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Recommendation Analysis

Good Essays

The usability testing for PowerTeacher’s Gradebook indicated that the interface is lacking in some basic usability features such as learnability, ease of use, feedback and memorability. The study findings suggest many usability issues related to creating new assignments, entering comments, manually overwrite grades, and generating reports within the school information system which are potentially impeding a teacher’s capacity to efficiently execute routine classroom management tasks, at least the time frame in which these tasks are completed. This is especially a problem for novice or intermediate teachers, and essentially teachers who do not ample planning time, as they are occupied with multiple functions and responsibilities. The …show more content…

Also more than one “+” buttons are on the assignment screen; therefore a user may not know which one to use after reading the steps in the Help File.
4. Simplify the steps, and make more visible the option to include a teacher’s signature line when generating reports. Including a ‘Signature Line’ on a report is a frequent task by users, hence should not have to manipulate several options to locate it. Currently, the user have to manipulate several steps to find the signature line, this can be time consuming and frustrating, especially for a novice user or intermediate user, which was the case during the observation.
5. Simplify the steps to generate reports. Currently to generate a final grade and verification report requires the user to complete approximately 10 steps. A user generating five successive reports must chose an incorrect reporting period before the correct one can be selected. For example, the first report for year, year one is selected, then the second report for quarter 4, another period such as quarter 1 must be selected and then go back and select quarter 4 before the quarter 4 report can be generated. This is time consuming and reduces the memorability of the Interface.
6. Add more examples to the Help File, for example how to enter grades so that it is not reflected in a final grade. None of the three participants was able to locate the steps for this task using the Help File.
7. Include more ‘feedback

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