The internet as a resource for teaching non internet topics

The Web continues to attract the attention of the media, the public and education. There have been many successful and interesting attempts to use it as an educational tool. The popularity of the Web can be used as a means of motivating students. Additionally, there are many usability problems with the Web which HCI needs to address and which are within the scope of an investigation by students. This paper describes an activity designed to teach usability engineering using a collection of closed Web pages and a number of novel browser interfaces, designed and built by final year students. These interfaces were then used by a group of students to carry out an investigation on 124 users.