Testing

The I-CLEEN staff is gathering applications of volunteer teachers to study the use of the service offered by the I-CLEEN project. The analysis will be carried out on two fronts: the sociological one, focused on the influence that the service has on teaching systems, and the information one, focused on the interface of the gateway.

Whoever is interested in taking part can contact the staff at the e-mail address: redazione@icleen.museum

Analysis of the use of the service

The first study will be made by Luca Masiello, graduate student of the MA Course in Work, Organization and Information Systems of the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Trento. The goal is to gain data to make the I-CLEEN gateway closer and closer to fulfil the actual educational needs of teachers. To reach such a goal, we study the way the resources provided by the service are supporting the teaching activity, and how this tool integrates in the usual procedure of preparation of a lesson. For this purpose, the "shadowing observation" technique has been chosen: a technique that implies the presence of the observer doing field research through pure observation of the processes and no interference with those.

The choice to do a double-enquiry allows observing the creation of an interactive educational activity in parallel "with" and "without" the support of the I-CLEEN service. The place chosen for the observation is the same one generally used by the teacher to carry out his/her job (for instance, home or office). The goal is to simulate as faithfully as possible the usual teacher's activity of preparation of a lesson with the classic tools he/she has been provided along his/her experience. In this stage, it is strategic to understand which tools – computer and others – are employed and how.

The supports which the analysis makes use of are: a software inputting the activity into the pc in a video format and an audio recording tool. The analysis of the records will be carried out in full respect of the privacy of the subjects. In the end of the project, only the analytic results of the study will be published, and not the audio/video records and personal information.

The volunteers are not required to have any particular computer knowledge or skill.

Usability of the I-CLEEN website

The second analysis will be carried out by Martina Angela Zampieri, a graduate student of the BA Course in Computer Sciences of the Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and natural Sciences of the University of Trento.
In this case, the project is included in the range of Interaction Design, a subject aiming to put into practice and simplify at most the man-machine interaction, which means to allow the users to fulfil their tasks in an effective and pleasant way.

The study means to estimate the usability degree of the I-CLEEN gateway, especially of the "Try" section. The usability evaluation allows checking the overall quality of the website and identifying as obstacles those perceived as difficulties by users when trying to reach a goal. Besides, it provides the project managers with clear information about the kind of problems encountered and their possible solutions, so to improve the usability of the service.

The main techniques employed in the I-CLEEN gateway evaluation are referable to two classes of approaches: the inspections methods, providing methodologies to deeply analyse the usability of the website, and the tests with users, consisting in the observation of two samples of users while they browse the website. Both the approaches are focused on the evaluation of different aspects of the usability. Such techniques will be accurately combined in order to obtain an evaluation as deep and complete as possible.