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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Three Ways to Test Effectiveness Without Learners
By Archana | Jun16, 2009 | Main Articles No Comments »Have you worked on projects where you have limited access to learners? Do you roll out the course anyway? Let us first list the reasons why learner testing cannot be conducted for all projects.
- Learners may be situated halfway across the world and therefore, they are accessible only over phones/Skype/emails.
- Clients may not wish to give you direct access to their learners as they are not comfortable about this. Read more…
Part 1 of the article
As a consumer, let me begin by telling you that it’s a thwarting experience to switch mobile phones. This is especially the case when you feel like you need a change. Obviously you would expect this change to be for the better, right? This is not the case always my friend! So, I got myself a new Samsung X210. I switched my Nokia phone for this (which I regret now by the way!). But I had to move on and that was my plight. I began fiddling around with my phone before I showed it off to everyone I knew (and didn’t know). As you can guess, my usability instincts play hard on me. Read more…
We all know what 3D glasses are. We know where they are used, how they are used and what they can be used for, the purpose of its use. But in essence I want to talk about the usability of these glasses. I’m not sure we realize how detrimental they can be sometimes! Read more…
Psychologist, Carl Jung studied human behavior deeply and passionately. He studied the behavior and knowledge of the human mind and developed theories of how the dynamic brain functions. This article is essentially concerned with Jung’s understanding of personality types. I would encourage you to sieve out knowledge from this section and weave it into your daily work of usability studies. There is an enormous need to understand and interpret the behavior of our users in the models that we design. And Jung’s ideas will help us achieve this. Read more…
Last night as I was flipping through the channels on the television, I stumbled upon a show that is ever so famous among teenagers today. Yes, you guessed that right- I am referring to American Idol. I came across something so regular. Yet, it was alarming to see the same sight on national television- a place where everything is expected to be perfect and flawless. It always portrays everything to be so perfect doesn’t it? Correction- it seems like this world has its glitches too!
Let us first understand what a mental model is. It is an explanation of a person’s thought process of how something works in the real world. In other words, it represents human emotions, feelings, perceptions and other psychological processes that surface externally. Let us explain this with the help of an example. We know exactly how a telephone looks and functions. It would typically have buttons to punch in a phone number and a receiver to communicate. Have a look at the figure below. We know how exactly this telephone would function. Right? You pick up the receiver, wait for a dial tone, punch in the number, wait for a ring tone, and you’re connected.
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…
Do you hold your users through the doors of a building to show them the way? Why should you show your learners “Click Next to proceed”?
Do you point an arrow to a doorbell to indicate: Press here to ring the bell? Why do you need to instruct your learner for every tab or a button to say: Click each tab to know more.
Do you need a guide every time you use your lift or go to a theatre?
