Educational software evaluation

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Draft

Feature evaluation[edit | edit source]

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

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

Cognitive task

Attending to static information
Controlling media
Navigating the system
Answering questions
Attending to question feedback
Exploring a world
Measuring in a world
Manipulating a world
Constructing in a world
Attending to world changes
Articulating
Processing data
Attending to processed data
Formatting output

Input technique

Typing
Valuators
Key pressing
Pull down menus
Menu lists
Buttons
Icons
Hot spots
Hypertext
Scroll bars
Media controls
Selecting
Dragging
Drawing

System response

Displaying
Presenting media
Presenting cues
Branching
Assessing answers
Generating feedback
Updating world
Generating world
Processing data
Searching
Saving and loading

Conceptual evaluation[edit | edit source]

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.

Belfer, Nesbit, & Leacock, T. proposed a Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI)

References[edit | edit source]

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.

Belfer, K., Nesbit, J., & Leacock, T. (2002) Learning object review instrument (LORI). Version 1.4

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.