Towards a Model for Evaluating the Usability of M-learning Systems: from a Mapping Study to an Approach

This paper presents the analysis of recent research on mobile learning and usability areas, applying a systematic mapping study. It also presents the main focus adopted by each publication, the types of mobile device and operative systems. The aim is also to understand the tendencies and needs in the fields of design and evaluation of the m-learning systems. Results demonstrate that research in the area has grown significantly since the 2012, and due to the recent boom of mobile devices in education, we believe that the number of studies will continue to grow in the following years. Also we identify a necessity when we see that not all the m-learning applications have used usability tests, we did not find guidelines or frameworks to evaluate them either. With this results and tendencies, we propose the creation of a model for evaluating the development phases in m-learning applications, considering pedagogical usability, student's experience and user interface usability, to improve the quality of m-learning applications. Within this proposal we have also created a framework that supports different stages of our model.