Full length articleMultidisciplinary criteria for the quality of e-learning services design
Introduction
Different digital technologies of information and communication have emerged in recent years, which led to changes in how the educational and corporate agents make use of these technologies. Their needs favor initiatives that design online services that run in any environment (at work, at home, at the university, among others), with different possibilities of use. A service is any action or activity that a party (provider or consumer) may offer to another and that is essentially intangible (Kotler, 2000). Polaine, Lovlie, and Reason (2013) define service design as the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and the consumers. In cases when the provider is a higher education institution, an e-learning service is seen as an opportunity for business sustainability, since it favors opening up the forms of attendance to students and future students, as well as innovating teaching practices, and applying active methodologies (Diesel, Baldez, & Martins, 2017). Providers (managers of educational institutions, pedagogical staff, and system developers) and consumers (students, teachers and tutors) must take responsibility for the success of this business. For the Quality of the Service (QoS) offered, an organization is expected to manage its projects and guarantee the quality of its products (Pressman & Maxim, 2016), and thus contribute to its visibility in a competitive market in current times (Freitas, 2005).
For quality of user experience with online courses, a student user is expected to be capable of interacting and exploiting available technology such us, using a Learning Management System (LMS), with more autonomy and critical capacity (Cardoso, 2015). LMS provides a place and opportunity for teachers to work on creating and delivering online teaching materials, develop tasks, communicate with students and use all of the other LMS capabilities (Daniela & Rūdolfa, 2019). McGorry (2003) proposed the following seven constructs would be necessary to evaluate quality and learning in online courses: flexibility, responsiveness and student support, student learning, interaction, technology and technical support, and student satisfaction.
These expectations and requirements for a sustainable business increase the need for a human centric service design process. Kavanaugh and Isenhour (2006) show the relevance of involving stakeholders (clients and users) in participatory sessions of user centered design in order to define requirements (functionalities, restrictions, and affordances) that are appropriate to their preferences.
We conducted a research in the literature with the objective of identifying the requirements involved in the online courses offered by universities and identified 20 criteria that support the provision of online course services in 5 different areas: education, human-computer interaction, psychology, management and law; and 7 criteria in two other areas: logistics and customer service and economics. The identified criteria and requirements may assist service providers to understand the context and elements preferred by their consumers. However, we did not find any systemic process in studies where the multidisciplinary criteria are analyzed altogether and classified by preferences of those involved (providers and consumers) in the configuration of online course services. Our research question was the following: How to configure an e-learning service for QoS? Specifically, how do we consider the various legal, administrative, pedagogical, and customer satisfaction requirements as well as the existing constraints in the context for providing a service with quality?
This article describes a strategy to help providers (as universities) of online course services to establish requirements and evaluate the quality of their services. This strategy focuses on the opinion of involved users and their preferences of providing and using an online course with quality and considers multiple criteria in participatory decision making.
The MPS-USE presents characteristics that guided the definition of its five pillars: Elements of user experience; human values; multicriteria approach; participative project; and model of quality. The first two pillars support the configuration characteristics of a service according to the preferences of consumers and the social and organizational contexts in question. The following two pillars define the approaches applied to evaluate a configuration, they are: i) the use of the Verbal Decision Analysis - VDA (Moshkovich & Mechitov, 2013), studied in the operational research, to support the decision making about the service being studied and ii) the use of participatory design techniques when applying VDA, with providers and consumers. The last pillar refers to the support given to the quality analysts and designers so they can verify how the QoS can be guaranteed. We adopted the quality reference model to the improvement of the software process for services (Softex, 2012) called here simply the “quality model”. Models of reference of process quality have been adopted and followed by product development companies. Such models are usually established from successful initiatives and common sense among experts about what really matters to the quality of a process. The adopted model presents a service design development process to meet the QoS but does not specify how to implement it. We propose that the activities of this process can be performed with the MPS-USE strategy.
The strategy was applied to evaluate whether the online courses being offered by a university were appropriate for the client (teacher and student). Results showed that the online course service offered was in agreement with the interests of the decision makers and the demands (requirements) adequate to ensure quality during its provision.
The MPS-USE contributes to the e-learning service design, because it considers an integrated view of elements from different areas to identify and analyze the alternative solutions of a service and no pedagogical approach is imposed. In addition, the components of the strategy are linked to the requirements of a service design process in order to guide the provider of the service to organize its processes. When a company meets the requirements necessary in the processes described in a quality reference model, it can obtain certification for the quality of its processes, thus contributing to its visibility.
The structure of this article is as follows. Section 2 presents relevant subjects for the analysis of multidisciplinary criteria that impact the QoS and the criteria involved in the e-learning service domain. Verbal decision analysis methods are described in Section 3. Section 4 presents the pillars of the MPS-USE strategy, its configuration model and activities. Subsequently, section 5 applies MPS-USE in a case study of the online course service. Sections 6 Discussion, 7 Final consideration present discussions and final considerations, respectively.
Section snippets
Background for analysis of multidisciplinary criteria for the QoS
This section is organized in two parts. The first presents the categories to assess the quality of a service. The second presents how the literature has identified multidisciplinary criteria to study services tied to online courses and quality of user experiences.
Verbal Decision Analysis and its applications
Daft and Weick (2001) point out that decision making is usually part of the information and interpretation processes in organizations, and that decisions depend on different modes of interpretation. In many organizations, the decision-making process is an important aspect of management activity. Managers are expected to make better decisions, which result in productive actions, rapid solutions to a problem, and improved organizational performance (Jung, 2001). The process of decision making by
MPS-USE strategy
Our strategy is interested in QoS by analyzing both experienced and desired quality. The quality of experience can be analyzed by checking for factors that affect User eXperience (UX) with a service, for example, how individual preferences, such as interest in interacting and autonomy, may affect analysis of judgment for an appropriate solution to users' needs (Furtado & Pinheiro, 2015). In this sense, the analysis of user's preferences should be carried out through participative methods of
Application of the MPS-USE strategy in the online course service and its results
The MPS-USE strategy was applied in the online course service of the Education Institute of Ceara state (The service provider) in order to verify if the configuration of use of the online course service discussed was in accordance with the requirements adopted in this Institute. The group of decision makers was formed by 5 people, being: 2 professors in education with over 5 years of work experience with online courses (ages between 30 and 45) and 3 tutors of an online discipline (ages between
Discussion
This section is divided into two relevant points to be reflected on in regard to the application of MPS-USE. They are:
Criteria analysis as support for Innovation. We show that the criteria can be identified from a review in the literature and the application of questionnaires and interviews with those involved. However, it is important to emphasize the need to innovate in the design of services and to identify criteria previously never studied. So, in this case, other actors (like innovators,
Final consideration
In this study, the research question was: How to configure an e-learning service for QoS? We did two analysis of the literature on UX and online courses. The first identified multidisciplinary requirements. The second confirmed that most of the studies evaluate the user experience with software without considering promising scenarios for design of innovative services. The strategy proposed in this research is designed to help those who want to offer innovative services with an emphasis on
References (62)
- et al.
Does content categorization lead to knowledge building? An experiment in a social bookmarking service
Computers in Human Behavior
(2015) - et al.
The quality of service desired by public transport users
Transport Policy
(2011) - et al.
MAIS-A model for the multi-criteria analysis of interaction solutions
Procedia Computer Science
(2015) Measuring quality in online programs
The Internet and Higher Education
(2003)- et al.
Ordinal judgments in multiattribute decision analysis
European Journal of Operational Research
(2002) Measuring the quality of service for passengers on the Hellenic railways
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
(2008)- et al.
Evaluation of the Alzheimer's disease clinical stages under the optics of hybrid approaches in Verbal Decision Analysis
Telematics and Informatics
(2018) A qualidade da informação para a tomada de decisão sob a perspectiva do sense making: uma ampliação do campo
Ciência da Informação
(2010)- et al.
A secure collaborative multimedia learning scheme in cultural environments
- Blind (2015a) authors' article in computer human...
Tutors and university teachers' perception about quality assurance in distance education: The case of the undergraduate management course in minas gerais-Brazil
UML: Guia do usuário
Mixed e-assessment: An application of the student generated question technique
MASF: Modelo de Referência para Aplicação da Sequência Fedathi na formação profissional e na produção de conteúdo. 2015. 180f. Thesis in Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação Brasileira
Analysis of the interaction design for mobile TV applications based on multicriteria
Analyzing the multicriteria of the interaction design of an educational map application for digital TV from user preferences
J. UCS
Análise de alternativas de design de mapas para TV digital brasileira baseada em multicritérios
Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems
Organizational Studies. Critical Perspectives on Business and Management
Learning platforms: How to make the right choice
Os princípios das metodologias ativas de ensino: uma abordagem teórica
Revista Thema
Information visualization to support decision making in the context of distance learning: A study with VLE TelEduc
A qualidade em serviços no contexto da competitividade
Revista Produção Online
Teoria da decisão. São Paulo
User experience and experience design. Chapter in the encyclopedia of human computer interaction. By mad soegard.
Facilitating active learning in distance education: An experience from India
Transformational and transactional leadership and their effects on creativity in groups
Creativity Research Journal
Emotional aspects in quality of experience and learning (QoE and QoL) of audiovisual content in mediated learning
A qualitative analysis of synchronous distance mode teacher training workshop
Adaptive multimedia content in mobile cloud computing environment
Cited by (20)
Analysis on quality of learning in e-Learning platforms
2022, Advances in Engineering SoftwareCitation Excerpt :In recent years, diverse digital communication and information technologies have arisen that lead to variations in how the learning and corporation agents exploit these techniques [1,2]. Their requirements support an initiative that designs the online service, which works in any environment (at university, at home, at work and among others), with diverse feasibilities of use [3]. e-Learning is turning out to be a vital tool, which is broadly implemented and used by educational universities and institutes all around the world [4].
Impactful e-learning framework: A new hybrid form of education
2021, Current Research in Behavioral SciencesCitation Excerpt :The learning material glossed through the ontology of classes, of which three academic classes (C++, C #, and JAVA) were represented. Vasconcelos et al. (2019) presented decision-making methods based on multidisciplinary requirements and various criteria for the configuration of online course programs. The decision-maker configuration model developed, program institution-based mentors listed practices relevant to the consistency of service design implementation processes.
Beyond the ICT- and sustainability hypes: A case for quality education
2020, Computers in Human BehaviorWhat Elements in the Web Page will Influence the Course Participation? Empirical Evidence from China
2024, Technology, Knowledge and LearningA Model of E-Learning through Achievement Motivation and Academic Achievement among University Students in Saudi Arabia
2023, Sustainability (Switzerland)How do benefits and challenges influence students’ satisfaction with online education? The mediation effect of awareness
2023, International Social Science Journal