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Explained by Chris |
| Contents |
| Abstract |
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The many key features software evaluators and evaluation organizations
employ to evaluate instructional software
do not necessarily say much about the instructional effectiveness of the evaluated software package.
More valid informations result from incorporating students
as participants in the evaluation process.
After a review of the current evaluation practice, the authors describe their method of participating students in the software evaluation.
In order to conduct this review, the authors examined
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| Introduction |
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The market of instructional software is growing and
the teachers and school administrators are getting troubles:
they can't no longer review them all.
But educators have to be able to select and have their students use software that is instructionally effective.
Software evaluation organizations are helping out, Neill & Neill (1992) identified more than 30 of them.
The procedures that are used vary widely across organizations:
The authors differentiate between two types of evaluation:
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| Who does the evaluating? |
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Recommended and employed individuals:
- teachers, - subject matter experts, - media specialists, - school administrators, - target group students.
Very few models suggest that students serve as evaluators:
Two roles that students may play in the evaluation process:
The authors believe that there is much benefit in using students as participants.
How many individuals should evaluate a particular software program?
How train the evaluators?
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| What is the nature of the evaluation process? |
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Evaluators have to ...
- go through a software program in the same way students would; - observe students as they work their way through the program: classroom tryouts; - work through the program first and then observe students as they do so.
Individual and overall ratings
Types of rating scales
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| What features are evaluated? |
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The authors found a wide variety of features evaluators were asked to look at:
ranging from 4 to more than 300.
No consistent terminology across the methods can be found.
They identified a few categories of features:
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| How reliable are the evaluations? |
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The authors revealed that evaluations are not at all reliable:
Teachers and students rate software quite differently
Subjective ratings differ greatly across individuals and groups
Different groups tend to consider different features to be most important
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| How might the evaluation process be improved? |
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Observing the students
In order to overcome the problems of subjective evaluations, students are recommended to serve as participants: - students should be observed as they work through a software program, - they should be observed in the classroom as well as in a controlled laboratory setting.
Measuring the gain
See: the software evaluation
model proposed by
Reiser and Dick (1990):
Collecting attitude data
Results:
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| Conclusion |
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The increasing use of computer software for instructional purposes
demands for new qualifications of educators:
the ability to identify software that is instructionally effective.
In order to do so, educators will rely on software evaluation organizations
to provide them with the information they need.
What can evaluation organizations do to improve their evaluation methods?
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Chris Mueller (prolingua@access.ch)
++41 (0)52 301 3301 phone
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97 05 02 |
