Comparative usability evaluation of three popular MOOC platforms

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming widely spread and recent years have seen a substantial research interest on this topic. MOOCs are mediated by software platforms that need to meet specific non-functional requirements, such as usability. The goal of this paper is to investigate the usability of three popular MOOC platforms: edX, Coursera and Udacity. To this end, a study combining experimental and inquiry usability evaluation methods was conducted. Thirty-one participants were asked to perform five typical tasks in the evaluated MOOC platforms. Study results showed that Coursera was perceived to be significantly more usable compared to both edX and Udacity. In addition, interaction efficiency was significantly higher while using Coursera compared to Udacity. No significant effect of MOOC platform on participants' interaction effectiveness and perceived task difficulty was observed.