For the piloting of instruments that will be used to gauge implementation, the evaluator should seek as respondents, teachers and students who have participated in other online courses. They can complete questionnaires, serve as pilot interviewees, and be "observed" in their course settings. The evaluators should not use teachers or students from the actual project, for the pilot. Their participation in the pilot would disqualify them from the actual evaluation. Given the fact that there are only four teachers and four classes of students taking the online course, they should all be used in the evalution.
For the piloting of the learning assessment, which will be used to gauge outcomes, students who have also taken high school biology, but in different virtual classes, can be used. Think-aloud protocols would be an appropriate methodology for collecting information about the suitability of the wording and formatting of the learning assessment items, as well as for gauging the extent to which the students are interpreting the items as intended. The larger the number of students who participate and the more representative they are of the actual students in the project being evaluated, the more confident the evaluator can be that the piloting has identified all the technical quality issues that need to be addressed.