Educational software evaluation
See instructional design method for the moment.
There are several ways to evaluate software:
Technical evaluation
E.g. Dalgarno (2004)
Geissinger (1997) starts with the question Can this product actually teach what it is supposed to?" and uses Barker & King's (1993:309) four categories:
|
Category |
Discussion |
|
Quality of end-user interface design |
Investigation shows that the designers of the most highly-rated products follow well-established rules & guidelines. This aspect of design affects usersí perception of the product, what they can do with it and how completely it engages them. |
|
Engagement |
Appropriate use of audio & moving video segments can contribute greatly to usersí motivation to work with the medium. |
|
Interactivity |
Usersí involvement in participatory tasks helped make the product meaningful and provoke thought. |
|
Tailorability |
Products which allow users to configure them and change them to meet particular individual needs contribute well to the quality of the educational experience. |
References
- Barker (1995). Evaluating a model of learning design. In H. Maurer (Ed.) Proceedings, World Conference in Educational Multimedia & Hypermedia. Graz, Austria: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
- Barker, P. & King, T. (1993). Evaluating interactive multimedia courseware -- a methodology. Computers in Education 21 (4), 307-319.
- Baumgartner, P. & Payr, S. (1996). Learning as action: A social science approach to the evaluation of interactive media. In Carlson, P. & Makedom, F. (Eds.) Proceedings, World Conference in Educational Multimedia & Hypermedia. Boston: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
- Peter R Albion, Heuristic evaluation of educational multimedia: from theory to practice HTML
- Dalgarno, B. (2004). A classification scheme for learner-computer interaction. In R.Atkonson, C.McBeath, D. Jones-Dwyer and R.Phillips (eds) Beyond the comfort zone, 21st annual conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Perth, Australia. Available: PDF. (This paper describes environments, but is useful for deciding on which criteria you will select a tool)
- Geissinger H (1997) "Educational Software: Criteria for Evaluation". ASCILE '97 HTML.
- Reiser, R.A. & Kegelmann, H.W. (1994). Evaluating instructional software: A review and critique of current methods. Educational Technology, Research & Development 42(3), 63-69.