A Usability Review of Undergraduate Student Web Portals at University of Ibadan

Abstract

Tertiary institutions have deployed web portals for undergraduate students as a crowd management tool and fraud reduction technique. Tertiary institutions offer student web portals for a wide variety of self-service features such as admission, registration, payment, e-mail, transcripts, repository, counselling and so on. University of Ibadan (UI) is a tertiary institution located in the southwestern region of Nigeria. The institution has student web portals used for registration, admission purposes amongst others. The University of Ibadan is a complex organisation with governance aided by the Committee System and technology such as web portals. This paper examined the usability of undergraduate student web portals currently in use at University of Ibadan,
Nigeria. A modified University Portal Usability Assessment Index was used on a digital platform. Six web portals forundergraduate students was identified. The results indicate that students require consolidation of the various portals into a single portal and improvement on support for portal users. The study identified the need for a mobile app to be developed since most users access the portal via mobile devices.