The usability analysis in a brazilian online english course

Abstract

The Department of Education of São Paulo launched in 2012 the course “English Online”, created by the Virtual School of Educational Programs of the State of São Paulo (Evesp) for the high school students from public schools. After three years, the perception of the Pedagogical Coordination for Modern Foreign Language in the city of Bauru (Brazil) is the increased student dropout rate and the decrease in subscribers in the virtual platform. To investigate the causes, the article set out to see what impacts the usability of the site, from the experience of the primary user (Cybis, Bettiol, Holtz, 2007) with students from the first year of the high school in the city of Bauru. The research indicates that there isn´t a great rejection of the students to the virtual interface “English online”. What leads to the conclusion that reducing the number of subscribers and evasion cannot be directly related to the usability.