Evaluating a Classroom Website Through Usability Testing

Abstract

In order for students to be successful, parents need to know what is going on at school so they can help support their child/children. This usability study was developed to improve parent teacher communication using a classroom website in an elementary school. During the year there is a lot of communication between families and schools. Although many newsletters and flyers are sent home, parents still seem to never have all of the information they need, perhaps because information gets lost in transit from school to home. The purpose of this usability study was to evaluate the effectiveness of navigation and the organization of the content for a classroom website to improve weekly communication with parents at a Hawaii public elementary school on the Windward side of Oahu. Peer feedback suggested minimizing text on web pages by breaking up sentences for easier readability, adding a tab for homework, and specifying names with room numbers. These suggestions were implemented in the hope that the website would become more valuable in the future for communicating to parents and helping them easily find information pertaining to their child. This paper will showcase how the website changed and will discuss design principles that informed choices in the redesign.