Using Card Sorting to Redesign the Information Architecture of a University e-Learning Platform

Today, most higher education institutions use e-learning platforms. Information Architecture (IA), the way that content is organized and interconnected, in such e-learning environments often poses usability problems to learners. This paper presents a case study of designing the IA for the Moodle website of mathematics courses at the University of the South Pacific. The study employed the open card sorting method and involved current staff, postgraduate students, and third-year face-to-face students. A total of 112 participants were involved and 50 cards representing items from the Moodle site were used. Individual sessions along with researchers were arranged, and the participants sorted the cards into groups that were meaningful to them. Each participant provided a label for every category of cards they created. This paper also proposes a new clustering algorithm, the Actual Agreement K-means (AAK-means), for analysis of open card sort data of more than 30 participants. The algorithm combines the Actual Agreement Method (AAM) and K-means. The results were compared to the results of a previous study that used the state of the art method. It was found that the proposed clustering algorithm provides increased insights when analyzing open card sorting datasets compared to existing methods. From the findings, a new Moodle Site IA is proposed.