Week 4

I had trouble getting into this discussion. I even had trouble getting back into it for this write up. The discussion began with costs for designing and EdWeb, something I've never really thought about and still can't really wrap my head around. Maybe teachers just get to used to giving things away and using their own funds for classroom supplies that the cost factor isn't priority number 1 like it is in the business world.

From there we moved into discussing various aspects of formative evaluations and how we were going to apply it to our EdWeb. Maybe my work on the Evaluation committee last semester, but nothing in the conversation grabbed my attention or caused me to question something. Overall, I was pretty passive in this discussion.

I did offer up my insight from doing a usability test with Google last fall. And I do think that it helps you understand formative evaluation when you've been on the other side of it.

Jessica stated:

I love that he made that comment about making your questions about the subject and not about "them". For example, don't ask what they "don't understand" because that is about what "they" are able to do, rather than what is missing or confusing about the material.

This is important to remember because you aren't 'judging' your testers, you are judging yourself and your product and you can't have them feeling judged or they are less likely to provide good, honest feedback.

Jenn Olsen also deserves some credit for asking lots of good questions that Dave had to answer for us and our formative evaluations.