Effective Web Instruction - Chapters 3 & 4

This portion of Effective Web Instruction handbook covers how to prepare for and conduct prototype testing.  Boling and Frick point out that it is important to choose the right testers.  These testers, must not have a mastery of the topic beforehand.  This is necessary to determine if mastery is reached after the instruction is complete. However, just because a person goes from non-mastery to mastery, does not mean the instruction is successful. Some learners can read between the lines, while others cannot.  Instruction should strive to have no holes in order to reach every type of student. Satisfaction and usability are also factors beyond mastery that determine successful instruction.

The chapters go on to explain the benefits of paper prototyping, then further reviews the paper prototyping processes, Mager’s objectives and instructional goals as well as Merrill’s 5 principles.

These sections bring up some important points to keep in mind when pilot testing. 

1. Don’t forget to have the SME review the prototype, or if you are the SME, have a person knowledgeable on the topic review it to add an outside perspective.
2. No matter who your tester is, Look for non-verbal cues, and try not to answer questions about the instruction itself.  However it should be noted what questions are asked, and which the observer cannot resolve by examining and exploring the course.

Although there is some very useful information presented in this hand book, I do now always agree with every thing the authors say.

 “In our experience, conscientious testing generally leads to at least one major revision of a design – and even minor revisions can lead to scrapping electronic files that are easier to recreate than to

revise “ 

This stament may have been true at the time of this writing, however over the past 11 year, modern design packages, and coding techniques along with experienced designers allow for easy changes. Custom design of any kind always includes modifications and changes at many point in the process, this should be expected and planned for. When set up properly, a designer will create a site or project in such a way that will usually be easy to modify down the road. I am not against true wire framing, (non interactive, static block layout of a design), to make sure the client and users support and understand a layout structure, but I am not convinced it need to be done on paper for proper testing. For me, I am much more comfortable blocking something out in Photoshop (no color, graphics or detailed content, just placement and structure, and navigation) than I am in paper.  But that is me.  Other designers who do not focus on software use, would probably be much more comfortable with paper prototyping. Essentially the process is the same, (by testing at an early stage) just a different medium. However, no matter the medium, the detailed user experience test is a necessary process to successful instruction.  It will give the designer great insight as to how users think and the process they use when navigating and completing the instruction.

Because my activities and task are web released(creating an online portfolio), I found it hard create a detailed paper prototype and  test such as the one described in the this reading.  I was mainly testing structure and navigation to make sure the sections and layout made sense to the learner, in that respect, things weh well.  However for a more detailed instruction, I can see how more detaliled proptypes and tests would be necessary.

One particularly useful point I found was how to gage student satisfaction.  This section describe what questions should be asked in order to determine how satisfied the student was with the instruction. These would be great for surveys.