Abstract:

The web is playing a central role in distance education. The word “usability” is usually synonymous with functionality of the system for the user. Also, usability of a website is defined as something that can be used by a specific group of people to carry out specific objectives in an effective way, with efficiency and satisfaction. There are some useful usability evaluation instruments of websites in other languages. The aim of this study was to develop a Persian instrument to evaluate usability in distance education websites. This study was a methodology research design. According to review literature, the main structure of evaluation instrument for usability designed. It was consisted of forty-eight items divided in 8 domains. Each domain was composed of closed multiple choice questions in which an ordinal scale with three values is used (always, sometimes and never) that measures the opinion of the evaluator about the frequency of visiting each item selected in the website. After that, we used face validity method. It refers to what instrument appears superficially to measure. At the final step, we omputed a formal content validity index (CVI) across the experts’ ratings of each item’s relevance. The content validity index was measured by set of ten experts, who evaluated each item individually. According to CVI, the final version of instrument was composed of 40 questions divided into 8 domains: Navigation, Functionality, Feedback, Control, Language, Consistency, Error prevention and correction, and Visual clarity.CVI score for each phrase was more than 0.75. According to our findings, this instrument has enough validity to apply in evaluation usability of educational websites of Persian distance education websites. However, instrument reliability can be measured in further study.

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