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

The use of interactive whiteboards is spreading rapidly in the educational settings. Turkey has initiated a project called "Fatih" to integrate interactive whiteboards to the public schools by spending huge budget. 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 has been applied to both experienced and inexperienced groups of teachers. The data has been 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 have been revealed as the main usability problem. Finally, short evaluation checklist is formed to provide guidance on the assessment of usability issues, when adopting any interactive whiteboard system.

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