UX Review
Since I will be asking students in my course to use a variety of different tools and websites as part of their learning, I wanted the navigation of my website to be as straightforward as possible. Students will be spending the majority of their time on the course units page, so I chose it for my UX review.
In terms of click testing, anywhere my students are trying to access should be immediately clear. I have only included four pages in the navigation bar–blog, discussion, syllabus, and units–so it should be obvious to users which page they want to use as soon as they access the website. Once users click “Units,” they will be taken immediately to a units page with the Table of Contents at the top. From there, users can either scroll done the whole page or click the title of whatever unit they’re hoping to explore and access it through the linked Table of Contents.
Since I am not requiring my students to purchase any textbooks, I’ve linked all of the required readings on this page. As of now, none of the links are broken. However, I will need to check back periodically to ensure this remains the case. The only websites that are password protected are those linked from the MSU Library; therefore, students will be able to log in using their email and password.
I will develop a survey to distribute to my students toward the beginning of the course based on the System Usability Scale. Any areas they identify having trouble using I will rework to make more usable for the remainder of the course. Additionally, I would like to have some of my colleagues complete the usability test as well to determine if this website is scalable to other online courses without having my explanations like my students may have.
Reflection
I was not familiar with UX design before this course, and I thought it was very interesting to explore the ways in which this can affect students of an online course. When I have more time, I would like to run UX reviews on various DH projects that I commonly use to see what elements they include to make their websites user friendly. While my course is in WordPress, I would be interested to see the results of a UX review of a course housed on D2L. As a student in their first semester at MSU, I’ve found the D2L has an extremely deep learning curve.