An Empirical Assessment of Pedagogical Usability Criteria For Digital Learning Material With Elementary School Students
Author
Petri Nokelainen
I was initially drawn to this article in the International Forum of Educational Technology and Society for two reasons. I have read countless articles in the past few years about the state of American education and how we are being surpassed by many Asian and European countries. This article was written by an education professor in Finland. I thought that it would be interesting to glean some international perspective on digital learning materials and how they should be incorporated. I was also interested in the topic of the article. As a school media specialist, I work closely with my SIT team and administration in coming up with ideas on the types of technology we should be purchasing for the school. I have worked at a couple of different schools and have found that it is not uncommon for the schools to purchase a lot of the newest technology only to find that it is not user friendly or it has aged rather quickly and depreciated in value. One of the biggest obstacles with technology in public education is budget. I believe that it is important that each purchase should be scrutinized and some sort of criteria should be established prior to purchasing digital learning material.
The article states that the purpose is not to label anyone product "good" or "bad" but to aid in choosing the best material for the given learning situation. The article then goes on to state that while technological criteria and user friendliness has been studied greatly in the past twenty years, very little about pedagogical usability has been studied. I felt that the criteria listed in this article were great for me to consider prior to making purchases for my school.
The four pedagogical criteria discussed in the article were:
- Learning Control: Has the material been broken down into "meaningful units?"
- Learner Activity: Is the activity problem based? Does it allow for collaboration?
- Cooperative/Collaborative Learning: Does it allow students to work together as "members of communities in practice?"
- Goal Orientation: Are goals and objectives clear?
While the pedagogical criteria seems pretty straight-forward, it streamlines the purchasing process for the powers that be in the school. It is so easy to fall into the trap of "keeping up with jones-es" or falling pray to those smooth talking vendors!
Source:
Journal of Educational Technology & Society, Vol. 9, No. 2, Interoperability of Educational Systems (April 2006), pp. 178 - 197
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.9.2.178
