MacEwan University Strategic Vision: Our commitment to “stripping away barriers,” making sure our students can “hit the ground running,” and “maximizing flexibility to meet students where they are, moving beyond traditional scheduling” (p. 2-6) means that ease of access and use/usability of technology and intuitive interface design is a priority.
Definition
Educational technologies are necessarily intuitive, efficient, and easy to use, allowing both learners and educators to focus on achieving learning outcomes rather than navigating complex systems. Usability ensures that digital learning tools support education by reducing barriers to access, minimizing the learning curve, and integrating seamlessly with existing institutional technologies. What This Means For technology to be truly usable, it ideally would have the following:
- Intuitive Design: The user interface is clean, logical, and requires minimal training to understand. Common tasks are easily discoverable without extensive documentation.
- Convenient Access: Integration with single sign on (SSO) eliminates unnecessary downloads or extra accounts and enhances efficient access.
- Minimal Onboarding Time: Educator and learners can quickly and conveniently gain access (ideally remote access) to and start using the tool without needing lengthy setup processes or specialized technical support.
- Consistent User Experience: Technologies function consistently across devices, platforms, and operating systems.
- Reliable, Interoperable and Compatible: Technologies are responsive, load quickly, experience minimal downtime, and if warranted, work seamlessly with the university's learning management system (LMS), library resources, and other institutional platforms.
- Efficient Task Execution: Technologies enable users to perform essential tasks in as few steps as possible, removing unnecessary complexity and use of resources.
