The Collaborative Critical Incident Tool: Supporting Reflection and Evaluation in a Web Community

Abstract

We describe an evaluation tool used by teachers and researchers to study the impact of computer-mediated collaborative and communication technologies used in K-12 education. Standard usability engineering methods and tools focus on individual users at a single workstation.  Networked collaborative systems, however, present the challenge of multiple users interacting at a variety of times and places. We developed a Web forum tool to capture and display user critical incident reports and threaded discussions of these reports by users, evaluators and system developers. Our Collaborative Critical Incident Tool (CCIT) is effective at evoking detailed usability evaluation information, as well as reflective analysis of usability issues from diverse points of view among stakeholders in the system.