Open and Distance Education/Evaluating Technologies for Open and Distance Education

There are many ways to evaluate tools and technologies for education. However many of them were borrowed from the field of Information Technology or Information Systems, specifically in Human and Computer Interaction.

System Usability Scale
The system usability scale is a quick and reliable way of measuring the usability of a website or software. It is a five-point Likert Scale that was developed by Brooke (1996).

Technology Acceptance Model
The technology acceptance model is a model developed by Davis (1989) that originally showed that Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU) can predict the intention of users to use a certain system or software. It was revised several times and is now currently updated to version 3, which addresses the effects of trust and perceived risks upon use of the system in an e-commerce context (Venkatesh & Bala, 2008).

UTAUT
The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is another form of technology acceptance model that was formulated by Venkatesh et al. (2003) This theory has four key constructs to explain the user intentions on using information systems and the user's behavior upon usage: 1) performance expectancy, 2) effort expectancy, 3) social influence, and 4) facilitating conditions.