EDUC 767
Designing Computer-Based Training (CBT)
I believed that this class would be the one where I would struggle the least considering my experience with web design and UX, but as it always happens, that same experience was what made this class the most tasking of the sequence so far. That being said, those moments of struggle were what kept pushing me to develop the best possible RLO and to present the best content and information that would allow my learners to understand the topic being covered.
When I approach projects like this one, the interface design is the first thing that I think about. Over the years, I have gotten better at wireframing, and for this project, I was able to think about how I wanted it to look like and to keep it separated from the content. I tend to like simpler designs because it forces me to think about usability and how the user will interact with the interface. And so, the layout of the screens is simple and clean to let the user focus on the content. Being new to Captivate, I had to spend quite a bit of time learning about what I could do and couldn’t do. Taking the time to learn the application changed my original design, but it also taught me about features that enhanced the way I presented information. For example, rather than having multiple pages when introducing learners to the parts of an academic article, I was able to use advanced actions and variables to change the states of different assets and have all that content in one page, making the content more unified.
Library instruction, like any other type of instruction, varies in terms of complexity, and it should not come as a surprise that not every topic can be done well through computer-based training. In deciding what topic to cover in this RLO, I had to think about what content I could present and how to assess it in the context of an online learning environment. Ideally, I would have liked to present the content in an LMS were I would have more control over how feedback is given during and after the assessment, but again, I was limited by the technology and time. In the end, because Captivate has limited feedback customization, I decided to cover a topic that would be easier to break up into chunks to avoid cognitive overload and to reduce ambiguity when it came time to assess the learner. Had we the chance to develop an LMS module along with the reusable learning object, I would have tried to include a bigger variety of questions and include more feedback as the users progressed through the assessment.
Though I had read about 508 accommodations and accessibility best practices for design, I have yet to implement them fully in a project. However, because of the limited amount of development time that we had, I decided to use a tool -- Captivate -- that would streamline this process. And so, apart from making sure that I was enabling the right settings, all I had to do was make sure that my theme was using colors that provided enough contrast and that my images had no flickering and were appropriately described in alt tags. I was grateful to have a tool that allowed me simplify this process, but I was still surprised to see that many accessibility settings aren’t enabled by default and require the developer to toggle them on, potentially limiting the number of people that can experience the resources as it was intended to be used.
During the development process, I encountered three big issues: narration, quiz, and navigation issues. Thanks to the feedback received from the usability test, I was able to confirm some of the doubts I had about my initial prototype and to resolve these issues to a certain extent.
Regarding the RLO navigation, I was able to address the issues of the table of contents not being easily identifiable by creating a button, but the other two issues went somewhat unresolved. When it came to the audio narration, the feedback I received mentioned that there was no option to mute or pause the audio. After some time, I was able to find several possible solutions, but none addressed were able to give me a definite fix, and in the end, I decided that my time would be best spent making the RLO functional. In future Captivate projects, I hope to spend more time recording audio narration that can be better manipulated instead of relying on auto-generated narrations.
The last issue encountered relates to the point I made in the assessment section. The feedback I received said that there was some interaction issues with the questions, but there was little that Captivate would allow me to change. Again, I would have benefited from have a platform that handled assessment better, but that would have broken the inclusivity principle of the RLO.
Overall, I was happy with the progress I made, but I would not have achieved as much without the feedback that I received both from classmates and teachers. Like I said before, this was the part of the design process that I looked forward to the most, and after going through it, I realize that there are still many things that I need to consider as I start to think about how to apply all this to my everyday work life. The next class in the sequence will have us work with others as we go through these same steps, and to be honest, I’m both excited and anxious about the process. Still, I will use what I have learned so far and make the best of the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people and their respective talents.