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

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

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.