Usability Benchmarks for Interactive Whiteboards: Lessons Learned from Turkey’s Fatih Project

Abstract

The use of interactive whiteboards is spreading rapidly in educational settings. Turkey initiated a huge budgeted project called “FATİH” to integrate interactive whiteboards to public schools. In the scope of this study, usability evaluation of the interactive whiteboard system used in Fatih Project is conducted by implementing a user test with the first group of teachers who are inexperienced users of the system. In addition a usability questionnaire was applied to both experienced and inexperienced groups of teachers. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics. Problems about the sensitiveness of touch feature of the board, complex menu structure, incapability of the software for opening different file formats and inconsistencies about the software features were revealed as main usability problems. Finally, short evaluation checklist is formed to provide guidance on the assessment of usability issues when adopting any interactive whiteboard system. K eywords— usability, usability evaluation, Fatih project, Starboard software, interactive whiteboard