Designing an interactive e-book for object-oriented programming and evaluating user experiences

Countries update their development plans to increase welfare levels. Education policies are changed in order to provide individuals with the skills required by the age. In this sense, teaching methods and learning objects to be used in coding education are important. In this study, an interactive e-book was developed for teaching programming at the undergraduate level. User experience with this interactive e-book was examined and suggestions were given to increase the usability levels of interactive e-books. The sample of the study is undergraduate students which are studying in CEIT Department of Hacettepe University during 2018-2019 Spring term (n=10). The study was carried out by using mixed-methods which included qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative data was collected by semi-structured interview form and the quantitative data was collected with the usability scale. The quantitative data was analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test and the qualitative data was analyzed by descriptive analysis method. During data collection, firstly volunteered participants' demographic information was collected with a personal information form. Later, an instruction with nine tasks is given to the participants. After the tasks were completed, the participants answered the usability scale and open-ended interview questions. Statistically there was not found a significant difference between the groups of gender (woman-man), object-oriented programming experience (beginner-intermediate), interactive e-book experience (yes-no) in terms of questionnaire subdimensions (Interface-task performance, Interface-process performance, Visual competence and consistency, Error messages and technical competence). According to the research results, the interactive e-book was found usable by undergraduate students.