I asked three people who are a part of my school community in different capacities to evaluate my website: a fellow Special Education teacher Kumar, our Site Technology Coordinator Jenell, and a parent (who requested not to be named) whose child is on an IEP and who I am the case manager for.
I asked Kumar to serve as a user tester and HTML developer of my site. I chose him specifically because he has worked in the Special Education field for over 20 years: first as a paraeducator, and now as a Special Education case manager. Kumar and I work very closely with one another, and we have discussed several times about the importance of parents (and their kids) in knowing and understanding their Individualized Educational Plans (IEP). Also, Kumar has some basic understanding of HTML code. He said he has dabbled in creating a few websites of his own, although he is far from being an expert. Kumar used his school-issued Macbook AIR laptop, and he was using our school's WIFI connection to access my site.
Jenell is our school's Site Technology Coordinator, which means she handles all things technology-related on our campus. I also asked her to review my code as well as my overall website, so she worked as both an HTML developer and a user tester as well. Although she claimed that it has been a very long time since she's coded anything and it took lots of convincing, I believe Jenell would be able to provide some good and useful feedback. Jenell also used her school-issued Macbook AIR and our school's WIFI connection to access my site.
Lastly, I asked a parent, who I have worked with for the past two years as their child's case manager, to review my site as an observed user. This parent has no experience with coding, but they have been working with their child being on an IEP for the past seven years, and have a very good understanding about the process. I felt that their insight on what my website should and should not include would be an invaluable resource to me. They used one of our school's DELL chromebooks and our school's WIFI connection to access my site.
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Design | 3 |
| Content | 4 |
| Credibility | 5 |
Overall, my evaluators liked my site. They all thought the site was organized in a logical progression, specifically the set-up of the supplementary pages (Before the IEP, During the IEP, and After the IEP). The color choices I made did not pose any kind of hindrance for any of my users, and they all said that the material and text was formatted in an organized, clear, and consistent manner. The overall design did not seem to contain any major flaws based on the evaluations I received. There was a comment made by Jenell regarding my navigation menu, and she thought it would be best if my menu had some way to make distinctions between the links. She felt that, with the way they were set up currently, they were a litle hard to read.
However, all three evaluators did make note about the absence of multimedia elements. Kumar especially felt that my lack of videos and/or images actually made my website appear "amateurish". He felt that, although the site is clean and orgainzed well, there isn't much to it overall because there are no multimedia elements anywhere on the site. All of my evaluators commented on the lack of videos and/or pictures, but Kumar really felt like this absence of material was a big negative element in my site.
Additionally, Jenell and Kumar both mentioned how the majority of my site's information seems to be stemming from one source primarily; however, this didn't seem to be much of a concern for my parent evaluator. Kumar mentioned how, being that he is also a SPED case manager, he knows there are many other resources avaialble to parents, and I should really try to incoporate more sources within my site to give parents as much information for them as possible.
There was very little commentary regarding my actual coding. Kumar and Jenell both felt that my coding looked clean and without error. Kumar's only suggestion to me was about changing my links so they would open in external pages, so my users wouldn't have to navigate away from my page.
Here are links to the evaluations submitted by all the evaluators of my website:
Here are my proposed changes:
This evaluation process was really eye-opening for me for several reasons. I didn't really think it was so important, or made such a negtive impact, not having multimedia elements. However, I'm guessing this is the way our world is going now; truly accepted and fully-functional websites are expected to have some multimedia elements. Even though my parent user, who is truly the representative from my target audience, did not seem to mind, I could sense that my other evaluators really felt it was important to incorporate those elements.
I was really happy that my parent user found the website to be clean, concise, and useful. They even said they wished this website existed seven years ago when their child was first started receiving Special Education services. Considering they are my target audience, I am really pleased that they found my website to be easy to use and informative.
Lastly, I also really appreciated the comments from my colleague Kumar. He proved to be really insightful with regards to his suggestions and the reasons behind his suggestions. His experience as an educator in this field turned out to be a great resource for me.