Have You Seen These Characters?
Actionable Feedback eLearning
The Analysis
Author, Melanie Faith, wants her audience to take their expertise into the online classroom, but she needed help developing a practice activity for her audience based on her book (Writing It Real: Creating an Online Creative-Writing Class for Fun and Profit). I proposed an interactive eLearning scenario for giving effective, actionable feedback.
The Process
After reading Melanie's book, and completing a SME interview, we determined that one major way that online instructors can retain clients is by providing quality actionable feedback. We then explored solutions to specific scenarios where feedback would be necessary within an example online classroom: the writing workshop. From there I created a text-based storyboard before beginning mock-ups in Canva and Storyline. We went through multiple iterative cycles to fine-tune the story, visuals, and prototypes before beginning full Storyline development.
During development I spent time testing the project for accessibility, including color contrast, font selection, and focus order alignment for screen readers. One of the biggest challenges I encountered during the project involved determining the best variables and conditions towards providing learners with the most interactive and personalized experience possible. I also discovered elements that did not lend themselves well to certain aspects of development such as icons as they do not have a state to modify. Finding issues like this late into the development process helped me iterate on my own development and QA processes.
Results and Takeaways
This project was such a fun challenge. I worked with a terrific SME. We generated a large number of possible ideas for this project before zeroing in on the scenario-based video call experience. I’d love the opportunity to continue developing on this project as there is still room for extending the project to an even wider audience, particularly in three main ways:
First, while the scenarios covered in this project focused on giving feedback for writing projects, the type of advice given could apply to other subjects that online instructors might teach.
Second, while this project tests well on mobile devices, it is optimized for computer use.
Third, providing actual writing samples versus a writing example summary.
Melanie and I have both shared the project with our networks. These posts have generated thousands of views so far! One user on LinkedIn advised that she took notes to use within her own writing!