Educational software evaluation

Draft

See also instructional design method

There are several ways to evaluate software:

Feature evaluation

E.g. Dalgarno (2004) proposes three broad categories:

• Categories of cognitive task
• Categories of input technique
• Categories of system response

Cognitive task

1. Attending to static information
2. Controlling media
3. Navigating the system
4. Answering questions
5. Attending to question feedback
6. Exploring a world
7. Measuring in a world
8. Manipulating a world
9. Constructing in a world
10. Attending to world changes
11. Articulating
12. Processing data
13. Attending to processed data
14. Formatting output

Input technique

1. Typing
2. Valuators
3. Key pressing
4. Pull down menus
5. Menu lists
6. Buttons
7. Icons
8. Hot spots
9. Hypertext
10. Scroll bars
11. Media controls
12. Selecting
13. Dragging
14. Drawing

System response

1. Displaying
2. Presenting media
3. Presenting cues
4. Branching
5. Assessing answers
6. Generating feedback
7. Updating world
8. Generating world
9. Processing data
10. Searching
11. Saving and loading

Conceptual evaluation

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.