Geeta Bose presented this paper written by Archana Narayan on Learnability Testing of Online Courses at the 3rd National Seminar on ‘eLearning and eLEarning Technologies”, (ELELTECH India) November 5-6th, 2009. This seminar was organized by Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad and JNT University Hyderabad in association with Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Government of India.
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This post has been authored by Geeta Bose.
The objective of the approach is to design courses that help learners achieve their learning outcomes and increase the ROI of stakeholders. This research is based on proven research in human factors engineering, which has techniques, processes, and procedures to design user-centered products.
As promised, here’s the follow-up article on ‘Do you test your elearning courses?’. Before I proceed to explain how we conduct learnability testing at Kern, let me briefly explain the origins of this testing methodology. eLearning at Kern is highly influenced by usability. We apply design logic, contextual inquiry, usability testing, design principles typography, accessibility, and lots more to our eLearning courses. Learnability testing is inspired by usability testing. In simple words, usability testing is a controlled experiment that tests how well people use a particular product. The user performs a series of tasks while the observer watches him and takes notes. Read more…
What is testing in a typical eLearning environment?
In a typical eLearning company, testing involves several rounds of QA. To ensure that the course is error-free, these QA rounds generate numerous defect reports. But is that all that you need to test the course for? Read more…
Kern offers two kinds of services — usability and elearning. Often our clients inquire about this holy matrimony of usability and elearning. I think usability lends itself naturally to any elearning solution. This got us into an interesting discussion about how usability impacts learning solutions.
Geeta: How do we apply the learning from usability to our elearning projects?
Ripul: Usability is a measurable attribute where we measure the usefulness of a product. We can apply the same concepts to elearning where we measure the learning ability or “learnability” of learners. The basic premise of usability is to make something easy and useful. At times, things may be easy to use, but may not be useful for the user. So, applying the same principle to elearning, we can make things easy to access as well as more learnable for learners. Read more…
