PBL in Human-Computer Interaction course, NUCES

Course overview

This course covers both human factors and the technical methods for the design and evaluation. Main objectives are to emphasize the:

  1. Importance of making systems those are user-friendly and receptive to the user’s needs so that people can achieve their results faster, with lesser mistakes and greater satisfaction.
  2. Impact Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has on society, economy and culture provides the basic skills and understanding required to enable learners to design and implement human computer interfaces.
  3. To learn the fundamental design patterns that are generally acceptable to all.
  4. To understand the need and significance of design in development.
  5. To evaluate the usability of design to make it understandable and acceptable for the community.

Participants in piloting 

This course was conducted to undergraduate students from the Faculty of Computer Science. Approximately 250 students were enrolled. Most of them were 3rd year students. The course took place in Fall semester of the 2018 and 2020 academic year.

Timeframe

Fall 2018

Fall 2020

Use of ALIEN services and tools

Students were assigned a Human-Computer Interaction project, which was conducted through active learning, and more specifically project-based learning, with the intention of covering the following topics: design principles, conceptual design method, storyboarding, personas, and usability testing (Heuristic Analysis). The context of application of these topics was embedded in the following objectives of the project:

  • Designing,
  • prototyping, and
  • evaluating a web-based app/android app.

The course took place in the Problem-based learning Lab i.e. a learning space designed through the ALIEN project for conducting active learning classes in the Software Engineering Department, Faculty of Computer Science NUCES and in the lecture hall environment. PBL Lab consists of five islands with 8 PCs in all.  The lab can accommodate of 40 students at a given time so that 5 people could share one PC. Each island is equipped with movable workstations and monitors.