The key to creating great eLearning is keeping the learnersin mind. That sounds simple, but it can be devilishly difficult. One way tokeep learners’ needs and abilities front-and-center is user testing.
Learning architect and Guild Master Nick Floro, president ofSealworks Interactive Studios, swearsby user testing at every stage. He starts a project by testing ideas with the audience,and as his teams progress through design and development, they test at eachstage. Floro says that testing with about 10 to 15 actual users is the “magicnumber.” According to Floro, it is not necessary to recruit new learners totest each iteration of an eLearning project or even different projects. “Youcan use these people again and again, and they love participating; they feellike part of the process. Ask them if they would participate again as youevolve a concept or project, and take advantage of that,” he said. “They becomeadvocates to help communicate the project and help you launch successfully, aswell as being a vital source of feedback to test an idea or concept. This is awin-win.”
The value of user testing is also clear to Guild Master MichaelAllen, chairman and CEO of Allen Interactions, who pioneered a development model that incorporatessuccessive approximations of an eLearning module; user testing is built intoevery step of the process. “Early evaluation is input that either confirms orrefutes the correctness of the analysis or design,” Allen writes in his Guideto e-Learning (see References).
Allen’s development model specifies prototyping, rather thansimply specifying or drawing models of eLearning modules. “With functionalprototypes, everyone’s attention turns to the most critical aspect of thedesign, which is the interactivity, as opposed simply to reviewing contentpresentations and talking about whether all content points are in evidence onthe screen,” Allen writes. “We also know that many designs that are approved ina storyboard presentation are soundly and immediately rejected when they arefirst viewed on the screen, and they are even more likely to be rejected whenthey become interactive. Prototypes simply provide an invaluable means ofevaluating designs.”
Some instructional designers (IDs) who use personas to modeltargeted learner groups test with actual learners—users—in addition todesigning to meet the personas’ needs. Personas and user testing are “symbioticand hopefully reinforcing,” said Lacey Jennings, a service delivery leader at Xerox Learning Services.“There will always be a need for user testing for new interfaces andwebsites—personas just help you dig deeper into understanding which learnersegment you need to include or consciously motivate.”
Megan Torrance, CEO of TorranceLearning, said that increating personas, “we, as instructional designers, can stay connected to thelearners we’re supporting throughout the project.” The learner-testers canthen, in effect, bring the personas to life: “We want to make sure that weinclude representatives from the personas in the testing.”
Catch—and fix—problems early
It is essential to create eLearning that is both useful andusable; the content has to be worth learners’ time, but the best eLearning inthe world is useless if no one completes it. “You can build all kinds oflearning, and people aren’t going to show up and take it because it meansnothing to them,” said Sarah Thompson, a marketing and communications efficacyimprovement manager at Pearson.
Thompson advocates using personas to capture themotivations, goals, and needs of learners—that can make learning more useful.And she says that “user testing may reveal additional context, or furtherqualification of motivations, that wasn’t revealed when you first definedpersonas—it [user testing] tells you more specifically [about] something suchas sequencing,” meaning the order in which the learners use eLearning content.
Testing with members of the learner group who willultimately use the eLearning lets developers see how real people navigatescreens, how easily they complete basic tasks, and whether they remain engaged.If something is unclear—all of the learner-testers make the same navigationerrors, for example, or learners consistently fail to correctly complete asection—identifying and fixing design problems during development saves time,money, and future frustration, ultimately making the eLearning more usable.
When creating eLearning that will be used on different typesof devices—laptops, tablets, smartphones—it’s important to test on as manydevices as possible. Learners interact with content differently on smartphonesthan they do on laptops, so developers should be sure to test both the way theeLearning works and the way learners use it across multiple devices.
While different from formative evaluation of the eLearningcontent, user testing can provide an indication of how effective the eLearningwill be. Testers can observe whether learners engage with the eLearning andtest how well they are able to recall or apply the content. Poor response tothe content is best caught and fixed before the eLearning is released to abroader group of learners.
Collecting data and feedback during user testing ofprototypes and applying that information to improve each iteration will ultimatelyresult in eLearning that is both usable and useful.
