ABSTRACT
This article reports on an effort by the authors to use usability testing as a component of online teacher training for their multimajor technical communication course. The article further explains the ways in which program administrators at other institutions can create their own usability testing protocols for formative online teacher training in course design and in principles of user-centered design.
Funding
The authors would like to recognize the University of New Mexico’s Research Allocations Committee grant that allowed them to purchase equipment for this research.
Notes
1. For more information about how the usability testing and user-centered design unit worked to develop these undergraduate students’ understanding of technical communication, see Bartolotta, Newmark, and Bourelle (Citation2017).
2. For those interested in overviews on usability testing basics and procedures, we recommend Barnum’s (Citation2011) Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set … Test! and Rubin and Chisnell’s (Citation2008) Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design and Conduct Effective Tests. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sponsors the Web site http://www.usability.gov, which makes several resources for usability testing available to the general public.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Joseph Bartolotta
Joseph Bartolotta is an assistant professor at Hofstra University.
Tiffany Bourelle is an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the eComp Program.
Tiffany Bourelle
Tiffany Bourelle is an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the eComp Program.
Julianne Newmark
Julianne Newmark is a principal lecturer at the University of New Mexico. She is also the assistant director of Core Writing and editor of Xchanges, an interdisciplinary technical communication, writing/rhetoric, and writing across the curriculum journal.