Evaluating the Usability of a Study Support Mobile App for Higher Education

Mobile learning (m-learning) is increasingly adopted in Higher Education (HE) given that almost all undergraduates own mobile devices with Wi-Fi and fast Internet connections. In HE, undergraduates are required to spend a significant proportion of time on self-study as well as use effective learning strategies during self-study to achieve academic success. Therefore, the use of mobile applications opens a wealth of opportunities for undergraduates to learn by giving them continuous access to learning materials as well as enabling them to study at their own pace. However, undergraduates’ use of mobile applications may be influenced by the applications’ usability. The current study examines the usability of a mobile app developed to support learning in HE to shed light on undergraduates’ experience using a mobile learning application in HE context for self-study and study support. While the results reveal a good level of acceptance in terms of learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction, further findings indicate that the app needs slight improvements in terms of memorability and errors. There are two key outcomes of this study, as a study support tool, the results show that undergraduates may rely on such apps for practicing and testing knowledge rather than using the app as a tool for studying. As a usability study, we did not only examine the memorability, efficiency, user satisfaction, and learnability, but also assisted ourselves in obtaining plentiful suggestions for further improvements of the app based on student experiences.