What is a course prototype and why is it needed?

Contents:

• Why do you need a prototype of an educational product?
• Why prototyping is sometimes difficult?
• What types of prototypes are there and what should they include?
• How prototypes are created?
• What else can be “prototyped”?

A prototype, or minimum viable product (MVP), is the initial version of a product idea that serves as a sample for demonstrating its functionality and design. Prototypes play a key role in digital industries, including software development, mobile apps, and websites. Interest in creating prototypes for online courses and other educational products is growing every year. Creating a prototype allows you to test ideas, gather user feedback, and make necessary changes before the final version, significantly increasing the chances of a successful product launch. Instructional designer and author of "Visual Design for Professionals," Connie Malamed, shared information on the use of prototypes in online learning on her blog. Prototypes play a key role in developing effective educational programs, allowing you to test and improve learning materials before their final implementation. Using prototypes helps educational institutions and instructors better understand student needs, optimize content, and enhance learning. Connie emphasizes the importance of visual design in this process, which helps create a more engaging and intuitive user experience.

Why Prototype an Educational Product

Connie believes that the benefits of prototyping far outweigh its drawbacks. A course prototype offers numerous advantages, including the ability to test concepts early, identify problems early, and gather user feedback. This allows for refinement of the course content and structure before its final launch. Prototyping also facilitates more efficient resource and time allocation by focusing on the most important aspects of learning. Using a prototype, developers can tailor the course to the actual needs of the audience, ultimately improving its quality and user satisfaction. A course prototype is an important tool for ensuring a successful educational process.

• test the idea in its real-life embodiment;
• identify potential problems early in the product design process;
• implement an iterative design approach - that is, start with a functional "draft" of the course, and then refine and improve it from version to version;
• avoid wasting resources on a bad idea (in business, this process of testing and selecting hypotheses is called the "fast fail" approach);
• visually demonstrate the product idea to other people;
• involve the customer, partners, or future students in the program development process - to collect and subsequently take into account their feedback;
• justify your decisions to the customer and show how much resources and effort is required to develop a high-quality product.

Why Prototyping Is Sometimes Challenging

Connie Malamed notes that identifying the shortcomings of prototyping educational courses is quite difficult. However, she identifies several notable drawbacks, two of which overlap with the disadvantages associated with thorough research before course creation.

• Prototyping takes time at the initial stage of course development (although it saves time in the long run).
• It can be difficult to explain to a client or your manager why you are spending time prototyping instead of immediately starting to develop the course.
• The aforementioned “fail fast” approach is the conceptual basis of prototyping. However, not all work teams welcome mistakes, even if they ultimately save time and money. Connie’s advice is to simply not mention this approach out loud.

What Types of Prototypes Are and What They Should Include

The author identifies four types of prototypes, each designed to solve specific problems. These prototypes play a key role in the development process, allowing you to visualize ideas and test concepts. The first type of prototype serves to create a basic structure, which helps to define key functions and interactions. The second type is aimed at visualizing the design, allowing for the evaluation of aesthetic decisions and the user interface. The third type of prototype is focused on functionality, providing the opportunity to test and validate various use cases. The fourth type is the final version, which combines all previously developed elements, ready for launch and implementation. Understanding these types of prototypes is important for the successful completion of projects and the achievement of set goals.

• A functional (or interactive) prototype contains the main functions of the product and shows users how it will be designed, and allows creators to ensure that the functions and interactive mechanics will work as intended.
• A presentation (or visual) prototype allows you to demonstrate and test the “likes/dislikes” of the visual design of the course.
• A usability prototype is used to test the ease of navigation and interaction with the product as a whole.
• A feasibility prototype helps creators test the idea to ensure that it is technically feasible or, conversely, not feasible and should be abandoned.

A single prototype can effectively combine components of different types. This allows you to create more versatile and functional solutions that meet diverse user requirements and increase overall development efficiency. Mixing different components in a single project helps improve interaction and interface responsiveness, which in turn has a positive impact on the user experience.

When creating this prototype, it is necessary to focus on student interaction with the course. Connie recommends using a prototype to test the following functions:

• buttons and other navigation elements function correctly;
• if the lesson contains a branching scenario, each path leads the student where it should;
• interactive elements work correctly;
• the student receives feedback on their actions as planned;
• student answers in the test are recorded, the results are displayed correctly;
• media content, such as video, audio, animations, plays without technical errors.

A product prototype often does not include actual functions, interactive mechanics, and full-fledged educational content. Its main purpose is to test user reactions to the design early in the development stage, before the creation of the course program and educational materials. It's important to include elements such as visual style, navigation, and core course concepts in the prototype. This will allow you to gather feedback and make any necessary adjustments before launching the full version.

• Screen layouts (or slides) with the course title, module and lesson headings, and different content formats;
• location and design of navigation elements and various menus;
• color palette;
• selected font (or fonts) in different sizes and styles;
• samples of the style of photographs, illustrations, and icons;
• appearance of interactive elements, including elements in different states (for example, what a tooltip looks like, how a button changes when a user hovers over it).

A usability prototype is used to collect feedback from users before or during course development, which helps identify and eliminate deficiencies in navigation, platform interaction, visual design, and the learning process. It is important to focus on elements that create difficulties or cause dissatisfaction among students. A usability prototype helps:

— Optimize the user interface, making it more understandable and intuitive.
— Improve student interaction with the platform, which promotes greater engagement in the learning process.
— Identify and address weaknesses in the visual design, making the course more attractive.
— Gather valuable feedback to help tailor the material to the needs of the target audience.

Using a usability prototype significantly improves the quality of the educational product and user satisfaction.

• Ensure that students can easily understand the course structure and navigate the learning materials;
• Check whether the course is easy to complete on different devices—laptop, tablet, smartphone;
• Test whether the learning process flows smoothly, whether the information is presented clearly, whether the cognitive load is too high, and whether students enjoy the course.

Connie Malamed emphasizes that usability prototypes do not require a high level of detail. They can represent a simple "skeleton" of the course, without visual design. This prototyping format is called wireframe in English, which translates as "grid" or "framework." Creating a prototype on a real learning platform is not necessary, as design tools such as Figma and Balsamiq can be used for this purpose. These tools enable the effective creation of prototypes that help visualize the structure and functionality of a course, which in turn improves its usability.

This type of prototype helps confirm the feasibility of a specific format or teaching method before full-scale course development begins. This allows for an assessment of how well the chosen tools, timeframe, and budget align with the intended concept. Feasibility prototypes are especially useful in the following situations:

• There are several possible solutions to a methodological problem.
• There is a risk that a particular course component will not work for technical reasons.
• The idea may seem so complex to implement that it will take too much time.

This could be, for example, a prototype of an original feature, a simplified version of a complex format, or a condensed version of a component that you think might take too long to develop.

How Prototypes Are Created

Prototypes can vary in sophistication from simple and low-fidelity (low-fidelity, or lo-fi) to highly realistic and accurate (high-fidelity, or hi-fi). Low-fidelity prototypes are used to demonstrate the structure and main functions, which allows you to quickly test hypotheses and collect feedback. High-fidelity prototypes, in turn, allow you to more deeply study user interactions with the product, test the visual design, and evaluate interactive elements. Effectively using different types of prototypes during the development process improves the user experience and enhances the quality of the final product.

The level of detail influences the choice of necessary tools. The right choice of tools depends on how deeply you plan to develop the project. The higher the level of detail, the more tools may be required to achieve the desired result. This may include both visualization software and specialized data analysis applications. Keep in mind that using the right tools not only speeds up the process but also improves the quality of the final product.

• Paper and pencil. Yes, the most basic low-detail prototype can be simply sketched by hand directly on paper. This can be used to depict the user interface, the logic of a learning activity, the structure of the learning material, or the entire course to show to colleagues or a client and get feedback.
• Low-detail prototyping tools. They are used to create a "wireframe" of the future design layout from blocks, lines, and other basic elements. Such tools include the aforementioned Balsamiq and Figma. The latter allows you to create not only static but also interactive prototypes.
• Presentation designers. Connie Malamed classifies services such as PowerPoint and Google Slides as medium-detail prototyping tools. They can be used to demonstrate the design of the future course, and use hyperlinks between slides to develop navigation and interactivity. If you're designing a course for mobile devices, it's easy to change the aspect ratio and slide sizes in the builder.
• Course builders allow you to create an interactive prototype that closely matches the final course in detail. By choosing the tool in which you'll build the course itself, you'll save time by avoiding the need to transfer your work from one platform to another. However, as the author of the article warns, this can lead to a premature focus on design elements.

What Else Can You "Prototype"?

Prototypes play an important role not only in online course development but also in the design of various educational programs. Connie Malamed offers a number of ideas for effectively using prototypes to improve the learning process. These ideas can be applied to the creation of interactive materials and responsive courses, which contribute to increased engagement and learning effectiveness. Prototypes allow you to test concepts, get user feedback, and make changes early in development, significantly improving the final product. Using prototypes in educational design helps to create more structured and targeted curricula that meet the needs of students.

• a prototype of a training or workshop lasting several hours is a 15-30 minute training;
• a prototype of a multi-page manual is a one-page cheat sheet;
• a prototype of a video lesson is its shortened version or a full version, but filmed on a budget (for example, on a smartphone).

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