User 870ab5b546
24-09-2004 13:28:17
Here are some comments from an evaluator at Prentice-Hall. I take no responsibility for their accuracy or relevance. Just thought you might like to see them.
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| As far as the sketcher itself, I thought when you completed an answer, the drawing looked clean and it was clear. I did think the actual entry of answers was a little bulky. The instructors I’ve spoken to seem to want things to be drop and drag. For example, when you click “C” to get a carbon atom, I think it might be better if the CH_3 immediately appeared at the tip of the mouse. Then the user could drop it anywhere on the drawing surface. Currently, you have to click on the C button, and then click on the drawing surface and the CH_3 appears. I think being able to see immediately what you are adding at the tip of your mouse would be easier. I thought it was a bit strange that to add certain bonds you hold down the mouse first until a pink circle appears, and then until a blue circle appears. I wonder if there is some way to handle this through a button on the tool palette instead. Or possibly it could be changed to a circle and then a double circle? At the very least, the colors need to be more contrasting. I think there could be some problems with students who are color blind, who may not be able to see the difference between the two circles. I liked that you could click on the bonds to change them from single to double, to triple, etc. I also thought it was clever that when you had created a bond on the sketcher, that when you clicked the bond button, another one of those bonds would appear. I think it might be a good idea to instead add any bond the student used in the problem to that button as an additional option in the dropdown, so that student has a more visual clue as to what they are adding. I think changing to a drag and drop method would help you with user retention. You have to consider that a student may only see this program for one semester. If an instructor has to spend a lot of time at the beginning of the semester teaching students how to use this program they will be much more likely to drop the program. Doing all the problems in the “typical questions” assignment took me over an hour and I still don’t know how clear everything is to me. Maybe students who know the content would find this more intuitive, but I think over an hour for the tutorial is probably more time than the average student will spend on this. I think rollovers should also be added to all of the buttons, and the sketcher might be well served to be done over to have a less industrial, more marketable look. Another thing I noticed is that for some questions the instructions read “If you use Netscape, do this. If you use Internet Explorer, do this”, etc. This needs to be changed so that the program works the same for all browsers. When students have issues, the first person they go to is their instructors. The instructors shouldn’t have to learn several different browser behaviors in order to answer the students. That will just frustrate them. |