Resumen de Qualitative evaluation of software maintenance services integrated in a virtual learning environment
Zeljko Stojanov, Dalibor Dobrilovic
Evaluation of virtual learning environments and integrated services provides valuable feedback to educators how toimprove the quality of education and the provided services. Virtual laboratories are complex learning environments thatinclude diverse hardware and software components. Due to the inherent complexity of these environments, theirmaintenance is a challenging and demanding task, but most often neglected. This article presents an approach tointegration and qualitative evaluation of software change request services within a complex virtual learning environmentbased on a virtual network laboratory. The services were integrated with the aim to facilitate software maintenanceactivities in the learning environment. The evaluation of the services was conducted with the goal to discover theiradvantages, disadvantages, and based on them possible improvements. Based on the proposed research objective,qualitative research methods were selected. The evaluation was based on input from 22 final year undergraduates andnine graduate students at the Department of Information Technology. The collected data include participants’ answers toopen-ended questionnaire questions and field notes taken by the researchers. The detailed description of advantagesprovides the evidence of the services’ usability, while discovered disadvantages form the basis for directing furtherimprovements of the services and the learning environment. The detailed description of the research context, usedmethods, research process, as well as the research findings provides a guideline for conducting similar researches aimed atevaluating various types of services in learning environments.
