LMS Usability Testing
We’re down to two options for replacing our LMS, and we’re planning pilots for both of them. The first phase of our testing is going to be a usability test. I’m brainstorming what student tasks could be tested. Keep in mind that these are graduate courses with instructors.
Looking at my list below, is there anything you think I’ve missed? Is there anything I included that I should leave out? Obviously, my list is quite long, and I’m not sure that we’ll really be able to test everything here. How would you prioritize these tasks?
Administrative
- Log in
- Find the right course to enter
- Edit profile
- Starting point (i.e., if you didn’t have a list of tasks, where would you go first in the course)
- Check messages/internal email
- Send message to instructor
- Check grades
- Find a specific topic in help info
Course Content
- Find a specific piece of content (e.g., Module 4, Topic B, Assignment 1)
- Find the Key Information that supports a specific assignment
- Navigate from one place in the course to a different one
- Post & reply on the discussion board
- Submit an assignment
- Post to a blog
- Edit text on the course wiki
- Join synchronous chat
- Watch a video/listen to audio
- Open Flash content
- Open activity checklists
- Find & print syllabus
- Determine the deadline for an assignment
- Post to small group discussion board
That would be great Tracy. I’d love to see that list. During our last team meeting, we all brainstormed together about instructor tasks. I know we listed reporting as one of the tasks to test. I haven’t looked at the reporting ability for either of our options yet, and we definitely should review that before deciding.
Hi Christy: One problem I am having with mine is the whole reporting structure. There is little to no reporting function available. I essentially need to tell the developers what reports I want to see. By teacher, by student, by course, by date, so on and so on. I have a really great LMS check list that actually someone from a different company sent to me when we were discussing LMS needs. I’ll find it and email it to you.
Deb, I can definitely see that would be useful. We are comparing the search functions for our two options; we want something that really works well for finding posts and content. I’m not sure about extracting to a Word document, but I’m hoping we’ll have the option to filter posts. Being able to filter for just a particular student would make it much easier for the facilitators to grade.
Hi Christy,
one of the things that i found when i was studying was that we used the message board a lot – some of the things we couldn’t do was do an advanced find through the posts and even extract all posts to a word doc etc. That would have been awesome. maybe something to think about?
Cheers,
Deb
Excellent point! I completely forgot about the calendar. Good catch!
Is there a calendar function? If so, you might want to look at how that integrates with assignments and across courses.