• Background
• CLASS Project
• CLASS Staff
• General Insights
• Questions & Considerations
• Content
• Development Teams
• Content Acquisition
• Assessment & Grading
• Design
• Introduction
• Modeling
• Presentation
• Interactivity
• Navigation
• Assessments
• National Standards
• Quality Assurance
• Courses
• Features
• Courses
• Copyrights
• Technology
• Building a Course
• See and Say
• There are Limits!
• Influence and Change
• CLASS Courses
• Content
• Extras Designed
• Extras Linked
• Class Assessments
• A Bit of Dreamweaver
• Proofing
• Graphics
• MOUs
• Detailing Treatment
• Course Credits
• CLASS Style
• Publications

Suggestions for Quality Assurance

Based on the experiences over the duration of the CLASS™ project, anyone considering doing online course development should consider the following with respect to quality assurance (QA):

• Quality assurance procedures should be in place from the beginning of the development process.
• Communication lines must remain open among all parties involved so that everyone is aware of his/her responsibilities and deadlines.
• The entire group should play a role in developing a rigorous framework, and each part of the development team should work with specifications and standards.
• From the beginning, the development and production teams should come to an agreement about what standards must be met to constitute "good enough to go."
• Quality will suffer if quantity takes precedence over quality, regardless of the safeguards.
• Determine what operating system(s) and browser(s) will be supported well in advance of development.
• The Help Desk and Quality Assurance groups should work closely with each other.
• Those responsible for setting the budget and deadlines need to take into account the extensive QA needed for every course.

Following is a sample QA cycle. It may be a matter of weeks or months depending on problems encountered.

1) QA Round 1

QA Testing
• on classdev server
• PC: Win 95/98, Win NT
• Mac: 8.6, 9.0
• NS and IE (PC)
• read-through and click-through
• need script, syllabus, etc. for comparison

Errors to ID/IDS for corrections

Errors ID/IDS cannot fix to DCS Tech person


2) QA Round 2

QA Testing
• still on classdev server
• PC: Win 95/98, Win NT
• Mac: 8.5, 9.0
• NS and IE (PC)
• click-through

Errors to ID/IDS for corrections

Errors ID/IDS cannot fix to DCS Tech person

QA and Tech person (Bill) confer

QA asks NET to move the course to the Class Server

QA does function check of the course on the Class server

QA requests NET to burn CDs of the new courses for testing

3) QA Round 3

QA testing
• course on Class server
• test from LRD
• PC: Win 95/98 Win NT
• Mac : 8.6, 9.0
• NS and IE (PC)
• click-through

Errors entered into a course-specific spreadsheet

Errors to IDS for comments, if needed (Web link decisions for example)

Errors to NET for fixes, then returned to QA with NET comments

QA verifies NET fixes

Courses ready for release, or a fourth round of testing (if necessary)

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