Categories: Technology, Communication Design
Summary and Citations:
Montgomery and Fogler provide a heuristic for selecting instructional software. They recommended asking:
- What are the intended roles of the software?
- What thinking skills is the software designed to challenge?
- What student learning styles does the software accommodate? (p. 53).
Interestingly, their entire focus is on the student's experience, with no thought to the workload, difficulties, or needs of the instructor. This may be more telling about the general attitudes and perspectives of distance education with technology than their actual findings. Even in the section on
assessment, the emphasis is entirely on the student's actions and experiences, not the effort required by the teacher to assess. Their conclusion evidences this gap further, "Much educational software is currently being developed. When evaluating software for possible course use, it is important to focus on the pedagogical roles, educational objectives, and learning styles addressed by the software" (Montgomery & Fogler, 1996, p. 59).
