A Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process for Usability Requirements of Online Education Systems

Recent advances in information and communication technology have greatly increased the popularity of online education. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the adoption of online education due to the need for educational institutions to adopt online learning models. On the other hand, the online education system faces several challenges, such as lack of usability to overcome access barriers and scalability issues. These problems stand in the way of widespread adoption of the online education system. The usability of online education websites is one of the fundamental challenges because it directly affects students’ learning experience. This study focuses on the challenges related to usability of online education websites. If an online education website has usability issues, students may have difficulty using the learning materials provided. This makes it difficult to achieve the required level of service, which can lead to a poor reputation for the website. Therefore, in order to develop a well-functioning online education website, it is necessary to ensure that all usability requirements (URs) are met efficiently. Considering the different backgrounds, knowledge, and skills of students, they may have different preferences regarding usability requirements. Therefore, prioritization of URs is necessary to focus on the most preferred requirements. In this study, we apply the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to analyze the usability requirements in the requirements analysis phase. We consider the online education website of Virtual University of Pakistan, a leading online university in the country with more than 0.1 million active students. The result of this work is a flexible approach to identify precise usability requirements for developing a functionally sound website with an optimized and easy-to-use user interface that will ultimately improve the quality of education.