mGuides, design and usability of a mobile system to assist learning in critical situations

Abstract

This work presents the usability evaluation of the mGuides system, which emerged as a response to the educational needs of students affected by the earthquake that hit Chile in the year 2010. With this system, teachers generate working guides through an editor, including learning guides and questionnaires for their learners. At the same time, students visualize and complete these working guides on cellular phones. The objective of this work is to present the impact of usability evaluations as part of the process for the development of the mGuides system, contributing mainly to the validation of the functionalities and the detection of errors. The results show that the mGuides system was highly accepted by both teachers and students, and that it is an intuitive and easy-to-use tool. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.