen the platform, operating system, and application. Advanced techniques like eye tracing and facial recognition are used to get user experiences, and emotions "3E tool" is used to explore the communicating emotions and experiences. The results are observed and validated using the models that were selected as criteria for usability assessment in the second step. If the criteria satisfy the model's requirements or demonstrate improved performance, the findings are recorded in the form of a report. If the requirements are not met, return to step one and repeat the process, modifying the characteristics or performance parameters as needed to achieve good results. If the assessment results do not meet the pre-defined criteria or if there is an improvement when comparing, a report is produced. Authors said "This study is particularly useful to comprehend usability issues and their likely remedies to produce high quality smartphone apps. The study provides a conceptual framework for usability testing of smartphone applications." There were no major findings supporting the outputs of the conceptual framework. The authors use in their studies this sample or empirical research while only creating a conceptual framework. Usability of mobile learning applications children. A systemic review has been done by Mkpojiogu et al. (2018) and in this paper's primary goal is to assess the usability of mobile education applications in terms of how they impact children's learning experiences, as well as the effects and benefits they provide. This method is used by gathering and evaluating the results of earlier studies conducted by other researchers. Two processes, namely the search process and study selection, were established in order to perform the search and selection of research studies. In order to conduct the search and selection of research studies, the search strategy was established based on the scope, participation, and outcome criteria. The keywords "usability," "evaluation," "children," and "education" were used to search 120 magazines. Only 50 journals out of 120 were chosen for further review in order to receive guidelines for mobile app development. The ISO defines usability as "a software product's ability to be understood, learned, used, and appealing to the consumer when used under defined conditions." Learnability, reliability, memorability, user satisfaction, effectiveness, simplicity, results, and understanding are all factors considered when assessing the usability of applications in the learning environment. Usability refers to how easily children perform tasks, how quickly they complete them, and how many mistakes they make along the way. Usability testing is used to determine these variables. A few general conclusions were drawn from observing a group of children. The following are some of the points to consider when evaluating the usability of mobile education applications for children:The hidden navigation is the first point to mention , the clean interface is the second point to mention and the third thing that stands out is the application's ability to connect to other objects. Most researchers favored productivity, efficacy, learnability, and user satisfaction as the best dimensions to use, according to this study. The study yielded the following four dimensions, which were discovered and chosen. 1) EFFICIENCY: The general usability of mobile learning applications for children is a critical factor, as children do not want to struggle with applications simply because the user interface is not appealing to them. The less time spent controlling resource access, the more time is available to draw on the usefulness of those resources from an efficiency standpoint. Compatibility, loading time, and accuracy are three subdimensions of the performance dimension. 2) EFFECTIVENESS: Effectiveness refers to how accurately and completely users accomplish their objectives. There are two sub dimensions to measure the effectiveness which is Presentation and Navigation. 3) LEARNABILITY: A system's learnability refers to how simple it is to pick up and use the system so that the user can get to work quickly. Two sub-dimensions, simplicity and familiarity, were considered under the learnability dimension. Simplicity and familiarity can be combined to determine the amount of work needed for a user to understand the interface and be satisfied with it. 4) USER SATISFACTION: Satisfaction is defined as the absence of pain and the development of favorable attitudes toward the use of a product. User satisfaction is based on the content, user guide, and attractiveness of the application interface. According to the results, little attention has been paid to usability testing in the field of mobile learning application design for children. The study also found that mobile learning apps for kids should be simple to use, learnable, understandable, and appealing, as well as provide a fun experience for the kids. Tahir & Arif (2014) review existing work in order to synthesize a set of usability guidelines for mobile educational apps for children and, as a result, create a framework for assessment that includes metrics and measuring instruments. This paper uses ISO 9241-11 as its starting point. Along with this baseline model, quality qualities from ISO 9216-1 are chosen as sub features. As a result, the following usability traits will be the focus of this research: efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, understandability, learnability, operability and attractiveness. The framework is divided into three stages. The first phase examines the literature and offers usability features as well as guidelines for designing educational apps for children's interfaces. The Goal Question Metric (GQM) is used in the second phase to create metrics for evaluating the usability of mobile educational apps for children. The metrics are grouped into objective and subjective metrics in the third phase, which are then used to create two measuring instruments: a task list and a questionnaire. This study used two educational apps to validate the framework. The accessibility tests included a total of ten toddlers. The findings show that the framework's user satisfaction questionnaire is credible and efficient for gathering subjective data for assessing the usability of mobile educational apps for kids. The task list contained many tasks, and some of them needed a long time to complete, and this may cause the child to feel bored, which is counter to the ease of use. Also, the questionnaire was long and may take time to do, and this avoids users from doing this questionnaire. Also, the goal was to test the usability of specific applications only, and not educational applications targeted children. Evaluation Tool for Educational Apps has been suggested by Papadakis et al. (2020). They claim that the main problem is how parents and teachers can choose the best educational applications among the many available applications. Four factors were used: usability, efficiency, parental control, and security. On the basis of which an assessment can be created. The authors created a questionnaire and relied in their work for this questionnaire on several questionnaires that were previously made and relevant in evaluating applications, as well as on evaluation rules and checklists. The authors found that preschool teachers are the most appropriate sample to use this tool. they sent the questionnaire to 218 students of pre-service teachers in preschool education at the University of Crete, Greece, studying in the Department of Preschool Education. The authors claim that the educational application developer should take into account the efficiency well because it is reflected on the quality of the application. Since some apps are more effective than others in facilitating a learningby-doing approach and improving levels of children’s engagement in the learning process. In this study they did not focus on usability as it is difficult to learn effectively and efficiently unless usability is fully taken into consideration during the design and development process of any educational application. The authors took a sample of students of pre-service teachers in preschool education, ignoring the parents who are more familiar with and follow up with their children. Also, teachers of pre-school education and the elementary stages of school are ignored, and they are the most familiar with what suits the levels and abilities of children. From the literature review, there were no studies defining usability metric criteria for mobile learning applications targeting children, or some of them had limitations as criteria from other studies were used but not related to mobile learning applications targeting children. Learning apps that target children on mobile devices should be easy to use, learnable, and understandable. Therefore, some criteria have to be identified and the extent to which they affect usability. References. Mkpojiogu, E. O. C., Hussain, A., & Hassan, F. (2018). A systematic review of usability quality attributes for the evaluation of mobile learning applications for children. AIP Conference Proceedings, 2016(September). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5055494 Papadakis, S., Vaiopoulou, J., Kalogiannakis, M., & Stamovlasis, D. (2020). Developing and exploring an evaluation tool for educational apps (E.T.E.A.) targeting kindergarten children. Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(10), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104201 Parsons, D., & Ryu, H. (2006). A framework for assessing the quality of mobile learning. Proceeding of the International Conference for Process Improvement, Reseacrh and Education, 17–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221340802463979 Shareef, S., & Khan, M. N. A. (2019). Evaluation of usability dimensions of smartphone applications. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 10(9), 426–431. https://doi.org/10.14569/ijacsa.2019.0100956 Tahir, R., & Arif, F. (2014). Framework for evaluating the usability of mobile educational applications for children. The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC), December, 156–170. Shafiq, S., & Khan, T. A. (2018). Role & value of usability in educational learning via game based apps. International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research, 7(11), 70–77.
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Running head: COMPUTER SCIENCE

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Developing and Evaluating Usability Metric for Mobile Learning Applications Targeted toward
Children
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Abstract

COMPUTER SCIENCE

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The purpose of this study is to find the usability indicators of mobile educational
applications targeted toward children. Education is changing course, and the means and modes of
accessing it are changing from what used to be teachers and libraries to means facilitated by the
internet. Things are changing from classroom schooling to mobile schooling. The process has
been a transformation since electronic records were introduced (Spires, 2017). This
transformation has been enhanced by the ease of accessibility of the internet and the technology
of mobile smartphones. This would not have been possible without IT technicians who are doing
everything to bring innovation into modern studies (Ozer & Kılıç, 2018). Past studies have been
highlighted in the literature review to set the basis of this study. The study conducted is based on
user interface friendliness toward the child to elaborate the essence of usability. Thirty family
volunteers came forward to participate in the research. Results are analyzed and discussed below.
Recommendations are raised, followed by a conclusion.
Methodology
A quantitative approach for data collection was administered. I used questionnaires to
collect the necessary data. This data originated from a group of 30 children to explore the
usability of apps targeting children using the metric measurements of efficiency, effectiveness,
and satisfaction derived from the Nielsen analysis model. The data was analyzed and discussed
in the discussion section. The children were required to have experience in the usage of
smartphones for whichever reason. The data collected was based on observation by the parent.
Parents were required to have been trained on using the apps to intercept and offer assistance
whenever the child experienced difficulties operating the apps. The usability test took 30 for
each app. A ten minutes break was given before the resumption for mode 2 for another 30
minutes.

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To prevent the children from experiencing stress, their parents were the observers
required to interrupt only at the child's request. No parent was required to assist. The satisfaction
level was recorded by observing how the child's mood was expressed during the two tests. The
number of requests made by the child for assistance was also crucial in determining the
efficiency. Incomplete tasks were used to calculate efficiency. John Nielsen's usability indicators
were used sparingly for this research.
Quantitative research was necessary on this topic to provide a figure in the discussion. It
was essential to reflect on the actual responses from the consumer rather than only relying on
qualitative research, which could be biased against the consumer. Questionnaires had to be used
to collect the quantitative data aspect for the analysis.
Discussion
This research focuses on the usability indicators of the Nielsen usability mode to determine apps'
usability targeting children. The Nielsen mode focuses on effectiveness, satisfaction, and
efficiency.
Efficiency- the resources provided in the mobile earning apps helped the children to achieve their
desired goal
Satisfaction – the user should develop a positive attitude toward the app without feeling annoyed.
Effectiveness- the user could earn the app and perform specific tasks within a given time or
period.
This data focused on the user interface and features. For the collection of quantitative data to be
successful, 30 parents were selected to participate in the research. They were to introduce their
children to earning apps. Two app modes were selected for use. One used text instructions
(Mode 1) while the other used animated graphics instructions combine with texts (mode 2). The

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parents were close observers and not active participants, while the children were active
participants—all they had to observe and assist when necessary. Later on, the parents were
issued questionnaires, and the results were as follows.
Assumptions
It was assumed that children had the same background information on how to operate a
smartphone device.
It was assumed that the children had the same capabilities of doing tasks
Effectiveness
All the participants showed that the level of effectiveness with both apps was 100% for
apps with animated graphics for instructions and 83.3% for text-based instructions. The reason
for the biasness in the results was attributed to recognition rather than recall. Children were able
to follow animated instructions easily to the end of the assigned tasks. With text-based
instructions that depended on recall, most of the children could not complete their tasks.
Efficiency
83% of the total participants were able to complete tasks using mode 2, while only 43%
could complete tests using mode 1. These tests were to be done within one hour, once the time to
start kicking off. Mode 2 proved to enhance more efficiency in the learnability of the app.
Therefore, more students were able...