Instructional design/User testing fundamentals/Principles

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What is User Testing?

In e-learning solutions, designers not only need to assess the efficacy of their instruction, but also the quality and performance of the systems that deliver the instruction. For the purpose of our course, user testing in e-learning courses is formative evaluation conducted at the end of the development cycle. User testing of e-learning courses evaluates instructional objectives, software quality assurance, and the overall user experience. To do this, designers must incorporate the good practices from the instructional field and the good practices from the software field to ensure the quality of their solutions.

Why use User Testing?

User testing is used to ensure quality assurance, correct information, correct strategy implementation, strategies support instructional objectives, and delivery platform and courseware are compatible.

• Quality Assurance w:Quality_assurance
  • The instruction is fully tested for quality assurance.
    • For example, forming interview or worksheet questions that ask about the reliability, maintainability and safety are ways to promote total quality control.

• Correct Information
  • The information presented is correct.
    • For example, a typographical error may cause the learner to choose an incorrect response.

• Correct Strategy Implementation
  • The instructional strategies are correctly implemented.
    • For example, does instruction follow Gagne's Nine Events as established in the design document or have events been rearranged or dropped?

• Strategies Support Instructional Objectives
  • The instructional strategies meet the instructional objectives.
    • For example, what strategies were used in Lesson 1 to support the learner to describe formative evaluation? Do you think they were effective or ineffective to achieve the instructional goal?

• Compatibility of Delivery Platform & Courseware
  • The delivery platform works as expected with the courseware.
    • For example, does Houghton Mifflin's Understanding Business, 8th ed., electronic course and textbook import successfully to Valparaiso University's CourseVU LMS for the course, "English for Business"?

Phonebein 17:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC) Think about micro instructional strategy here. Is there anyway to make this list more memorable? Anytime you have a list of principles, you need to be thinking about making it easy to remember. You've already chunked it (7+/-2 items, but is there more you could do? Also, I won't comment on this any more, but you need instructors for what the user should do next.

Back to Topic: Instructional Design > User Testing of E-Learning Courses > User Testing Fundamentals