How To Quality Check Your Own eLearning?
Before you send your eLearning on for a quality review, how well do you test it yourself? A self-check may seem like an obvious task, but some people pass on their eLearning courses for a quality check when the work is less than stellar. Within a few minutes, the reviewer or tester can tell it hasn’t been checked for quality and consistency.
Get your own work as clean as you can before sending it on. Here’s how.
1. Make a Test Plan
For your test plan, think through the course’s structure and the potential paths that a learner may take. Then list all the test paths you will take through a course. If your course has a simple structure, your plan may consist of something like this:
- Run through and select every correct response
- Run through and select every incorrect response
- Run through the course using the Back button
- Return to the menu at different points during the course and re-start
- Select all glossary terms and hyperlinks
- Select every selectable object
- Attempt to move ahead before completing all interactions
2. Use a Review Form
Create your own Review form to ensure that none of the issues you find will slip through the cracks.
To make your own, create a table with four columns. Use the first column to enter the identifying screen; the second to note the the issue and how it occurs; the third to check off when you’ve made the revision and the last to check off that you tested it and it really was fixed.
3. Publish with Identifiers
Now you’re ready to start testing. Make it easy on yourself by publishing with unique screen identifiers.For example, create a menu just for testing purposes so that you can quickly identify the screen that has a problem.
Or
put in a temporary identifier at the top or bottom of each slide. You may find that using an ordered list of number identifiers for each screen is the easiest and quickest approach.
4. Run Your Test Plan
Now you’re ready to run your test plan. Do this at a time of day when you can be very attentive to details.Keep working through every step of the plan and write down all the issues you find,from a typo to a programming error. Don’t skip any of the paths. If an issue stops the program from working, you’ll need to fix that before continuing.Some typical things to look for include:
- Spelling errors
- Awkward or unclear writing
- Graphics with the wrong aspect/resolution (Stretched, pixelated or fuzzy images)
- Graphics that are misaligned Graphics that don’t adhere to the Visual Style Guide
- Text that is difficult to read
- Errors in labeling
- Messages pop up at the wrong time
- Interactions not working properly
- Navigation goes to the wrong screen
- Feedback is not appropriate for the selection made
- Test is scored incorrectly
Make the necessary fixes to the course and check off each one as it is completed. Then do another quality check to ensure every single issue has been fixed and is no longer evident when tested.
