Analyzing the Needs and Characteristics of Learners on the World Wide Web

Poster at UW Undergraduate Research Symposium
by Jacob Burghardt, Senior, Technical Communication & Psychology, Mary Gates Scholar
May 12, 2000

View: Poster

The World Wide Web is a powerful tool for teaching and learning with great potential to extend the educational mission of the University of Washington. A major problem with web-based educational resources that are not designed for a specific class or other "known" audience is that educators do not have a concrete idea of who is using their sites. The design of educational websites is often based on an "ideal" user, but the open-access nature of the web does not guarantee that a designer's "ideal" represents the actual users of their site. This absence of a concrete user definition is being explored by The Program for Educational Transformation Through Technology (PETTT), a UW research group (of which I am a member) that seeks to create a campus framework to promote the thoughtful exploration, development, assessment, and dissemination of educational technology. Specifically, PETTT is studying the Arthritis Source, a website created by Rick Matsen, Chair of the UW Medical Center's Department of Orthopaedics. The Arthritis Source is being used as an environment to test new ideas and to distill design principles and processes that will be made available to faculty members designing their own educational websites. As the Arthritis Source was designed based only on "ideal" users, the first task in redesigning the site is to define its actual users and their associated needs. To define these users, the PETTT team is exploring four different sources of information: (1) an interview with the creator of the site, (2) an online survey of actual users of the Arthritis Source, (3) a content analysis of arthritis patient bulletin boards on the web, and (4) an interview of the arthritis hotline operator for the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. In my poster, I will give an overview of these four sources and discuss my content analysis of arthritis patient bulletin boards as a source of user data.