Week 8

Development-Testing

The media that I create using Camtasia would be tested to insure quality assuarance, both in the presentation of the materials and the quality of the material to make sure the desired students learning outcomes are being met.  For my online class, I plan to upload a majority of my videos to WebCT,  (our college's management's system) but that does not necessarily mean that every video will be compliant to ADA standards.  I will need to create word documents explaining each step of the method to solve every problem that I create a video for.  I want to create captions for the videos, but I am not quite sure if Camtasia would allow me to do this.  I am thinking that I would need to create a PowerPoint to go along with Camtasia that has the closed captioning feature for the hearing impaired.

I would test my videos for completeness and validity by asking several colleagues to view the videos before posting to WebCT.  This would check for accuracy, correctness and clearness of the explanations.  I would also be checking for this three criteria as I created the videos as well.

I would then need to upload the videos to WebCT and have some sample students try the videos in settings where students would be watching the videos from.  (etc. home, mathlab, work...)  I would want to take note of any difficulties in download speeds, choppiness of the videos and audio with slow connection speeds and other issues that actual students might run into.  I would also have this group of students test the videos on different platforms, such as Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Macintosh systems as well.

As far as quality checking and testing, I would definitely run my videos through a sample set of students.  I would probably choose a controlled sample like a traditional class to view the videos and to give me any feedback and details/corrections on my videos.  The reason I would choose a traditional class was so that I can ask for feedback when we meet as a class.  I could also make any corrections/suggestions and then asked the traditional students to take a look at the videos again to see if improvements were made.

After the videos are posted, if there are any corrections and/or suggestions made by online students, I would need to remove the videos from WebCT, make the corrections, and then re-upload the videos for others to view.  This would take time and more effort, but still would be possible.  Hopefully, it I won't need to do this very often.

James