4.Testing and Revising a Design

4.1 Introduction

Every freshly made course or lesson is unique. It carries the fingerprint of its designer’s design decision-making. The last convolutions in the print come from decisions made as you test-and-revise (activity 4.3) a thought-up, worked-out design. The test is made with the help of a small group of learners, chosen at random but representative of the student population for whom the course or lesson was designed.

In the programme writing practice that I knew in New York in the ’60s and ’70s, it was the custom to use eight learners in a try-out. Such a ‘jury of eight’ were able to pick up most of the design mistakes that had been made in preparing self-study programmed learning systems. The eight usually represented a heterogeneous population of several hundred users. Habit, and previous good results, would make me choose eight for testing the design of a new course or lesson today. Practicality might, of course, make one settle for a smaller group of three or four or even two.

4.2 Testing for the unexpected
4.3 Some common mistakes
4.3.1 The missing imperatives
4.3.2 The missing overview
4.3.3 The impracticality of a design
4.3.4 The-missing-melody
4.3.5 The non-integration problem
4.3.6 Some minor but critical faults
4.3.7 An always avoidable fault
4.3.8 A fundamental fault

4.4 Case study no. 5: Riding out the storm
4.5 Some tips

4.2 Testing for the unexpected

In the developmental testing of a design, you are testing for the unexpected: for unexpected wrong responses, unexpected interfering responses and unexpected attitudes of learner and teacher (if one is involved). These things are ‘unexpected’ because with the help of the four referents and the protocol for working out a design, you have done your best to avoid unwanted results. But in this respect, ‘all that glitters is not gold’. You must expect the unexpected. The symptom that all is not what it should be is an unexpected low rating on one or more of the elements in the Emax Vmax Lmax E’max criteria. Continue reading 4.2 Testing for the unexpected

4.3 Some common mistakes

In the beginning, every designer makes a lot of mistakes. You never stop making them, in fact but they grow less in number as your experiences grows. Most are made in working out the design – in giving the abstract idea its concrete form. In my experience as a mistake maker, there are eight special ones which you have ti guard against. They are listed below:

4.3.1 The missing imperatives
4.3.2 The missing overview
4.3.3 The impracticality of a design
4.3.4 The-missing-melody
4.3.5 The non-integration problem
4.3.6 Some minor but critical faults
4.3.7 An always avoidable fault
4.3.8 A fundamental fault

4.3.1 The missing imperatives

Learners can like being told what to do. ‘Think aloud’, Draw a diagram’, ‘Talk to yourself about….. ‘Label this picture’, ‘Explain this to….. ‘Match the items in List A with those in list B’, ‘Conjure up a mental picture of….’Explain to your neighbour….. ‘Listen to the silence in this film’ — these are some of the imperatives you can use to sharpen the pace of the learning process. Continue reading 4.3.1 The missing imperatives

4.3.2 The missing overview

Learners like to know where they are going. They need some navigational aid (verbal or visual) at the very start of the course or lesson which maps out, or hints at, the response route they are going to take. In the world of design at the micro level, this is often called an ‘overview’. This overview can, in a subtle way, anticipate things which later in the course or lesson will be very critical. Continue reading 4.3.2 The missing overview

4.3.3 The impracticality of a design

‘Nice’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’, ‘exciting’, but remaining for ever gathering dust in its worked-out form on the designer’s shelf: this is sometimes the fate of a good design. Continue reading 4.3.3 The impracticality of a design

4.3.4 The missing melody

An S-R event in which the primary goal is `to instruct’ has a sharp, business-like sound to it. It has to deliver some pre-defined knowledge or skill. In contrast, an S-B, event which is an ‘encounter’ gives the learner plenty of room to respond in her or his own way. An encounter has no end-performance goal. It has an evocative sound to it. Events which have to ‘explain’ or to ‘tell’ have goals and sounds somewhere in between. In the Think Tank workshop we nickname these four types of event thang’, thung’ and thong’ events (see Table 7). Continue reading 4.3.4 The missing melody

4.3.5 The non-integration problem

How many times as a teacher or designer have you heard the complaint that the separate parts of a course ‘don’t seem to belong to each other’? You have probably had to respond to the complaint of non-integration in a course or lesson more than once. It’s a common problem. Continue reading 4.3.5 The non-integration problem

4.3.6 Some minor but critical faults

‘Tek frak’, ‘tooterm’, ‘non crit art’, ‘non crit info’, ‘transition’, ‘wow!’ and ‘speed up’ were some of the editing codes used in editing self-study texts in Basic Systems Inc, New York, in the ’60s. Continue reading 4.3.6 Some minor but critical faults

4.3.7 An always avoidable fault

This refers to any breakdown in the relationship between components in referent 2 (the nth generation of the specified needs). Continue reading 4.3.7 An always avoidable fault