Designing and Evaluating Effective Online Learning Interfaces

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As post-secondary institutions face stagnating budgets and pressure to increase enrollment, they have had to find ways to become more accessible, flexible, and cost-conscious. As a result, and fueled by the pervasiveness of mobile technologies and growing access to broadband connectivity, various approaches to online learning are being implemented or considered by most post-secondary educational institutions. Although online learning approaches have been touted as revolutionary for higher education in terms of increasing educational reach and impact without overburdening scarce space and human resources, there are several challenges that limit their effectiveness and result in high dropout rates and low student and instructor engagement and satisfaction. As such, research is essential to understand the conditions required for students to succeed in online learning environments. The proposed program of research builds on the investigator's expertise and successful track record in human computer interaction, designing for individual differences, online learning and multiple research methods to tackle the engagement challenge of online learners. The overarching goal of this research program is to understand online learners and how they interact with online learning activities so that online interfaces can more effectively be designed to support learning engagement and objectives. More specifically, demographic, personality, learning style and motivational factors will inform a comprehensive model that will be used to examine various online learning interactions and interfaces via experimental comparisons. Notably, this program of research will combine traditional self-reported survey methods with physiological measures and brain activity measures. Triangulating these research methods will allow for a much deeper understanding of true online learner experiences by analyzing their underlying cognitive, biological, affective and attitudinal correlates. The insights from this investigation will be used to develop an adaptive software tool that will encourage engagement with online learning by appropriately matching interface modes with individual characteristics and interaction types. Subsequently, this will lead to the development of empirically driven interface guidelines and tools appropriate for various online learning activities supporting diverse users.This program of research promises to help make online learning more reliably successful for a diverse national and global audience. Additionally, this proposed program of research will provide excellent training opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students in designing and evaluating interfaces as well as utilizing multiple research and analysis methods.