Evaluating Usability of Academic Websites through a Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process

AbdulHafeez Muhammad, Ansar Siddique, Quadri Noorulhasan Naveed, Uzma Khaliq, Ali M. Aseere, Mohd Abul Hasan, Mohamed Rafik N. Qureshi and Basit Shahzad
Additional contact information
AbdulHafeez Muhammad: Department of Computer Sciences, Bahria University Lahore Campus, Islamabad 54600, Pakistan
Ansar Siddique: Department of Software Engineering, University of Gujrat, Punjab 50700, Pakistan
Quadri Noorulhasan Naveed: College of Computer Science, King Khalid University, Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia
Uzma Khaliq: Department of Computer Sciences, Bahria University Lahore Campus, Islamabad 54600, Pakistan
Ali M. Aseere: College of Computer Science, King Khalid University, Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia
Mohd Abul Hasan: College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
Mohamed Rafik N. Qureshi: College of Engineering, King Khalid University, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
Basit Shahzad: Department of Software Engineering, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: In the higher education sector, there is a growing trend to offer academic information to users through websites. Contemporarily, the users (i.e., students/teachers, parents, and administrative staff) greatly rely on these websites to perform various academic tasks, including admission, access to learning management systems (LMS), and links to other relevant resources. These users vary from each other in terms of their technological competence, objectives, and frequency of use. Therefore, academic websites should be designed considering different dimensions, so that everybody can be accommodated. Knowing the different dimensions with respect to the usability of academic websites is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) approach has been considered to be a significant method to deal with the uncertainty that is involved in subjective judgment. Although a wide range of usability factors for academic websites have already been identified, most of them are based on the judgment of experts who have never used these websites. This study identified important factors through a detailed literature review, classified them, and prioritized the most critical among them through the FAHP methodology, involving relevant users to propose a usability evaluation framework for academic websites. To validate the proposed framework, five websites of renowned higher educational institutes (HEIs) were evaluated and ranked according to the usability criteria. As the proposed framework was created methodically, the authors believe that it would be helpful for detecting real usability issues that currently exist in academic websites.

Keywords: academic websites; fuzzy analytic hierarchy process; usability criteria; website usability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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