The portfolio site was approximately seventy-five percent completed at the time of the initial review. Three of the evaluators were asked to respond to the checklist at this point. Two of the evaluators were then asked to review the site again after modifications were made that incorporated the initial feedback. The following report will discuss the initial and final results with a description of modifications made in between the two evaluation dates as well as anticipated modifications to complete the site fully.
Diana Fast: Student in 7360 – Intro to Web Development, role as user and coding / developer, used a VAIO running Windows XP with a Cable modem running Explorer and Opera. - Completed 4/25/08 @ 8:40PM
Janiece Mulia: Student in 7360 – Intro to Web Development, role as user and coding / developer, used a Gateway running Vista with DSL running IE7. - Completed 4/27/08 @ 1:22PM
Leta Reppert: Student in 7360 – Intro to Web Development, role as user and coding / developer, used a Compac Presario running Windows XP with Ethernet running Firefox 2.0 - Completed 4/26/08 @ 6:18PM
Bobbie Mitchell: Vice-Principal for Shead High School – role as potential target audience for job offering, used a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.4 with a T3 connection running Firefox 2.0. - Completed 4/28/08 @ 10:34PM (time completed was actually AM but file shows PM)
The initial group of reviewers all accessed the site via a link from the course discussion board and was only given a basic set of limiting factors. These factors included the understanding that the site was only approximately seventy-five percent complete and that their role was to examine the site for structure, function, and coding for the purpose of a portfolio. Each user then used the included Web Evaluation Form and had access to the Portfolio Review Rubric. Only Leta Reppert submitted the Portfolio Review Rubric to me but the others were able to better understand the role of the site by having access to this rubric.
The initial users were exceptionally kind in their evaluations, but did offer some feedback for considerations. Aside from the assumed completion of the pages as a whole, they are as follows:
Navigation - The primary consideration included the navigation of the site. Although the permanent sidebar with popup tips offered some explanation, it was not obvious what the role of the links were to all users. To alleviate this confusion, the navigation was changed to a horizontal bar in the page header that has drop down options. Each drop down option that is not self-explanatory has a tip popup that displays to the left of the main material. This will enable more fluidity to the movement through the site. It also enabled me to include a greater number of links without cluttering the site. This is accomplished by allowing the pages to be broken into smaller pieces which contain specific content rather than long strings of text that are not appealing on the Internet. The material is easily accessible and fluid to maneuver from every page.
Images and multimedia – The site was not completed at the time of initial review and these were intentionally left out. This enabled me to make modifications more easily without this secondary consideration. The menu consists of images, and there will be subsequent image input for the header and other pages as it supports the material. Also, there will be a small video introduction to accompany the page as well.
Links and contact – The initial review had a few links, but more were necessary. These are being added as the pages develop. The primary concern is to create enough external links. These will be primarily located under the course reflections to sources. The artifact links were also not in place correctly for the initial review. Those that are currently finished have been updated and are working. Another consideration for links is more return to top links on long pages. This will be overcome in most pages by dividing them into sections so there are more pages with fewer long pages. The only sectioned page will be the resume page but sections will have return to top options.
Color Scheme: Overall, the color scheme was either not an issue or received well, but Leta suggested lightening the background to increase the contrast between it and the text. I chose a slightly lighter shade for the background.
Ben Knowles: Technology Coordinator for Shead High School – role as technology developer / potential target audience for job offering, used a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.4 with a T3 connection running Firefox 2.0. - Completed 4/28/08 @ 10:45AM
Crystal Consalvi: My wife – role as observed user, used an iBook running OSX 10.3 with a dial-up modem running Safari. Completed 4/28/08 @ 10:08PM
***Note that no actual portfolio reviewer or advisor were asked to evaluate the site because of its developing status. The site will be progressing over the duration of my studies and I will seek assitance of my advisor when it is closer to a finished product. Probably at the completion of the final site for this course it will be ready to advance to that level of scrutiny. For this course, I wanted the evaluation to be more based on the web development and not the portfolio content.***
The secondary group members were both observed moving through the site. As they progressed, they completed the Website Evaluation Form and gave suggestions. The suggestions from Ben were geared towards simplifying the coding while Crystal was offering suggestions for enhancing the marketing of my technology and education skills. Their feedback included the following:
Navigation: The navigation bar works well with the drop down menus and descriptors. Ben offered a coding suggestion to fix the JavaScript for the menus. The popup descriptions were showing up but the reset function was not activating. This was due to a duplicate coding that when combined and resolved allowed the menus to drop down with the popup and reset appropriately when the mouse was moved away.
Images and Multimedia: Again, there were limited images and multimedia. The few graphics that were there worked fine and had the appropriate alt, height, width attributes. It was suggested to not over use graphics to maintain the professional look.
Links and Contact: The links all worked well and with the new descriptions were easy to follow.
Color Scheme: Ben and Crystal had no problems viewing colors and reading text with the lighter background. Liked color scheme.
The site needs to have the final pages developed to complete the Learning Beliefs and Course Content / Reflections. The general layout is fairly sound and the navigation seems complete. There may be need to tweak some of the final coding to make sure everything stays in the regions correctly. The coding is a bit more complex because of the use of percents to allow the page to view well on multiple screen dimensions. The final review of links and inclusion of more artifacts is necessary. Lastly, inclusion of the embedded CSS for the Intro Web requirements is necessary. For the development stage, I have been using a linked style sheet to see how the changes work across the site. In general, all of the feedback suggesting changes was valuable and appropriate modifications will be taken to resolve the issues. Lastly, all of the pages will need to be revalidated to accomodate the recent changes.
The evaluation methods both have merit depending on the need of the evaluation. The limited contact evaluation was more valuable for general feedback. It helped to spot missing links and navigation issues or confusion. It also could give generalizations such as color scheme and obvious code errors. Its weakness lies in the inabilityof the evaluator to understand fully what is the intent of the development. That also has the power of being an advantage as well because the site author cannot bias the review. The high contact observational evaluations were better for specific issues to see if the user was behaving or reacting to the site as desired. As for the experienced developer, it was convenient to have contact to allow collaboration when viewing the code to ensure that the desired outcome was achieved. This was particularly evident when I worked with Ben to resolve the reset issue with the JavaScript for the popup. Overall, a combination of distance and observational evaluations are necessary. Furthermore, it is valuable to have another developer to assist and critique a site for functionality and completeness. In the absence of another person, the validators work in a way to accomplish the completeness of the coding requirement. Evaluations are essential to developing a good product much like proofreading to enable the author to receive external feedback and gain a different perspective.
*Note: Dates and times for site evaluations were based on the created and modified times and dates from the Microsoft Word survey files.