Dear Volodja: Great news that you've gotten this far! Since I am new to the usability business most of what I know is from the books I'm reading as fast as I can to figure out what the professionals do when they do usability studies, and this week I am reading
The Elements of the User Experience, by Jesse James Garrett, where one finds a powerful, multi-levelled modelling for the design of user studies, including elements of strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface, and where he outlines how to analyze each individually and in combination and explains why he thinks user studies require such sophistication. To answer your question of what might help the Dotlrn community, I would answer: that you develop a study that demonstrates why such (there are other approaches of equal power, and his website refers to a number of them) approaches are recommendable and that your case study return this insight to the community in accessible form. To do this I think you might want to employ a consulting firm that has at least one foot in the Dotlrn community, and I suspect Al Essa would be able to recommend one or a number of firms who he has worked with successfully. During the past couple of weeks I've been studying
Kathleen Gilrow's Otter Group and her blog, where you will find evidence of expertise in the design not only of learning activities, but of creating online community. I don't know any of these people personally, but a recent brief report by one of her colleagues,
Designing Collaborative E-Learning For Results, by Glen Mohr and Julia M. Nault, suggests considerable precision in execution, depth of experience, and a formula for online learning success. The building of alumni communities is different, of course, than an online course, but I would think her group would look first at the many different ways alumni presently relate to your organization, how they might, and having built a strategy to deliver desirable outcomes would then start building a research protocol into your platform from there. The additional advantage of using a firm such as Gilroy's that is already familiar with the Dotlrn community is that they would be familiar with our technology and interests, know some in the community, and so might be in for helping us over the long term, ie, become a sorta "in house" research outfit for Dotlrn over the long term. In sum: hire someone with a sophisticted approach and someone who is going to stay close to us, that's my advice. I hope you find it helpful! All the best,
Bruce
