Educators, and especially teachers are among those who collect data from their students and would benefit from understanding of basic principles of Statistics. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate an online based resource where basic statistical concepts are paralleled with scenarios of their use in a classroom. The usability study explored ease of use of the website and satisfaction rate of the content presented on the website. The systematic design of instruction and ARCS model were employed during the development of an instructional resource. The website was developed using WIX platform. After that three rounds of usability tests (5–5–2, 12 overall) were conducted. Each session included a pre-survey, cognitive walk-through and a post-survey.
Representatives of the target audience declared for the resource as well as subject matter experts took part in the study, both providing valuable insights about possible ways to improve the user’s experience as well as quality of the content. Overall, there was agreement about simplicity and clearness of the layout, and accessibility of the content. The organization of the content was questioned by some of the participants but generally worked well for the majority of them. Based on the results of the usability study the investigator implemented some changes unifying links and underlined texts. The content of the website met the investigators expectations and demonstrated a high satisfaction rate of the participants. Some major changes suggested throughout the study were accepted, but stayed to be addressed in further iterations of the project.
Dmitrii Egorov