What are the best ways to conduct elearning quality assurance?
Everyone wants to create a successful e-learning course. Each employee has a personal preference when it comes to learning. And that’s why; e-learning companies USA, have to keep in mind such choices to make their courses work for everybody. Henceforth, quality assurance by their clients has come into the picture so that all their employees find the e-learning course to be of use to them. This is how it can be done:
- Include all in the company
- Respect employee comments
- Make sure SMEs are included
- Check Visual design
Everyone in the company should be involved in checking the e-learning storyboard before it’s put up for production.
Some employees can’t be ignored because they don’t have much insight into the topic. Everyone brings their opinion to the table, which is useful. Therefore, companies should ensure that when a project is being evaluated, all the managers are involved, including the HR professionals. It should be an online evaluation of the draft, which could be shown to the team through video conferencing software. The creative professionals should be consulted after such videoconferencing discussions.
Sure, employees can be sent emails when a new course is launched. The YouTube links of the course could be included in such mailers, but the company should make it mandatory that employees watch such videos. The employees should also post their comments about the snippets of the e-learning video. Companies can also launch YouTube channels for course promotion and getting feedback. Employees can also be encouraged to provide content, including images and PDFs, which they believe will enhance the value of the e-learning module.
After the changes to the e-learning course have been made as per employees’ perceptions, they should be shown the course again and their opinions sought. This way, the employees can be asked again to provide their reviews. If the employees are having difficulties with the user interface of the course, the rectified course should be to their satisfaction.
SMEs are the most valuable resources for quality assurance because they know what is to be included. They can do the crucial fact-checking so that employees’ don’t get any inaccurate information. They also have experience with the presentation of the course, and if the course is tough to understand, they can provide simplification ideas like including charts to convey information.
Visual design is an important part of the course which affects the learners’ experience. Hence, the readability and color of the font are crucial apart from proper paragraph spacing in the course. The learners should also be able to play the videos with ease and rewind and forward them. Any interruption in the video is not pleasant. Blurred images, which impair learning, also make learners move to other sections of the course. Also, avoid providing too much information if it is irrelevant to the learners, and that’s where SMEs can guide.
Hence, this is how e-learning companies USA can get on with the quality assurance process where they include their clients’ employees too.
Importance of quality analysis
Quality assurance is also significant in removing bugs in the course, which can cause problems later. That’s why testing should be done on the prototype rather than sending it for approval to the client. Hence, when a client discovers that the course has some issues, he may lose trust in the vendor and not consider him for future business. If the bugs are not detected beforehand and fixed, it can also infuriate the clients because they can’t show it to employees, and their L&D is delayed. It can also cause clients to give negative feedback to other interested customers. Hence, a quality analyst must have a detailed list of things to be checked in a course. He can’t do any spot-checking, which only involves reviewing a few course slides.
What can quality assurance teams do?
E-learning companies USA can provide specialized quality assurance teams to carry out the job with ease. This team consists of people who created the course, such as the instructional designer and editor. An editor’s job is to see whether the text has any grammatical and spelling errors, and an ID checks whether the content is up-to-date. The Quality Analyst heads the team, and he is responsible for checking whether the functional requirements of the course are met, i.e., whether the navigation buttons are functioning properly. Since a tester’s job is to check whether the course has proper functionality, he needs to check it on a browser tool like Chrome DevTools, which makes you know whether the course will work properly on distinct browsers. But if the learners prefer to see the course in an LMS, it’s better to check it in SCORM Cloud, which is compatible with all protocols such as AICC, SCORM, and xAPI. Chrome DevTools can help evaluate whether the course controls work properly, such as its buttons, which work on JavaScript(JS). So, you can edit the JS on the slides of the LMS course when the buttons or certain triggers don’t function.
E-learning companies USA can also help when the LMS is not accepting inputs in a certain form, and hence the interactivity is not working. In that case, you can ask the e-learning vendor who designed the LMS to describe the input format.
Hence, this is how e-learning companies USA can get on with the quality assurance process, including their clients’ employees.
