CADIAI (COOPERATIVA ASSISTENZA DOMICILIARE INFERMI ANZIANI INFANZIA) is a social cooperative and has been operating in the services to disabled people for more than 30 years, as a managing agency of services.
Once the online training platform has been developed and available, the closing step of the AGID project was to evaluate if the e-learning modules, as they are implemented in the online platform, are useful in helping front-line staff in improving their knowledge and competencies related to the work with aging people with ID.
To achieve this objective, the concept of usability of an e-learning product has been considered. The analyses have been based on the SUMI and SUS method, two of the most used questionnaires in usability evaluation and research.
The questionnaire has been built with the aim to maximize the feedback from the users, providing both quantitative and qualitative data about user feedback, while remaining short and quick to administrate.
Along with the questionnaire items collecting user feedback on usability1, some items were prepared to collect demographic and other relevant data. In addition to demographics, to be considered are years of work experience, educational level, general and specific computer experience and previous experience with this or similar products. These socio-demographic variables collected among the sample group were deemed to be used to identify specific users profiles for which specific adjustments of the user interface might be necessary.
From this first set of comparison appears clear that a specific user profile, namely a user that is under 30 years old is still a student and already had an experience with e-learning platform appears to find the module platform more usable and easy, thus is probably slightly more advantaged in benefitting from the system. Conversely, users over 40 years old, working in the social field and that never used an e-learning platform appear to find the platform slightly less usable than the average of the entire sample.
To see read the final report on the usability of the platform
1 International Standards Organization (ISO) defines usability as: “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context” (ISO, 1998).
