Review of the "Web:How2SolveIt" Website

Web:How2SolveIt is a website provided for Gakushuin University to help students understand maths concepts, mainly in the areas of Economics and Business. The site offers a practical collection of quality study material, with useful videos.The site has been evaluated by “walking through” the student interface, applying some typical user cases, which are typical usage stories of student users. We recommend a few changes to the site, which would help students to find what they need easily, making it more attractive for students and for academics who contribute their materials. For example, the Home Page should give more useful context information and a text-entry search box should always be visible, with which students can navigate the collection of teaching resources.An attractive feature of the site is the hand-written question sheets, which explain or amplify important teaching points. Some changes to the presentation of the sheets and the videos would make them easier for students to follow.A usability study, where a small number of volunteers from the target demographic are observed while carrying out typical tasks, would quickly and cheaply give valuable insight into the way that real users respond to the site.Directions for possible future development of the site include: Adding further explanations, videos, notes and formulae to cover further topics in Business MathsAdding further content from other lecturer Offering the site to other students outside the Economics Faculty Offering the site to High School Students Developing a bi-lingual version of the site for teaching through the medium of English as well as Japanese These future directions would involve varying degrees of additional effort and investment.