On evaluating online teaching and learning experience: A usability evaluation study of synchronous teaching platforms

Online teaching and learning became everyday practice during the Covid-19 pandemic in education worldwide. There is a strong belief that it will remain part of common practice even in post-pandemic times. Therefore, it is important to systematically measure the user experience from the perspective of key stakeholders. In this paper, we report findings of a large scale multi-faceted usability evaluation study of tools widely used for synchronous online teaching and learning (Zoom vs competitors). The study was conducted by three independent groups of experts, who are presenting the results of the study and an analysis of the findings in this paper. The experts performed a comparative evaluation of Zoom alongside other tools used for online synchronous teaching and triangulated the findings of the study using alternative evaluation methods (personas, heuristics, interviews, etc.). The study highlights the findings of the three evaluation studies and produces a list of suggestions for improvements of the Zoom online teaching/learning platform. We also discuss the contribution of different evaluation methods in the final recommendations.