People-Process-Product
Badrul did a very good job of breaking down the eLearning development process that could be used in an academic or non-academic settings. As I was reading the article I was reflecting back to the online courses I have completed using eCollege and tried to run through the processes he describes and the personnel involved to create the courses. As students taking the course we don’t typically see the other processes just the course shell and the final content. We are involved in the moment only. As students of eLearning and Instructional Technologies we have the opportunity to be in the moment, to analyze the processes and ask questions of the people involved.
E-Learning People–Process–Product Continuum
Badrul’s provided an extensive list and descriptions of roles and responsibilities. He made it clear that several of those roles can be performed by a single person. He also included the product outcome of every stage. I saw a quality assurance mentioned once but I didn’t see quality assurance or testing included in the process section of the eLearning P3 model. He stresses the importance of a pilot testing with a group of diverse learners after development. The pilot group might be able to catch only a few errors with the delivery and miss some logistical or process-oriented critical features.
The area that I would like to see more information is the evaluation stage, the formative used for improvement throughout the process stages, summative used for the final assessment, evaluation to measure students’ performance in eLearning and evaluation of the pilot process.
This article is a good document to keep as a reference guide to review the process and players in simple terms.
References
Khan, B. H. (2004, September-October). People, process and product continuum in e-learning: The e-learning P3 model. Educational Technology. Vol.44, No. 5. pp. 33-40.
Carm-good idea to add a graphic from each of the articles to your comments. I am sure this will help with recall later on, especially after the review of several dozen articles through the grad program. More info on the summative and formative eval process would be helpful, but agree that this article provides good overview of the players involved with the complete process.
Your posting really made me think about student involvement in online courses. I think it would be really interesting to see if students could create an online class, maybe utilizing the instructor as the content expert…just a thought, but who knows?
Hi Carmella!
I like the way your blog is laid out.
Yes, I imagine that one would want more arrows going back and forth to represent gathering of feedback (especially towards the ending phases – but then again –is it ever really over?). Maybe they left it out because they wanted a neat model? More a definition of the process and roles than a real world working out of ideas in practice?
Interesting thoughts…look forward to discussing more.
Carmella,
In your blog, you said: “He stresses the importance of a pilot testing with a group of diverse learners after development. The pilot group might be able to catch only a few errors with the delivery and miss some logistical or process-oriented critical features.” I’m not quite sure if this is Khan’s quote or yours.
It’s been my experience when piloting courses that the pilot class provides very thorough feedback. Of course, you have to weight your pilot class with the appropriate personnel.
New learners or basic skills users will normally help to identify delivery errors. Intermediate users tend to identify the logistical issues and some process-oriented features. The Subject Matter Experts (power-users) are the folks that normally identify process-oriented issues and show-stoppers.
It’s very important to ‘weight’ your pilot with a variety of skill levels. This will provide the best feedback and allow you to correct any issues with your course before ’showtime’.
Leisa
Hi Carmella-
A great resource for the areas that you felt the model is lacking in is the book “Don’t Make me Think” by Steve Krug. While geared towards website design, he has a no-nonsense approach towards evaluation and usabilty testing that I think would be easily translated to instructional design projects. It’s a very fun, interesting and incredibly informative read. Here’s the link on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222029297&sr=1-1