The Internet TESL Journal

Points to Consider when Evaluating Interactive Multimedia

Warwick J. Thorn
100406.607 [at] compuserve.com
Producer of 'English With Us' CD-ROM for Communicative ESOL (Romus Interactive)

Some foundational aspects in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of a program are:

1. Ease of use and navigation.
   A program needs to be very simple in its interface, so that learners don't have to compete between learning English and learning how the program works.
2. Cognitive load.
   Users need to cope with the programs content, its structure and the response options. The program needs to be intuitive, so that it works the way you might expect it to work.
3. Knowledge space and information presentation.
   The concepts about learning English as a second language need to represent existing methodologies, where these methodogies have been proven successful.
4. Media integration.
   The multimedia needs to be combined to produce an effective whole.
5. Aesthetics.
   There needs to be a sense a beauty in the graphical interface. This adds to an effective learning environment.
6. Overall functionality.
   The program needs to provide learning in a way that users expect it to. Students need to go away from it having learned something.

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The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. II, No. 4, April 1995
http://iteslj.org/

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http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thorn-EvalueConsider.html