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Integrating digital libraries and VLEs in higher & further education

Ease of use

Usability in its various aspects is obviously a key element in producting the ideal 'seamless one stop access' environment. Aside from general usability issues there are some interesting points emerging from Linker's work. In particular there are messages from users that the VLE is not an environment which suits every student. This appears to apply particularly when the VLE software itself is not sufficiently flexible, robust or reliable to meet user needs. The latter two are not in themselves usability issues but clearly affect ease of use. The former can manifest itself in various ways.

For instance one student cohort was found to be still having difficulties with the VLE after several months' use, with a consequent failure to use the system as required. It was suspected that this was because the VLE environment was less flexible than it could be and did not allow effective cross-linking. This meant that students' expectations of easy access to resources were not met, and they had to spend a substantial amount of time going up and down hierarchies to access material.

• Testing with users is clearly essentially, but users should be considered in the widest sense. Products ostensibly most used by lecturers and students may impact upon administrators, librarians, students, vendors, and institutional managers as well.
• Testing with users can be problematic in terms of timeliness in the HE environment, in particular finding staff and student users.
• Projects should be aware of the current student practices of reading on screen to avoid printing costs. This finding led directly to a recommendation to improve the quality of readings for on-screen display.

Additional Resources

Forthcoming..... contributions gratefully received