Introduction

EBONI - Electronic Books ON-screen Interface - was a 20-month project funded by the JISC. Beginning in August 2000 and based at the University of Strathclyde, EBONI aimed to develop a set of recommendations for publishing educational works on the Web which reflect the needs of academics and a diversifying population of students throughout the UK. This was achieved through an evaluation of texts which were found to be representative of approaches to the design of learning and teaching material on the Internet.

Aims

The aims of the project were:

• to evaluate the different approaches to the design of learning and teaching resources on the Web, and to identify which techniques/styles are most successful in enabling users to retrieve, quickly and easily, the information they require. Examples of techniques which will be evaluated include:
  • hypertext;
  • tables of contents;
  • navigation icons;
  • search mechanisms (for searching within the text);
  • indexes;
  • graphics;
  • and specific features of HTML such as frames, tables, coloured text and lists.
• to identify and report on the individual requirements of academics, students and NGfL professionals in learning and teaching on the Web;
• to compile a set of best practice guidelines for the publication of guides, tutorials and textbooks on the Internet for the UK Higher Education community; and
• to bridge the gap between publishers of educational material on the Internet and those who use it for learning and teaching.

The above objectives were achieved by:

• conducting a survey of the range of learning and teaching material available on the Internet, to identify the different designs and techniques used for displaying content;
• selecting particular guides, tutorials and textbooks which are representative of the variety of approaches to the electronic publication of such texts. These were used as the material for evaluation;
• developing a methodology for evaluating selected guides, tutorials and textbooks. This measures both the ease with which users can retrieve the information they need from the text, and their subjective satisfaction with the experience of reading the material on the Internet. The two measures combine to produce an overall usability score for each text;
• working with representative user groups from each discipline and background to carry through this methodology;
• developing a means of analysing the results of the experiment;
• using these results to examine the extent to which students from different disciplines and backgrounds have separate requirements for the electronic delivery of learning and teaching resources, and identifying mechanisms for improving the usability of such material; contacting companies such as NuvoMedia and SoftBook Press to obtain copies of portable e-books;
• disseminating project results within and beyond the UK Higher Education community;
• developing a Web site to support the programme, describing its background and purpose, methodology and project results and containing relevant publications; and
• investigating ways in which best practice guidelines can be implemented on new and existing texts.

Top