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5.8.1 5.8a Creating a Beta Plan
Quality assurance (QA) is an important step in the creation of a course. Quality assurance is where you have people (who were not involved in the course development) review the course to ensure that it meets your company's quality standards. During the quality assurance process, you should have a content expert review the course to ensure it is clear, understandable, and accurate. You should also have an editor review grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Beta testing consists of having a select group of people take the course. This group should be representative of your target audience. The goal of Beta testing is to ensure that the course meets its objectives. The number of people who are in a Beta test depends on your company. Typically, a Beta test require less than ten people. You should provide beta students with the course. After they take the course, you should ask those students questions on the effectiveness of the course. You can use their responses to update the course material and thereby make the course more effective.

A Beta plan is a document that identifies your goals for the course and identifies what specifically you want to assure with the Beta process. For example, this is the beta document for the course you currently are taking:

Course Goal: To provide course developers with the knowledge to effectively use the ReadyGo Web Course Builder.

Questions for beta sites on use of the course:

a) Were you able to easily access the course?

b) Did you find the course easy to follow?

c) Was the information clear and informative?

d) Was the information pertinent to the task at hand?

e) What additional content would you like to see in the course?

f) What did you like best?

g) What information did you find confusing?

h) Did you find the exercises helpful?

i) What additional features would you recommend for the class?