Children's evaluation??

I just wanted to reflect on what I have learned in class. Dr. Zaida give us an article about “Evaluating the Usability of Educational Websites for Children”. The study examined the usability of educational websites for children. Children ages 7 - 11 performed seven search tasks. To further understand what aspects of educational websites influence performance and satisfaction, they evaluated childrens' success, navigational efficiency, and satisfaction with three educational websites which are Enchantedlearning.com, Factmonster.com and Infoplease.com's Homework Center.

Another thing that I don't know before, there is one scale to rate children satisfaction - "smiley-face" Likert scale. It looks interesting...


From the finding, one aspect that we usually didn't alert is children tended not to scroll down the page. In addition, the website for children has to consider:

• - page length is not too long
• - don't offer too many links, it's confusing
• - use simpler terminology
• - large font size and pictures
  

Overall, we can say that the website is good if the children can perform the entire task given. Due to task based question, the website must be similar and have the same content. "Time" is also very important as indicator of the website performance.

Source: Full Article