Mobile learning course content application as a revision tool: The effectiveness and usability

The use of mobile phone technologies in the education sector is getting more attention nowadays. This is due to the advancement of technologies equipped in majority of the mobile phones which makes the devices become more capable of supporting the learning and teaching activities. Mobile learning (m-learning) is a learning tool which can be run on mobile devices. Mobile System Analysis and Design (MOSAD) has been developed with the content of a topic from the System Analysis and Design (SAD) course conducted at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). This paper presents the results of the testings conducted for MOSAD application. A heuristic test involving 5 experts in the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) was conducted after the first version of MOSAD was completed to strengthen its functionality and usability. Then, Post Test Quasi Experimental Design (QED) was conducted to 116 UTP second year students who took the SAD course to test the effectiveness and usability of MOSAD after it has been revised. The results show that the students who had used MOSAD (66 out of the 116 students) as their revision tool for answering ten quiz questions performed better the other group of students (50 out of the 116 students) who used traditional methods of revision. The usability test was adopted from Purdue Usability Testing tested on consistency, learnability, flexibility, minimal action and minimal memory load of MOSAD. Both results indicate that MOSAD is effective and usable as a revision tool for the higher education students.