Revising the Online Classroom: Usability Testing for Training Online Technical Communication Instructors

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Online courses
• program administration
• teacher training
• technical writing
• usability testing

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 (2017).

2. For those interested in overviews on usability testing basics and procedures, we recommend Barnum’s (2011) Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set … Test! and Rubin and Chisnell’s (2008) 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

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 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.