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Kalinangan Refereed Journal

Volume no. 18 | 2013/6
Issue no. 1


Title
Usability of eBrahman as the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) of University of Batangas
Author
Tolentino, Aurora Rosalie P., Ph.D. and Andal, Mario
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Abstract
eBrahman is a web-based application attached to the official website of the University of Batangas (UB), www.ub.edu.ph. It is a simple customized application, the initial objective of which was to provide an alternative means of communication between students and teachers. Within twoyears of application and constant improvement, eBrahman evolved into a virtual learning environment (VLE) specifically for UB community. The objective of this research was to evaluate the usability of eBrahman as a VLE for UB. Specifically, this study presented the system design and identified the applications of eBrahman to the students of the University. It evaluated the usability of the software and consequently used the finding to propose improvements to the design of eBrahman as VLE for UB. Descriptive research was employed and data collection was through documentary analysis and survey. Two hundred eighty seven (287) students from five selected colleges answered the online survey sent to their email accounts. The results revealed that eBrahman provides connection between and among faculty, students, class schedule, subjects and courses. It is being used primarily for student grade monitoring, survey and evaluation instrument administration. Though eBrahman was found useful in terms of the access and flexibility, communication and interaction, ease of use, delivery of learning and systems management and training, usability of the software may still be improved. Adding facility for synchronous learning improves the design of eBrahman as a virtual learning environment for UB. The study recommends further research on readiness of the UB community on the use of virtual learning to improve usage and acceptace of the software. It also suggests furtherstudy on various open source online learning software (i.e. Moodle) to benchmark for the improvement of eBrahman
Keywords
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Usability, Entity Relationship Diagram, System design, Web-based application
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