Loughborough College
Sports Science e-learning courses
review
Contact
Nick West
Senior Producer
DESQ Ltd
The Workstation
15 Paternoster Row
Sheffield,
S1 2BX
Telephone: 0114 221 0205
email: nickwest@desq.co.uk
1 Introduction
DESQ have reviewed some of the sports department e-learning courses for the
Foundation Degree Year 1 course and have written this report on how future
developments could further improve learners’ e-learning experience.
2 Overview
Overall, it is clear that the creators of these materials have put a lot of work in to
make them engaging and interesting. There is good variety, with lots of images,
interactions, diagrams, tables and videos. The use of different weights and colours of
type works well in places too.
3 VLE
The new design of the Learnzone VLE is attractive and modern-looking. It improves
on the navigation of the previous version, making it easier to find content.
Moving the College Links to their own section on the navigation bar has greatly
improved the usability. Each section is clearly defined and delineated.
The ‘Meet the new LearnZone’ news item is very useful – the two-part headline box
above the Course Categories section looks great, and provides useful information.
This could be built up over time to offer news, advice and guidance to students.
4 Online lectures
4.1 Narration
All except for one of the online lectures reviewed featured a series of slides with
linked narration. This works well to replicate the lecture theatre experience of a
tutor talking through a PowerPoint presentation, however it this does raise some
issues:
 If the courses are to be sold separately, the narration would benefit from
being professionally recorded. In the main, the narration is very good, but
there are some microphone pops and crackles, and some places where the
narrator sounds unsure or mispronounces a word.
 Again, to allow the courses to be sold, the narration would have to be rewritten to avoid mentioning external resources or what has been learned in
previous weeks. Any narration used should ideally stick exclusively to what is
contained within the course.
 The narration can be problematic for learners with hearing difficulties, or
those who do not have access to headphones or speakers. One way of getting
round this would be to use the Notes functionality in Articulate to provide a
transcript of the narrative, or perhaps to provide a Word version that can be
downloaded from the documents section.
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With this in mind, it may be worth looking at keeping narration to a minimum, and
ensuring that all the relevant information is displayed on the screen. This would
mitigate any issues with learners’ hearing or sound equipment.
Useful areas for narration could include instructions for interactions or definitions of
learning objectives. If narration is desired throughout all pages of the content, there
are ways in which this could be more effectively employed to aid the learning
process. Some of these ways are explored in the next section.
4.2 Audio and visual synergy
During a slide, it would improve comprehension if text and graphics either appeared
or were highlighted as the relevant voice over was spoken; for example, bullet points
which appear one-by-one in time with the audio. Users may feel there is too much to
take in when a slide first appears, and as a consequence they could end up reading
ahead or trying to makes sense of the slide rather than listening to the audio.
Some of the materials use this technique already and we would suggest it should be
applied consistently wherever appropriate.
Highlighting relevant areas of diagrams, charts and illustrations when they are being
described in the voiceover will also be helpful. The example below shows a table
that is described by accompanying audio. Highlighting areas in time with the audio
will make it easier for users to absorb what is being said, rather than trying to locate
the areas of the table that are being described.
It is also helpful if the text is arranged on the slide in the order it is described in the
voiceover. At the moment this is inconsistent. When text and audio start in sync but
then go out of sync the user could think that have missed something. They may start
to look around the slide for the content that is being voiced, causing them to lose the
thread of what is being said.
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4.3 Images
If the materials were to be sold, it is likely that some of the images would have to be
replaced. Although nearly all images are attributed, this would not be enough to use
them for commercial purposes. Original artwork could be used in such a way that
there is a lot of re-use (for instance, one image of a torso can be used many times
with different labels).
This would also ensure that a consistent quality could be attained throughout the
courses; at present, some of the interactions are let down by poor images. For
instance, Slide 11 of ‘Muscle anatomy’ is a really good interaction, but the image lets
it down.
Elsewhere, images are distorted, stretched or feature unreadable text.
4.4 Design
Whilst much of the content features a nice, clean design, the following areas could
be improved to increase the usability, user comprehension and user experience
significantly. This will also give the resources a visual coherence that will make them
feel like a suite of materials.
Use a simple grid system
The resources will feel more like part of a coherent set if some layout principles are
followed consistently. For example, this means that repeated screen types such as
the first screen and Aims screen should always use exactly the same layout.
Below are four Aims screens from the ‘Functional Anatomy’ and ‘Fitness Training and
Testing’ courses which would benefit from a consistent layout. The purpose of these
screens is consistent, so they should look consistent.
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There should also be a consistent use of margins, borders and text styles (headings,
bullets, body text etc). Compare the two examples below of bullet points:
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There are slides that feature different sizes of text (slide 14 of the ‘Cardiovascular
system’ lesson features enormous text, whereas slide 6 of the ‘Endurance
performance’ lesson has some text that is very small and difficult to read).
There are different styles of text too – some slides (for instance slide 4 of the
‘Endurance performance’ lesson) have text that has been underlined for emphasis,
but emphasised text should ideally be bold, with underline being saved for links.
Using master templates and a simple style guide would help to mitigate these issues.
These consistency principles may seem relatively minor, but without them the user
experience will be one where the content doesn’t feel coherent and the user won’t
trust it as much as they should. We aren’t saying everything should sit within a rigid
and formulaic structure. Rather that there needs to be a consistent framework that
gives ample room for varied and creatively presented content.
4.5 Content
Overall, the content is engaging and relatively easy to understand, with the learning
objectives well met and information provided in a logical and clear manner.
However, there are areas where the text needs proofing and editing, due to
inconsistencies with punctuation, spelling and tone. For example, on slide 7 of ‘The
respiratory system’ the second and third sentences need full stops as well as little
typos fixing, slide 14 of ‘Endurance performance’ – ‘to’ instead of ‘too’, slide 14 of
Flexibility – ‘effect’ instead of ‘affect’.
There are a couple of slides where a question is asked, suggesting that there’s a free
text interaction on the screen, but there’s actually no interaction to complete. This
can be seen on slides 10 and 11 of ‘Bones of the Vertebrae’.
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There are quite a few places where the learner is asked to complete something and
bring it to a following lesson or seminar (see slide 3 of ‘The upper limbs’ for an
example). Although this will work in the context of learners doing the course with
Loughborough College, it will make it more difficult to sell as a standalone package.
Perhaps these could be given as extension activities at the end of the lesson with
more generic instructions for handing them in?
4.6 Content per slide
Some of the slides are over-populated. Users will find the information easier to
digest if information is spread out over more slides or presented through interactive
elements such as hotspots. The screens below show good and bad examples of this.
This layout is well spaced and easy to digest
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This layout is too cramped and difficult to digest
Conversely, other slides have very little on them, but what is there has been made
bigger to fit the screen – see Slide 18 of ‘Cardiovascular system’.
A more consistent and templated approach would again help to address this issue.
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4.7 Interactions
Interactions should always have clear instructions telling the user how to interact,
i.e. what to click on, if something is draggable etc. At the moment this isn’t always
the case, so it’s left to users to work out how to interact. Some, more IT literate
users will be able to do this, but there will be some who won’t. The example below
would benefit from instructional text along the lines of “Click and drag the
definitions on the right to the correct terms on the left. Make sure the two pieces
join together”.
Interactions are also more usable if they don't scroll. In the example above it would
be easy to miss the interactive elements that are off screen. This could be addressed
by splitting the interaction across two or more screens.
Using buttons or hotspots which animate can distract the user from the content being
presented. The current design of the buttons is good, and is enough of a clue that
they are interactive. There isn’t a need for them to flash or pulse.
Some of the interactions are difficult to successfully complete. A particular example
of this can be found in slide 5 of ‘Bones of the Vertebrae’. The click areas are very
small, and there’s nothing in the instructions to say that you have to click within the
white space next to the image – it feels more logical and natural to click on the
actual image itself. This meant that even though we identified the correct places on
the spine, we failed the test with 0%. This is also a problem on slide 11 of ‘The
neuromuscular system’.
A consistent approach to interaction design, along with a user trialling policy would
help to ensure that any interactions are clear, easy to use and capable of reinforcing
the learning without frustrating the learner.
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For some of the interactions the questions are poorly framed. For example, slide 13
of ‘Introduction to Functional Anatomy’ – instead of ‘Which of these is an example of
a hinge joint?’, the question is ‘This is an example of a hinge joint’.
If a quiz features a text entry question, it is imperative that there are a number of
correct answers to ensure that it’s not frustrating for the learner. For instance, on
slide 15 of ‘The respiratory system’, I failed a question for entering ‘They expand’,
when the correct answer was ‘expand’ or ‘move up and out’. Also, one of the
answers for question 3 of this quiz is ‘moves down and flatterns’, which is spelt
incorrectly.
For example, in the case where the answer is ‘expand’, it would be sensible to offer
the following options as correct answers:
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They expand
Expansion
Expansion takes place
Expand
Move up and out
They grow in size
Video
Whilst some of the YouTube videos are good and of high quality, there are some that
are not so good. For instance, the video with the body builder in the ‘Flexibility’
lesson. Also, some seem to have little to do with the content, for instance the Diet
Coke and Mentos video in the ‘Periodisation’ lesson. Also, there is a broken link to a
video in ‘The neuromuscular junction’, slide 8.
Commissioning professional and high quality video for the materials will help to
mitigate this issue.
Other
Some of the slides are not named correctly in the Outline pane (for instance, slide 4
of Bones of the Vertebrae is just called Slide 4). This just needs amending in
Articulate. Again, this will add to the overall quality and consistency of the
materials.
5 Conclusion
To conclude, there is a lot of really good, usable content within the lessons. To
realise the potential of the learning materials, some relatively minor changes could
be made to ensure consistency and a high standard of quality throughout. There also
needs to be a content production process for people to follow and use as a guide.
This will ensure quality procedures such as proofing and testing are followed. This
would be a simple document to guide people through the process and offer links to
templates, style guides, and so on, that they should be using.
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6 Next steps
The suggested next steps are:


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Create and distribute a suite of templates for PowerPoint and Articulate to all
content developers.
Create and distribute a set of guidance notes that offer best practice for
layout, design, learning flow and use of media.
Edit existing materials to ensure consistency in content, layout and voice.
Create new images that can replace those within the materials and that can
preferably be used across different modules.
Explore the use of bespoke video to bring the materials to life.
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