Rant: Usability Testing in Online Distance Learning

Usability Testing to Improve Online Writing Classes. We used the results of a usability testing study to revise online sections of ENG 102 (First-Year Composition). In addition, we wrote two sets of guidelines to share with faculty interested in developing distance learning courses and conducting usability testing to improve online course design. [Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) Newest]

The item cited says, in part:

"Online distance learning courses are usually designed, developed, and structured in a manner that "makes sense" to the instructor. A vast majority of the time the instructor not only has more experience with the course content material, but also with the course delivery material (web pages, courseware, discussion boards, etc.). Therefore, the instructor has the advantage of a more detailed understanding of the "logical" organizational patterns between the course content and course delivery interface.

When a new online distance-learning student accesses the course, however, both the course content material and the course delivery environment may overwhelm him or her. Without knowledge of the content (which is the point of him or her being in the class, to learn the content) or experience with the specific online delivery interface (even if s/he is an "experienced" online learner, s/he may be new to different types of environments), the student is at a distinct disadvantage in starting the course."

Let me begin by saying that in my opinion it is a fine thing that this study has been done and published. But ...

I truly mean no disrespect here, but wasn't Malcolm Knowles telling us this thirty years ago, in a different context (but the same idea)? And Bob Mager, and Ruth Clark, and Tom Gilbert, and Alan Cooper, and and and? Didn't we at least hear about, if not learn, this when we were writing programmed instruction, authoring PLATO and Phoenix modules, building courseware for delivery on CD-ROM?

Some things apparently have to be re-learned by each generation of instructional designers. I often wonder why this happens if instructional design is a profession, when I don't notice that engineers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, and bricklayers (to name a few professional classes) don't have to keep re-learning the basics. These professionals have to learn new stuff, but the basics are pretty fundamental, taught to and mastered by everyone before they can call themselves a professional.

It isn't that "e-Learning is in it's infancy." Not when we are talking about a fundamental issue in instructional design. Do you wonder why it's a constant struggle to get accepted, when individual CEOs have been exposed to the same learning/training buzzwords over and over for the last forty years, each time with the buzzword connected to a new delivery medium? And why are we still talking about "delivering the material?"

OK, I feel better now.  Go read the article and promise that you will always think about how your application is going to look to your learner and how they are going to deal with it. To paraphrase Alan Cooper in About Face: The Fundamentals of User Interface Design, people don't want e-Learning. They really don't even want learning, much less training. People want to succeed.

10:57:18 PM    

Bill Joy: Why the future doesn't need us. [Scripting News]

Bill Joy was the chief scientist with Sun until this week, when he resigned. This article appeared in Wired in April, 2000.

"From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things."

This is still an outstanding piece that in my opinion should be read, studied, and understood by all of us who would take leadership of enterprises, technology, and thought.

6:51:55 PM    

Is Instructional Design Becoming A Commodity?

"The ascension of Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) and their increasingly automated authoring processes may be marginalizing the craft, if not the science, of instructional design. All the templates, wizards, and other productivity tools that come bundled into the leading LCMS platforms have certainly made it easier to assemble and deploy structured learning content. But will we see better online learning, or simply more? "

[ELearn Magazine]

Jerry Murphy is struggling with the "good-fast-cheap" choice in developing e-Learning. He asks:

"you want a new kitchen--do you call an architect or a builder? These are not mutually exclusive choices, but different ends of a spectrum (and you’ll need a builder regardless). The question comes down to approach: a custom solution, crafted with your specific needs in mind, or a template solution with a lot of generalizations and assumptions built in."

I maintain that "good-fast-cheap" leaves out a key element: the intelligence and experience of the instructional designer. The difference between a piece of furniture built by a master carpenter and one built by a kid in Wood Shop at the local school isn't due to the tools - the tools may well be identical. The difference isn't in the amount of time it took to build the piece - the master carpenter may well have done the job more quickly. The difference is in the experience and the maturity of the master carpenter.

In my opinion, instructional design is simply a tool. If anything is becoming a commodity, it's e-Learning itself. Much of the pressure we feel when a project has to be done quickly is due to factors other than the requirements of instructional design. If we haven't understood the business problem correctly, if we haven't done the networking ahead of time to know to whom we could go for fast, expert help, if we haven't built the necessary rapport with the decision makers, then we are going to be caught in a time bind. We will see development continuing to be passed to in-house SMEs who will build e-Learning that is not good, but it is fast and cheap.

10:31:08 AM    

How to use weblogs in WebCT

"I currently have an Announcements feed active in all five WebCT courses. This contains communication items which is relevant to all. This week, I'll add a Resources feed specific to the individual courses. The Resources feed will actually be separate categories in the course weblog, so the content will be unique. (But the Search feature will allowing searching through all items in the course blog - I teach web and programming topics, so the integration of this content should make sense.)  ...

I'm looking forward to adding the weblog technology to the distance courses and feel there will be many benefits to both the learners and me. "
[carvingCode]

Randy has been working on this for some time. He is finding ways to make WebCT a more useful tool for distance learning. If you are providing distance courses for clients within WebCT, this could be a great value-add.

Thanks to James Farmer for spotting this item.

10:07:04 AM    

"Segue is based on a publishing model of content delivery which regards faculty not as course managers but as authors and/or editors and students as contributors/collaborators. Indeed, Segue encourages the publication of course work (where appropriate) and opens the classroom to the world community. At the same time, Segue allows for a site to become a personal workspace, where site owners can develop ideas in a private web-based environment accessible anywhere; or a community workspace, where individuals or groups can share ideas amongst only themselves."

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]

A little more from the site: "Segue is an open source content management system designed for e-learning that combines the ease of use of course management systems with the flexibility of weblogs for creating various types of sites including course, news, journal, peer review and e-portfolio. When integrated into an institution's administrative systems, it can become a portal providing access to an indivual user's course and personal websites."

This is a collaborative learning system that could have a number of uses. It offers more flexibility than WebCT and Blackboard, but I am not certain as to whether, for example, individual postings can be individually cited as we can with a weblog. Since it is open source, presumably one could add whatever one requires even if the capability did not exist right out of the box. Worth looking at as a potential solution for clients who need to solve the problem of collaboration online.

9:57:14 AM