The Praxis of User Experience (UX) in the Design of Undergraduate Online Classes: Framing the Perceptions of Engineering and Social Sciences Students

Abstract

A sustainable educational design that derives from a user experience (UX) frame does not only represent the praxis of online class design(s), but also empowers students to take an active part in their educational journey. The purpose of the study is to promote user experience (UX) measurements for the design of online classes. An online survey based on the criteria of user experience, UX, derived from the literature is administered in two higher educational contexts in Saudi Arabia and the USA with 890 participants from both genders and diverse fields of study. User experience is identified within usability, educational context, and the emotional or hedonic aspects of the experience, which are measured from thirty-six items from the survey constituting the independent variables. Reframing of students’ perceptions into UX offers a sustainable model of technology design that ensures a student-centered model by filling the gap between theoretical use of students’ perceptions and the praxis of online class design. The findings reveal that a working educational model should be centered around human values in addition to usability. This model can be replicated in various educational online contexts, but it has to be an ongoing process accompanying online design where student satisfaction is the outcome from variable measurement.