MOOC SEARCH ENGINE Design , implementation and summative empirical evaluation of the User Interface

To date, there is a huge amount of resources for education on the Web. Students can utilize these to obtain further knowledge about a desired topic or close subject-related gaps, thus getting more successful in their studies. A popular way of self-learning is through attending Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). But the huge amount of MOOCs is both a blessing and a curse. Finding the right course for one’s need is often like searching for a needle in the haystack – or more precisely – in a great number of haystacks, since there are many different platforms that provide courses from various sources. This is why a cross-provider vertical search application would be of great help for students. Developing such a vertical search application is the purpose of this master thesis. A platform shall be created that offers not only an intelligent search functionality, but also useful personalized recommendations. Built with state-of-the-art web developing techniques the application shall have a user interface that corresponds to modern usability guidelines and provides a satisfying user experience. This includes, on the one hand, full responsiveness because mobile web usage is an indispensable part of our modern everyday life and thus an appropriate design of web applications is expected by today’s users. On the other hand the application shall offer all functionalities which are common for a modern, comprehensive vertical search engine. To increase the benefits of the application, the users shall be given the opportunity to adapt the system to their own interests and use the platform as a personalized tool for their own professional development. A major part of this thesis deals with the monitoring of the application usage. Extensive metadata about application usage shall provide detailed information about how the employed search and recommendation engines can be improved to offer students a high quality service. Furthermore, with the aid of the gathered metadata, the contentand design-based concept of the platform shall be proven effective regarding design choices of several key aspects, such as the use of a grid layout for search results and their individual presentation. The concept shall be continuously improved and extended further. A first comprehensive evaluation of the application has been conducted and has yielded many important findings to improve the layout as well as the content of the platform. Several of these suggestions for improvement have been also implemented. The evaluation results have proven the design concept of the layout to be successful. The employed search engine shall be further adapted to increase the efficiency of its usage. The core concept of the recommendation engine was very well received by users. With the extensive metadata gathered over time the recommendation engine can be further developed and adapted to the individual user in the future. Overall, a solid basis has been created for a successful, high quality search platform which can be further developed and improved with the aid of the provided comprehensive tracking functionality. The first version of the vertical search application is available and ready to support students in their search for the right online courses.