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This page presents the evaluation criteria used in Teaching with Technology with explanations of each criterion. Click on any of the six major criteria below to see the specific evaluation criteria for that section (Click on the Green Ball next to each subheading to take you back to this menu.):
1. Instructional
ContentIt is helpful for students to get oriented by knowing the objectives of a lesson. Lesson objectives should be stated in behavioral terms, letting students know what is expected of them, and how their progress will be evaluated. It is optimal if the objectives are stated as part of the lesson itself, but it is certainly acceptable to have them be part of the documentation.
A well-sequenced lesson should move the student through the lesson in a logical manner toward mastery. A good lesson will begin with a statement of Entering Behaviors (prerequisites for that skill). If these have not been met, students should be cautioned, or not permitted to continue. The subskills of the task should be sequenced so that if skills must be mastered hierarchically, then they are presented as such.
Practice activities and exercises should help students master the lesson objectives. There are many occasions where the computer cannot perform or evaluate critical tasks, so others are substituted for it. Often these are tasks that the computer can manage more easily, even though they are not the ones that are necessary for mastery of the task.
If a lesson requires skills or abilities that are beyond the stated age or grade level specified, it can cause a great deal of frustration. Specific factors to identify include:
A good lesson permits teachers to adapt it to meet the needs of a variety of learners. Some of the factors that teachers can modify in flexible lessons are:
A lesson's value is increased when it is extended by outside activities that provide a follow-up to the lesson itself. These can be included as part of the lesson on disk, or as part of the documentation. They can be presented as lesson plans, worksheets, outside reading lessons, or references to other software or texts.
The skills learned in a lesson are more valuable when they can be extended to other areas and settings. The lesson should provide information on the generalizability of the lesson skills.\
If the same information is presented in the same order each time, then a lesson is of limited value to a learner on repeated occasions. A good lesson will provide the following types of variability:
The lesson clearly should not contain references that are stereotypic of age, race, sex, religion or nationality. All persons should be represented in a fair, non- biased manner.
Because software is costly, you will want to make use of it for as long as possible. Avoid software containing any factors that will lead to its rapid obsolescence. A few factors to watch for are:
To justify the purchase of instructional software, the topic treated should be worthy of study. If the topic is trivial, it wastes the student's time and the school's resources.
2. Instructional
DesignA well-designed lesson begins with skills that are appropriate for the stated entry-level behaviors. New information should be presented hierarchically based on the sequence of previous information. The context and structure of the information should always be apparent.
Immediate feedback is an important feature of good instruction. Although feedback can indicate that a response is correct or incorrect, it can do far more. It can provide prompts, and present the correct response. It can greatly alter student motivation, and maintain interest by varying rate and type of feedback.
Given the high cost of CAI, a good lesson should be applicable to as many students as possible. By being able to vary the rate, sequence and level of difficulty, a lesson can accommodate a larger, and more heterogeneous group of students.
A well-written lesson should provide summaries and reviews that reinforce the concepts that have been presented. This is also a good way to provide necessary information for some students who are deficient, or have not proceeded linearly from the beginning of the lesson.
Sound and graphics contribute a great deal toward student motivation. Excessive sound and graphics can have the opposite effect. They can distract students, or eliminate their anonymity by calling attention to their errors. Slow appearing graphics can add unnecessary delays to a lesson, destroying continuity and causing a student's attention to wander.
Sound, when used well, can be a very motivating factor for students. It can also be a distraction within the lesson, or to other students not working on the lesson. Well-designed software permits the sound to be turned on-or-off by the student or teacher.
3. Ease of UseMany students use the computer in a lab setting. If 4-or-5 students all need the teacher's help, a good deal of their lab time is spent waiting, and missing out on the activity. Software manuals have a very short lifespan in a school setting, and should not be relied on. At best the lesson should have a tutorial and help section.
Built in help screens enable students to be more independent. These help screens should be accessible from any point in the lesson, and provide a direct route back to the point of origin.
Learners differ in style, and well-designed lessons accommodate to this. Students should be no more restricted in a computer lesson than in a book. They should be free to move in either direction, or browse by way of a menu.
Manuals should contain extra instructions for those students who need it, particularly first time users. They should also contain follow-up activities and lesson plans.
If a student does not respond correctly, a good teacher does not just tell him/her the answer. He/she will give a small part of the answer and see if that is enough. Such prompting still gives the student the opportunity to to learn in an active fashion. Overprompting can be distracting, and slow down progress.
If a student wishes to exit a lesson, he/she should not have to re-start the lesson. They should be able to return to the point of exit. This is particularly important in a computer lab setting.
4. ManagementStudents should move through a lesson based on their mastery of the lesson objectives. If the student demonstrates difficulty by making incorrect responses, he/she should take a different path than a student attaining mastery. The lesson should branch to a remedial loop, or refer the student to a teacher for additional help.
Records are useful for students to pinpoint their progress, and diagnose their difficulty. They provide a motivational element. They permit teachers to monitor student progress. Useful records can take many forms, including number of responses correct, time spent on the task, items attempted, etc.
Poorly designed instructional software treats incorrect responses by providing the correct response, or looping the student back over the same section. Students having difficulty should be presented with additional opportunities for practice, alternative explanations, additional examples.
A lesson author must anticipate alternative forms of student input. Students are confused when they respond correctly to a question, and are treated as if they were wrong because the program did not account for the form of their response. For example, a student might answer in lower case when the lesson was expecting upper case.
A well-designed lesson has prerequisite skill that are defined, and tested for at the beginning of the lesson. The best lessons do this within the program, and use the information diagnostically, identifying where the student should begin. These skills should at least be tested for in the lesson documentation.
Because technology is expensive, whenever a lesson can be used by more than one student at a time, it becomes more valuable. Strategies for using the lesson either cooperatively, or competitively should be identified.
5. MotivationA good lesson will keep the student motivated, and on task without requiring the intervention of a teacher. Game formats, exciting sound and graphics and appropriate use of feedback are factors that increase student motivation.
Some lesson authors attempt to use humor through sarcasm and criticism. Such attempts at humor, while funny to many students, can be offensive or devastating to others. Feedback should be positive and supportive.
Students, particularly those having difficulty, should have their privacy and anonymity preserved. Feedback consisting of loud noises and bright graphics that call attention to poor student performance embarrass and inhibit students.
6. Technical Aspects
If a screen is designed well then it is uncluttered and easy to read. Important information should be highlighted using different typestyles, frames or different background.Screens should not be overloaded with information. Similar types of information should be displayed in the same area of each screen.
If a lesson has frequent delays, students will lose attention. Such delays can result from slow loading graphics, overprompting, and a slow presentation of information. When students can control the rate of information delivery, this problem can be alleviated.
Lessons should always be debugged to avoid an unexpected crash of the program. The lesson should anticipate unwanted keystrokes and other responses. Lessons that crash easily and require constant re-booting are a source of frustration to both teachers and students.
