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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to discuss heuristic evaluation as a method for evaluating e-learning courses and applications and more specifically to investigate the applicability and empirical use of two customized e-learning heuristic protocols. Design/methodology/approach -Two representative e-learning heuristic protocols were chosen for the comparative analysis. These protocols augment the "traditional" heuristic sets so as to cover technology-enhanced learning properties. Two reviewers that have considerable experience in usability evaluation as well as in e-learning were involved in this comparative analysis. Coverage, distribution and redundancy were employed as three basic criteria for conducting the evaluation Findings -The main results of the study indicate that both heuristic protocols exhibit wide coverage of potential usability problems. The distribution of usability problems is uneven to a large number of heuristics for both heuristic sets, which reveals that some heuristics are more general than others. Originality/value -This study shows the empirical application of two heuristic protocols in a usability evaluation of e-learning applications. Furthermore, it provides a comparison of the two heuristic sets according to a set of criteria and provides a first set of suggestions regarding further development and validation of these heuristic sets.

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Programming assignments often suffer from plagiarism and lack of feedback.The Jarpeb system creates individually randomized assignments, grades the students' programs by utilizing Java's reflective evaluation capabilities, and allows students to submit their grade through the web by signing their grade with a cryptographically strong checksum. Jarpeb's empirical evaluation included as the dependent variables important learners' dimensions: plagiarism, understanding, learning, fairness, difficulty, fun, and interest. The results indicate that Jarpeb contributes to the reduction of plagiarism, increases the understanding, and learning of the course subject while also increasing the perceived fairness, fun, and interest of the learners. The system, however, proved to increase the difficulty of the related exercises. We discuss the implications for educators and outline specific future research directions.