Asian Journal of Education and e-Learning (ISSN: 2321 – 2454) Volume 02 – Issue 05, October 2014 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com ) 362 Usability Evaluation of Metacognitive Support System for Novice Programmers (MSSNP) using SUMI Siti Nurulain Mohd Rum 1 , Maizatul Akmar Ismail 2 1,2 Department of Information System, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1 Email: snurulain {at} siswa.um.edu.my _________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT— To build effective e-learning is the new challenge faced by software designers and human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers. In computer science, usability is part of the human-computer interaction aspect that relates to the clarity and elegance with which the interaction with software is designed. SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) is a comprehensive solution, and is a well-tested and validated method for determining whether software has achieved its predetermined goals efficiently and effectively, as evaluated by the end users. This paper presents an empirical study by employing the SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) to evaluate the MSSNP in terms of the affect, efficiency, control, helpfulness and learnability. The results indicate that MSSNP is an ideal system to support the metacognitve activities for learning Introductory Computer Programming. Keywords—MSSNP, usability, novice programmers, human-machine system _________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION In Computer Science Education, it has been noted that acquiring knowledge in programming is challenging for novice learners [10, 15]. Recently, a number of approaches, methods and tools have been used to teach the complexity of programming concepts. According to [14], per Figure 1, problem solving activities consist of the following steps: a. Initiate a specific plan; b. Analogical problem solving – Applying a solution to a known problem for solving a similar problem; c. To reduce the problem, general plans are applied; d. The trial-and-error method is applied for a possible solution; and e. The execution of this combination of approaches Figure 1. Problem Solving [3]