Principles and Practices for Enhanced Visual Design in Virtual Learning Environments: Do Looks Matter in Student Engagement?

Introduction

Online learning management systems (LMS) play an important role in providing the infrastructure necessary to support the delivery of learning content and resources and are an important complement to traditional face-to-face classroom teaching approaches (Hustad & Arntzen, 2013; Torrisi-Steele & Drew, 2013). Indeed, the very ubiquity of LMS use in higher education contexts has seen them labeled “an omnipresent educational technology juggernaut” (Murphy, 2012, p. 827). However, although it was predicted that the increased adoption and use of LMS would deliver increased flexibility and new efficiencies, open opportunities for participation in higher education, enrich student learning experiences, and enhance interdisciplinary learning (Alhazmi & Rahman, 2012; Coates, James, & Baldwin, 2005; Park & Mills, 2014), many of these benefits are yet to be realized. Instead, it has been suggested that LMSs are most often employed “to manage learners rather than to promote rich, interactive experiences” (Kim & Bonk, 2006, p. 26). In particular, a lack of student involvement in determining LMS requirements has been connected to the adoption of LMS infrastructure and practices that may meet an instructor’s functional requirements but which fails to consider a range of non-functional usability requirements for learners such as recognizability, user interface aesthetics and accessibility (da Soledade, Freitas, Peres, Fantinato, Steinbeck, & Araújo, 2013).

If students are unsatisfied, or not engaged in their learning, there is a higher risk of them withdrawing from their enrollment from a single unit or their whole degree (Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen, & Yeh, 2008). The use and design of an LMS can have a significant impact on student satisfaction (Rubin, Fernandes, Avgerinou, & Moore, 2010). Student engagement has been found to be a core component of student satisfaction in both face-to-face and online learning environments (Al-Mahmood, 2012; Coates et al., 2005; Maor, 2003; Seifert, 2016; Sheely, 2006). In this context student engagement is best described as “the intellectual, emotional and practical interactions students have with educationally purposeful activities and conditions” (Coates et al., 2005, p. 28). Engagement is more than an individual student’s decision to devote time and energy to their studies; it also involves the policies and practices that higher education institutions employ to encourage students to engage with their learning (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2007).

While users are influenced by usability, information richness, loading speed, and content relevance, student engagement is believed to also be influenced by the aesthetics of an LMS (Al-Mahmood, 2012). The first impression of a site, based on its visual aesthetics, is important for the user to want to continue to use the site (Schenkman & Jönsson, 2000), and users also draw on aesthetic factors to judge usability and credibility (David & Glore, 2010). Attention to visual design has been promoted as an essential consideration in designing online learning spaces, “not just for aesthetic pleasure, but also for integrated education, where a high quality of information transfer is required” (Duh & Krašna, 2011, p. 2). Research conducted by Al-Mahmood (2012) concurs that aesthetics matter to students and that they are critical of sites which are dull, visually unexciting and identical to other sites as they lack dimension and give the appearance of simply being somewhere to store notes online. Participants in Al-Mahmood’s (2012) study suggested it is important to balance aesthetics, clear communication and legibility through the consistent use of colors, typefaces, and visual symbology. Color and icons should be used to make a site more visually appealing but the visual ergonomics regarding the look and feel, fonts, navigation and iconic signaling also have an important role in enhancing navigation and usability. Design factors that negatively influence LMS user experience include confusing features, overfull or busy pages, inconsistent layout design, unrecognizable hyperlinks or buttons, and ambiguous or undefined features (Lim, Ayesh, & Chee, 2013).