Publish at November 23 2015 Updated May 29 2024
Faced with the plethora of educational software available today, one of the questions on the minds of education professionals in favor of the pedagogical integration of ICT is how to separate the wheat from the chaff. For, while e-learning tools are legion, they are certainly not all equal. And if debates on their effectiveness seem endless, it's because the differences observed in their characteristics sometimes leave us perplexed. So, what makes good educational software?
This is the question that Sjödén Björn, a student in the Department of Cognitive Science at Lund University, Sweden, sets out to answer in his doctoral thesis, soberly entitled " What are the characteristics of good educational software?
In his thesis, Sjödén Björn offers a critical analysis of the main characteristics that make educational software effective learning tools.
To achieve this, he analyzed 100 so-called "educational" applications. Following this analysis, the researcher sets out a number of characteristics inherent in quality educational software. He believes that the relevance of educational software depends on a number of criteria:
These and many other characteristics (re)place cognitive science at the heart of any system for transmitting and acquiring knowledge.
Secondly,Sjödén Björn focuses on how cognitive science can help improve the quality of educational software. To this end, he proposes several types of methodological approach that designers of this type of software should draw on to make them more useful for education. These include observational and quasi-experimental approaches with conceptual replications, to name but a few.
Sjödén Björn does not disavow educational software, but invites teachers to take a more critical look at these tools, whose limits are rarely perceptible. He obviously recognizes their pedagogical potential, but calls for more thought to be given to their design and development. For, as he himself acknowledges:
"digital learning tools can provide great educational benefits, as long as they don't become mere books on a screen, but also put their digital advantages to work.
This involves, for example, providing good feedback, showing that there are different ways of thinking to achieve a goal (...)".
Read also:
A range of free Windows-based software for primary schools
Free educational software for kindergarten and primary school
Software to measure your students' performance
Reference
Sjödén, B. (2015). What makes good educational software? Lund University Cognitive Studies
https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/7991505
You might also like:
Countering loneliness and its corollaries through digital tablets [Thesis].
Intergenerational activities using digital tablets boost life satisfaction and reduce psychological distress in the elderly, while having a less significant effect on loneliness.
Online behavioral influence: studies in the pressure-free submission paradigm - Thesis
The role of avatars in pressure-free submission: the anthropomorphism of the avatar has a very real importance in inter-individual interactions.
Global warming, class warfare and tree mortality in French forests
Forests provide ecosystem services essential to life. Human activity on Earth has resulted in the loss of 60% of forests, 60% of wild animals and 60% of insects. Ongoing climate change is one of many causes impacting forests. An increase in tree mortality is associated with climate change becoming more frequent and intense. But in what proportions?
Masculinities in skirts [Thesis].
"In what way(s) do consumer practices constructed as feminine participate in the deconstruction or even the reconstruction of masculinity?" How do men in Western countries who wear skirts move the relationship to a garment that, in their home, has not always been attributed to the feminine? And, basically, how and why do we gender everyday practices?
Go pee in the rhubarb [Thesis]
To metabolize our western cities in a different way, and put the food/excretion system back into a viable biogeochemical loop for the planet and its inhabitants.
