Independent software developers and vendors are generating an impressive array of programs and games that organize and encourage learning with a Table PC. They each have committed a huge investment of time and resources, even those who say “I just coded that in an hour.”
With due respect for these talented people, I’ve been working on a software content hygiene checklist that education ISVs may use to improve learning from their programs. (Maybe I should call it an education software beautification checklist.) By content, I mean the subject of the software, such as English sentence writing, solving addition-subtraction problems, or speaking Spanish.
Above all, I suggest this caveat when formulating learning content: think like a learner. Think like a four year old learning numerals, an eighth grader learning algebra. That is, remove anything from your program that does not directly and promptly lead to the intended learning. Remove any colors, shapes, sizes, and positions that do not increase the learning rate. You can identify these distractions during field tests.
Heres an annotated checklist draft of questions to help guide this cleansing.
The threshold question about education software seems apparent: What learning do you as the software designer intend from the use of your software? Specify, at least for yourself, an operational definition of what you mean by learning. For example, you might assert, “This software will increase a users correct responses from 4 out of every 10 tries to 9 out of 10 tries.”
If you decide to specify intended learning, then several questions flow across that threshold.
What will the user do to learn? You have two choices. One is that “learning just happens” as the user works through the program. The other choice is to describe the behavior (such as to read the problem and to write numerals) and number of problems the user must solve to meet your criterion for learning.
How do you know that learning occurs?Answers to this question flow from what the user does to learn. Specify what evidence you collect and analyze in order to assert that the user learns what you want learned. For example, count the number of problems tried and the number of problems solved correctly in sets of 10 problems to a trial block. You might say, for example, I know a user learns (the criterion for learning is) when the user solves at least 8 out of 10 problems correctly in 3 successive trial blocks.
What record do you offer to show that learning occurs? Describe what, if any, data collection, analysis, and reporting your program provides about correct and incorrect answers. There appears to be plenty of room here for creative responses to this question by developers.
So what? So someone learns what you offer through your software? What difference does it make? Where does your program fit into a curriculum or into the great narrative of human life? Answer these questions directly and specifically. Your answers can range from Why not learn? to Learn these tasks in order to … to Just because…
Someone will probably ask you which education standard your software fits. When asked, you can name the standard. Or you can also say that your program is generic and fundamental to more than one standard, meant for people learning to use skills you can then describe.
In any case, consider thinking like a learner in order to cleanse (beautify) your software of everything except that which measurably increases a users learning rate. Or, perhaps you intend your software as a form of entertainment that may lead to incidental learning.
Either way is good. Keep developing so others can keep learning.