The importance of piloting for real
We are currently in the middle of piloting our new online assignment handling system as part of the Cascade project. While we are finding out all the usual technical glitches, more than anything what testing this with real students, real course directors and real tutors, submitting real assignments has revealed is:
- how generous people can be in trying a new system for something which is so important to them.
- how you can think you have thoroughly mapped all processes in abstract but there will always be some aspect which nobody mentioned until it happens in practice.
- how completely random people can be.
While we certainly did not think our documentation and support assumptions were going to be perfect, with a lot of testing on trial assignments we thought we were probably on the right track, and for most of the process and the vast majority of students and tutors we were.
However where things did deviate from our expected norms, they did so in unanticipated ways. I won’t go into the minutiae here but it is certainly making us think about what are the issues you can plan for and design out, and what is going to happen no matter what you do.