European Journal of Higher Education IT 2017-1

If the company doesn’t have a website, it is losing out on great opportunities for its business. A website itself can be used to accomplish many different marketing strategies to help the business grow. Companies can benefit from having a website. Websites are nowadays used not only as a sales method and information tool, but also as a communication tool in marketing. (Kvasnicova, Kremenova, Fabus, 2015)

Schools and universities have a special place in the market. They offer education opportunities in particular areas. The educational institutions market is huge and extremely competitive. Although the reputation and the quality of institutions is a major advantage, they must think about the target group, who are young people spending several hours per day browsing websites. Schools and universities should have their own web pages, which represent them and perform many functions: information, communication, publications, cultural, and social, among other activities. University websites are intended for employees, high school students interested in studying, school partners, public authorities and the general public. (Kvasnicova, Kremenova, 2015)

The most important is that the web pages are usable – it means it is easy to use the website, user find what are looking for. Otherwise, visitors leave them and click on the competitor’s website.

The word usability has become the most inflected in the design and management of web sites and applications worldwide in recent years. Nielsen (1993) defined usability as a quality attribute – something that is easy to use.

We are able to evaluate the usability. One of the common tool is System Usability Scale (SUS), which provides a “quick and dirty”, reliable tool for measuring the usability. (Brooke, 2013) It consists of a 10 item questionnaire with five response options for respondents; from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Originally created by John Brooke in 1986, it allows us to evaluate a wide variety of products and services, including hardware, software, mobile devices, websites and applications.

We examined how the current situation in Slovakia is. There are no statistics for measuring and evaluating the usability of university websites. To fill this information gap, we conducted several interviews with administrators of schools websites. The interviews have shown that such a usability test have not been made. Therefore we formulated the research problem: Usability evaluation of universities websites and decided to find out the current situation. Research determine how many of universities in selected countries (Slovakia, Czech Republic and Finland) evaluate the usability of their web pages. We expect: More than 90% of schools do not evaluate the usability of their web pages.

Due to the existence of information gaps and our concern for them to be completed, it was a plan of the research project in two main steps. Step 1: We ask administrators from all universities and colleges in 3 selected countries to fill in a questionnaire. The main question will answer our research problem.

Step 2: We ask high school students to evaluate university websites by using SUS tool. The period of our research is from beginning of February to the end of May 2017.

The results offer insight into the current state of usability of universities website in selected countries. We can identify the weaknesses of websites and propose to remove them. Thanks to the results we are be able to improve website usability, make it more comfortable and easier for users.

An analysis of strategic plans of 40 institutions of higher education in the Netherlands shows an overlap in ambition: a search for more flexible and personalized education. But what does that look like, costumized education? And how would or should that prepare students for a career in a rapidly changing world? SURF, the collaborative ICT organisation for Dutch education and research, spoke to a large group of innovators that try to translate concepts of flexible and personalized education to classroom practices. We spoke to people who are changing the way they offer their courses, and explore, in the classroom, what works and what does not. We also spoke with visionaries who think about what we need to change to prepare students for the future. We asked them what they see as flexible and personalized education, why it is needed, what we have to change and offer to enable it, what organisational bounderies we encounter, what already is happening, and what their vision of the future is. We had them meet up and share their visions and inspire each other. We included international publications about the subject in the discussion. We looked where vision and practice seemed to connect and where it collided. During EADTU Christien Bok, program manager of SURF Technology Enhanced Education, will present the current state of flexible and personalized education in Dutch higher education, and how ICT can contribute to shape

Many institutions strive to provide education that matches the learning needs of each individual student. This places high demands on the digital learning environment (DLE) of an institution. One system that meets all the needs and requirements of every student and lecturer, does not exist, which is why a modular approach seems the obvious choice.

In 2016, SURFnet translated this modular approach into a functional model for the DLE. This resulted in thirteen components for the DLE, that support several educational processes. Splitting the DLE into components is supportive for institutions in two ways: 1. It helps institutions to decide to what degree of control and management the components have to be placed in the architecture of the digital learning environment; 2. It helps institutions to determine in which way the components are connected and able to interact.