Comments for Tell me your story...

Comment on IT 5650 Week 4 by jgiacomini

jgiacomini — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:40:48 +0000

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

Comment on IT 5650 Week 4 by Leisa

Leisa — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:38:04 +0000

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

Comment on IT 5650 Week 4 by Sheri Trapp-Cordova

Sheri Trapp-Cordova — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:14:13 +0000

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.

Comment on IT 5650 Week 4 by Dave Strousberg

Dave Strousberg — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:18:55 +0000

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?

Comment on IT 5650 Week 4 by Della

Della — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:31:56 +0000

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.

Comment on IT 5650 Week 3 by Chad Lynch

Chad Lynch — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:13:20 +0000

Carmella, I think you bring up a good point about students being responsible for learning the technology. Sometimes it may be frustrating and difficult, but it is worth putting in the effort. And it’s great when classmates can help each other out!

Comment on IT 5650 Week 3 by iltctaylor

iltctaylor — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:29:43 +0000

Hi Carmella, I agree that we need to be proactive in learning how to use the technology. I think activities like asking students to post to their blog at least once a week is a good way to implement hands-on… I’m so new to blogs though that I’m still tryng to figure out the whole structure of a blog website. I like how you’ve added the two blog rolls. I’m going to try to add these rolls to mine.

–Charlotte

Comment on IT 5650 Week 3 by Della

Della — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:12:42 +0000

And as graduate students, we have the resources at hand, whether it be the instructor, the ability to investigate online, etc. I think the crunch for adult learners, graduate students or otherwise, is that we have so many other projects/processes/decisions, etc. going around in our brains everyday, that to “stop” and try to figure it out “alone” can add frustration. I like the “digging” process! But also need the application once I “figure it out” to make true sense of it all!

Comment on IT 5650 – Week 2 by Jenn

Jenn — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:52:04 +0000

Your last statement about controlling the computer, not allowing the computer to control you really hits home. We really do need to focus more on the content and audience and find the most appropriate way to convey those, not deciding on a computer or technological way and then fitting our content to that medium.

Comment on IT 5650 – Week 2 by Jodi H

Jodi H — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:40:54 +0000

Great summaries of the two readings, Carmella. When I read the first article (Oliver and Herrington), the thought that really jumped out at me is how important the interaction with the content is. It is not as much about the content as what gets done with the content. I think this distinguishes where we are now with online learning design compared to “first generation” courses.

And I see a similar stream of thought mentioned in the second article – the idea that the instruction is the “active ingredient” – not the content.

Thanks for helping me make some connections!