Computer Technology and Application 2 (2011) 148-157 Usability and Effectiveness of Mobile Learning Course Content Application as a Revision Tool Ahmad Sobri Hashim, Wan Fatimah Wan Ahmad and Rohiza Ahmad Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Tronoh 31750, Perak, Malaysia Received: October 26, 2010 / Accepted: December 14, 2010 / Published: February 25, 2011. Abstract: The use of mobile phone technologies in the education sector is getting more attention nowadays. This is due to the advancement of technologies equipped in majority of the mobile phones which makes the devices become more capable of supporting the learning and teaching activities. Mobile learning (m-learning) is a learning tool which can be run on mobile devices. It can be considered as an enhancement to the electronic learning (e-learning). M-learning overcomes several limitations of e-learning especially in term of mobility. It provides more independent way of learning whereby learners can use the application to do the learning activities at anytime and any place. However, as with other learning and teaching applications, applications to be developed for mobile learning must also be developed based on certain learning theories and guidelines in order for them to be effective as well as usable. Therefore, in this paper, the development process of a mobile learning course content application called Mobile System Analysis and Design (MOSAD) as a revision tool will be shared and its testing’s conduct and results will also be presented and discussed. MOSAD was developed with the content of a topic from the System Analysis and Design (SAD) course conducted at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). A heuristic test involving 5 experts in the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) were conducted after the first version of MOSAD was completed to strengthen its functionality and usability, followed by a Post Test Quasi Experimental Design which was conducted to 116 UTP second year students who took the SAD course to test the effectiveness and usability of MOSAD after it was revised. As a result from the post test, the students who had used MOSAD (66 out of the 116 students) as their revision tool for answering ten quiz questions obtained a mean score of 7.7576 as compared to 5.160 obtained by the other group of students (50 out of the 116 students) who used traditional methods of revision. Besides, usability test which tested on consistency, learnability, flexibility, minimal action and minimal memory load of MOSAD gave results above 3.5 for each metric based on the rating of 1 to 5. Thus, both results indicate that MOSAD is effective and usable as a revision tool for the higher education students. Key words: Mobile learning, electronic learning, heuristic, post test quasi experimental design, usability. 1. Introduction Developing learning applications for usage on mobile devices, in particular the mobile phones, has become popular nowadays. This is due to the many advantages which are offered by the mobile phone technologies. The advantages include removing the limitations of times and places in performing learning activities [1], reducing the formality in learning, which Corresponding author: Ahmad Sobri Hashim, master, research field: information technology (multimedia). E-mail: sob_87@yahoo.com. Wan Fatimah Wan Ahmad, associate professor, research field: information technology (multimedia). Rohiza Ahmad, Ph.D., research field: information technology. some research have identified to be the reason for learners to be passive in getting knowledge [2] and many more. The integration of the mobile phones technologies and learning activities increase students’ interest during the learning process as it provides easier ways of performing the learning activities such as getting learning materials, doing online quizzes, doing discussions and others. In addition, some studies have shown that by adopting suitable learning theories into computer-based learning applications, learners will be able to learn in a more effective way [3-4]. Similar to other non-mobile learning applications, implementing some learning theories when developing the content of the applications as well as their interactivity will make