Usability and Effectiveness Evaluation of Adaptivity in E-Learning Systems

Abstract

Designing effective and usable adaptive e-learning systems represents a challenge because of the complexity which arises when meeting the needs of learners. This is compounded by the lack of well-designed experimental evaluations of adaptive e-learning systems in general, and of their usability and effectiveness in particular. This paper offers an experimental evaluation of the effect of adaptation, taking into account both the perceived usability level and learning effectiveness. A controlled experiment was conducted with 75 participants and produced significant results. They indicate that an adaptive version has a significantly higher level of perceived usability and of learning effectiveness than a non-adaptive version.