Alpha Testing
The development phase ends with quality assurance (QA), in two phases (or four, depending on client adoption):
- Alpha Testing
- Showcase Presentation
- Client Presentation
- Beta Testing
Alpha Testing is internal: student partners serve as peer reviewers to examine each other’s sites and provide specific and general feedback as requested through online forms like this one. Based on that feedback, each student creates a “punch-list” of tasks as they review the responses and decide which ones to apply to the site, and attack the list furiously as the end of the course grows near.
Showcase Presentation
In the final week of the course, students share their website projects with the rest of the class and some guests via slideshows. These presentations may be formatted to be talked through (with minimal text content on each slide), or as stand-alone “kiosks” that click through to site pages and other work products for independent review.
In some cases, these presentations serve as “Course Portfolios” documenting the learning journey of each student. However, these presentations are ideally positioned as dry-runs for presenting each site to its clinical client, who must make the choice whether to adopt the new sites or not. Slideshows formatted as client presentations should be presented live rather than as kiosks.
In standard web development relationships, the client presentation of the site is a request for a balance of payment: “Do you accept that we have created the site you asked for, to the agreed specifications?” If the client does not agree, it is followed by a set of final changes circumscribed by the contract.
In the context of this web clinic, however, this presentation is an evaluation by the client of the work of the student developer.