Master of Arts (Instructional Design & Technology)

This study was to evaluate the usability of an instructional game CD-ROM known as Justice Bao, designed to motivate students in doing drill and practice that is essential for the Chinese language mastery at the primary school level. The game is divided into two inter-related parts : the Courtroom and the Town. In the Courtroom, the user plays the role of Justice Bao and studies statements by various suspects. This is to enhance students' ability in using those vocabulary items learned from the school in the context as presented by Justice Bao. In the Town, user assumes the role of the detective and answers drill-and-practice questions. This is to motivate students to actively engage in practising the vocabulary.

This study focused on three main evaluation questions. The first question was the usability of the Courtroom interface. It was assessed mainly through the Scenario-based Prediction and the Constructive Interaction methods. The second evaluation question was the usability of the Town interface. It was assessed through Constructive Interaction. The third question was the motivational value of Justice Bao and it was evaluated through User Retrospection.

Results of the evaluation revealed that the usability of Justice Bao is satisfactory. Users were satisfied with the experience of using Justice Bao and it achieved its aim of motivating students to do more drill and practice questions. However, the usability is not as high as desired. Some problems were identified. For example, text labels of some clickable objects in the Courtroom do not inform the user about their functions as expected. Users were not adequately informed of the various functions in the Town interface. Two errors were found. The conclusion and recommendation suggest that some of the text labels have to be changed and a separate section for informing the users about the functions has to be incorporated in the introductory sections of the software.