Director: Robert Spielvogel, Education Development Center
Margaret Honey, EDC/Center for Children and Technology
Contact: Han-hua Chang, EDC/ Center for Children and Technology
Project Summary: An Evaluation Tool for Telecommunications-Based Projects
This project demonstration will present a new application developed at EDC to assist researchers and classroom teachers in the evaluation of students' use of the Internet within the context of project work. The presentation will demonstrate the software and discuss its current application to several projects and the results that it is producing. We will also discuss additional applications, the broader potential of this type of evaluation software and the various research and ethical issues that guided its development.
The tool consists of a client module that students use in conjunction with a wide variety of applications such as web browsers, word processors and spreadsheet programs.
The client records various quantitative measurements and records them in a robust central database that can store the accumulated records for a large number of students. The system can be used by a wide variety of research projects simultaneously and can handle both short-term and long-term studies. The client software also will display questionnaires or surveys and collect log entries at various points during the use of the applications being studied in a particular research project.
The flexible design permits the software to be adapted for use in various assessment and evaluation contexts. It has the potential to permit certain types of cross-project analysis as well.
Index of additional documents::
For more information, send e-mail to Robert Spielvogel.