Based on their instructional techniques, there are at least six different types of educational software programs.
1. Curriculum Design/Administration
2. Tutorial
3. Drill & Practice/Educational Game
4. Tools/Problem Solving
5. Simulation & Off-Site Connectivity
6. Shells & Frameworks
Since Curriculum Design programs are only for use by educators it is not covered it in this report.
A tutorial program is similar to a lecture or a text book in style. It is designed to take the student on a "walk-through" or tour of a subject. This type of program can be advantageous if the subject is better described with the use of multi-media. Sounds, color and moving pictures can often express a subject with high clarity and in an entertaining way. However if the subject is very complicated it should be broken up into digestible segments or allow the user to save her or his place. A good tutorial program allows the student (perhaps only with the teacher's permission) to skip areas that he or she may already know. End of section summaries and content retention evaluations are also signs of a well designed tutorial program.
Such a program is interactive. The writer must know the subject matter well and understand what content must be instilled into a student. These programs are different from tutorials because they always involve some evaluations and branches of reinforcement and further study.
A good program of this category can be interrupted by the teacher or lab tech to go forward or review.
DP/Games can gather a lot of diagnostic information on a student, often more than the educator or parent can actually use. Here are some of the diagnostic information that can be accumulated:
* Response times
* Pace of knowledge acquirement
* Pace of skills acquirement
* Style preferences
* What medium is best for which students (speech, video, printed word, etc.)
DP/Games tend to be ineffective for students with severe learning problems. The program generally can't help a student who has a lot of problems retaining information or concepts. Good programs should check to see if the student is retaining and instead of going over a concept infinitely, may ask the student to consult the instructor or parent.
The software designer should also make sure the program's pace is not too fast or slow.
* Generally the program should start fast and slow down when the student begins to have problems.
* Standardized or computerized pretests can help assess what skill/pace level a particular student should start at.
Positive reinforcement should be used, but only on correct answers. A student should feel a "warm fuzzy" when she or he completes a task correctly. The software designer must be careful not to give positive reinforcement when a student has failed to complete a task adequately. Otherwise a student may just hit keys, or use other input devices, in a nonproductive way. A very good educational program should be able to know if a student is bored and randomly hitting keys.
No negative reinforcement should be given, even for wrong answers. There is no need to make a student feel bad when a mistake has been made or a task was not completed correctly. Mistakes and failures are a part of life and learning. A good program would help a student understand how to come up with correct answers, perhaps by redirecting the student to go over a weak area.
In the educational community and beyond there is some paranoia regarding DP/Games. This is largely due to the:
This fear should be unfounded as long as parents and educational institutions realize that
* someone is still needed to program content into the computer
* usually someone should be available to help students who are stuck, provide some level of guidance and encouragement, and/or fix technical problems
DP/Games due tend to use Artificial Intelligence(AI) in order to adjust to a particular student's needs and skill level. Entertaining personalities are sometimes introduced into a program. The fear that a program will start doing something malicious like HAL did in the movie "2001" are currently unfounded, as long as the software is used by the teacher or parent in advance to use by a student. The more sophisticated AI software and the high powered computers needed to run them generally are not even affordable to most high schools.
Using a game element in educational software has been proven to improve its effectiveness(MWP,1976). A Drill and Practice program can be very smart and full of relevant subject matter, but if it is not entertaining it can easily loose a student's interest and even make the field of science seem distasteful. Adding a game to the software can change all of that. In general the best type of Drill and Practice software is the kind that is fun and interesting enough that the student wants to use it often and for adequately long periods. Making the learning process a fun game achieves those goals.
One example is a tic-tac-toe experiment done at Lawrence Hall of Science by Dr. Muata Weusi-Puryear. Young students were invited to spend the day at the hall for free. The students were randomly broken up into two groups; one group used a Drill and Practice program to learn arithmetic, the other group used the same program with a tic-tac-toe game feature added. Whenever a student wanted to mark an `X' or `O' in a box, they were required to work an arithmetic problem. If the student incorrectly solved the problem they would not get the box they wanted. The computer program was the student's opponent and also solved arithmetic problems, mirroring the student's success rate. Analysis of the data collected from these experiments showed conclusively that the game group on average learned a lot more arithmetic than the simple Drill and Practice group[(]MWP,1975)(MWP,1982).
These types of programs automate some task or skill for students, e.g., a factoring program. Students use such software tools to solve problems.
Onesuch popular tool is the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) which can be used for college statistical research analysis, as well as to teach grade schoolers about prediction and probability.[(]SPSS)
Even the programming that goes into smart calculators such as those made by Hewlett-Packard[(]HP) and Texas Instruments[(]TI) can be considered Tool Educational Software.
There is a lot of interest by teachers into software tools. This is because:
This is the main purpose and best use of such software. A psychology or a social science student can use SPSS to help organize and analyze collected data, thus giving her or him time to focus on the implications and interpretations of the outcomes.
However if problem solving tools are introduced too early they can hide what's really going on. A student who uses a sophisticated factoring program to solve all of his or her homework problems probably doesn't learn how factoring works and how to do factoring by hand.
This is a really cool side effect for educators, however it makes it very tempting to use such programs too early in the learning process.
A simulation program provides a virtual presentation of a system. This type of program is probably the most effective for science subjects. Educational science software can be very effectively used in the simulation of lab experiments that;
* cannot be done at home or in the available school labs,
* are too expensive, complicated, dangerous, or time consuming to set up, or
* are of such brief duration that careful observation is difficult.
"A successful simulation provides nearly the same experience as the actual, hands-on experiment, yet except for the initial cost of the computer and the software, the expense is minimal.", p.237) However computerized simulations shouldn't take the place of actual experimentation when it is feasible Some science software actually helps real experiments by making the personal computer a lab instrument capable of very precise measurements or analysis. , p.237-238)
For a small example of a simulation educational science program, point your Java capable browser to here: http://www.cancon.bc.ca/examples.html#darwin
Some off-site connectivity products now offer more than just communication with other teachers, students and scientists. A new field is developing where new "virtual field trips" are being created by marrying multi-media and Internet connectivity. These virtual places can often update themselves and thus are very useful for teaching cutting edge subjects that change often. They also tend to be written the Java language which works on any of the most popular hardware platforms. These "places" can also be "shippable" so a student can stop working on a project on one computer and restart work just where he or she left off on almost any other computer.[(]OHE,1996)
"Computers can also help students understand that scientists don't work in isolation. Students who want to become scientists need to communicate their theories and findings in order to participate in the scientific community. All young people should be able to comprehend and express their views on scientific issues that affect both their environment and the economy. Presentation software and access to other young scientists over the Internet offer great potential for developing an involved, informed, and educated community of scientific thinkers."[(]Apple, 1997)
For each other type of educational program their are "shell programs" or frameworks. These programs allow a teacher or specialist to create custom educational software programs geared toward their students' needs. This is done by adding specific material on a topic, or variety of topics, to a basic format given on disk. It is important that these programs are easy for educators to use., p.46)
(MWP,1976) Weusi-Puryear, M.l, "An Argument For Games in Computerized Drills and Tutorials", in Today's Revolution: Computers in Education. The 1976 Association For Educational Data Systems' International Convention Proceedings, May 3-7, 1976, Phoenex, Arizona.
[(MWP,1975)] Weusi-Puryear, Muata, An Experiment To Examine The Pedagogiical Value Of A Computer Simulated Game Desioned To Correct Errors In Arithmetical Computations. Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1975. Disssertation Abstracts International Volume XXXVI, Number 4, 1975. Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Order No. 75-21.906, 157 pgs.
(MWP,1982) Arithmetic-Tac-Toetm copyright 1982
... a computerized game to exercise basic arithmetic skills.
[(SPSS)] SPSS (1997). What do people do with SPSS: Academia [WWW document]. URL http://www.spss.com/software/spss/cando.htm#ac
[(HP)] Hewlett-Pakard (HP) (1996). Calculators: Scientific and Graphic Calculators [WWW document].URL http://hpcc997.external.hp.com:80/handheld/calculators/calculators.html
[(TI)] Texas Instruments (TI) (1997). TI Graphing Calculators for the Classroom [WWW document]. URL http://www.ti.com/calc/docs/sgraph.htm
[(OHE,1996] Orfali, R., Harkey, D., Edwards, J., (1996). The Essential Client/Server Survival Guide, 2nd Ed. Wiley & Sons, Inc. See also WWW document: URL http://www.corbajava.engr.sjsu.edu/
[(Apple] Apple Computer, Inc. (1997) Apple Education Series, Science Tools, Welcome [WWW document]. URL http://ed.info.apple.com/education/products/scitools/aes_sci_welcome.html