Forcing a Google mini to show “omitted results”

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Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil” but that doesn’t mean they can’t occasionally be overly helpful. Case in point our Google Mini (which serves up search results at Lafayette) was omitting results from the Library web site because it felt those results were too similar. You could still see them by forcing Google to … Read more

Gorilla, err, Guerrilla Usability Testing

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One our first tasks in getting usability testing for Moodle up and running is to find software that can capture video of everything that’s happening on screen, while simultaneously recording the audio of the user’s thought process. We’re still looking at Windows options, but the hands-down favorite on the Mac is Silverback. This $50 app … Read more

Moodle Usability Testing

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One of our semester-long projects is to do usability testing of Moodle. We’ll be conducting a number of tests in which we give people a series of tasks to complete and how they do them. We’re not alone in this; we’re working with a number of other colleges (including Smith College, Reed College, Macalester College, Kenyon College, Earlham College and Luther College) who will be conducting tests of their own this spring.

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Slushy the Snow Man

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  My daughter and I built a snow man after last week’s snow storm, just as the snow was turning over to rain. We named him “Slushy”; the rain caused him to fall over later that day.