Instructional design/User testing of e-learning courses/The Data

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Next Steps

So you've conducted your user test and have gathered some formative evaluation information. Depending on the style of user testing conducted, you might find yourself with one or several sources of data, including, but not limited to:

• Video recording(s)
• Audio recording(s)
• Web recordings(s)
• Users' written comments
• Other evaluators' and/or your own written observations
• Survey data
• Exam results

Now what do you do with all this data? Regardless of how you conducted your user test, you'll be working with your data using the following basic steps:

Next, qualitative and quantitative data are looked at more closely. The steps in the process illustrated above will be discussed in subsequent topics.

Different Types of Data

A user test will result in several different types of information. This data will be quantitative or qualitative in nature. Quantitative describes data in terms of quantity, whereas qualitative describes data in terms of quality.

Here is an example describing the spicyness of Ashley Food Company’s Mad Dog 357 Hot Sauce:

Quantitative: This sauce measures 357,000 heat units on the Scoville Heat Scale.

Qualitative: This sauce tastes really hot!

It is possible to approximate quantitative data from qualitative data. For example, the data from a survey that uses a Likert scalew:Likert_scale for the testers to rate their perceptions of the course can be measured using scaling techniques.

Quantitative Data

For an e-learning course, a user test might produce the following quantitative data:

• Total seat-time (i.e., how long it took the learner to complete the course)
• Time to complete practice tasks
• Ratings on a satisfaction survey
• Scores on an exam

Here is an quantitative data example of lesson seat-time from an actual user test of an e-learning course:

Qualitative Data

For an e-learning course, a user test might produce the following qualitative data:

• Problems users had with the delivery platform
• Comments about how the users liked/disliked the instruction
• Corrections to the content of the instruction
• Corrections to the content's style and formatting (e.g. spelling, punctuation, inconsistent page design)

Here are some qualitative data examples from actual user testing of two different e-learning courses:

Example 1: User Test, Learner Worksheet

Example 2: User Test, Observer Worksheet

Example 3: Do you recognize the user's comments below?

This is an excerpt from the Completed User Evaluation Form found in the knowledge check in the previous lesson, Conducting User Testing.

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Back to Topic: Instructional Design > User Testing of E-Learning Courses > Analyzing the Results