Presentation
Implications of Error Message Design and Student Status on Error Recovery in University Course Registration Systems
SessionWednesday Poster Session
DescriptionStudent enrollment and retention are important in post-secondary education, and course registration systems are crucial for student success in universities. Prior research focused on classroom settings, pedagogical methods, and learning motivation, which leaves human factors in the design of online infrastructure understudied. Therefore, the present study investigated students’ usability and identified friction points within online course registration systems. Forty-four college students (Mage = 20.48 years; 33 female) went through a simulation of a course registration system where they were tasked to recover from two different types of errors: waitlisted (i.e., full course) and linked (i.e., additional course needed). Usability was defined by ISO 9241-11 performance metrics: effectiveness and efficiency. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to test the effects of task type on the behavioral variables. Results showed that participants produced higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency in waitlisted, compared to linked task. Interestingly, transfer students showed better performance compared to non-transfer students. These results suggest that certain factors in the prior experience in student populations in influenced the interaction between users and online course registration. Our findings expand the understanding of these systems and highlight the role of usability in the design of online systems in educational settings.
Event Type
Poster
TimeWednesday, October 21st5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
Location
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